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dictAIted

“dictAIting” and “dictAIte” redirect here. For making things other than text, see mAIde. Not to be confused with ordinary dictation.

dictAIted is a coined verb form for writing that a person produced by speaking their ideas to an AI, which then drafted, organized, and edited the text. The author spoke it, reviewed it, judged it, and tweaked it, but did not type every sentence in the traditional sense of writing. The term was coined by Peter Jamieson as the writing counterpart to mAIde.¹

Etymology

The English verb dictate, from the Latin dictare, “to say repeatedly, to prescribe,”³ with the letters AI capitalized where they already sit inside it: dictAIted. As with mAIde, the spoken word is unchanged and only the spelling says what happened.

Definition

Text is dictAIted when:

• The ideas, argument, and voice came from the author, usually spoken aloud or typed as rough notes.
• An AI turned that material into drafted, structured prose, and often helped check facts or track down citations.
• The author read the result, judged it, and corrected it until it said what they meant.

Traditional dictation to a secretary or a speech-to-text tool records the author’s exact words. DictAIting does not; the AI chooses many of the words, and the author decides whether they are the right ones.

Origin

The idea predates the word. In September 2026 Jamieson closed a blog post with the credit “This post was written by me, with the help of Claude” and then questioned it: “I’m not sure I’m writing since I’m dictating to it?”² In October 2026 he replaced “written” with “mAIde and dictAIted by me” in his post credits.¹

“I” or “we”?

Main article: mAIde § “I” or “we”?

As with mAIde, it is unsettled whether the credit should read “I dictAIted this” or “we dictAIted this.”⁶ The question is sharper for writing than for making. A reader assumes the words on the page are the author’s, and in dictAIted text many of them were chosen by the AI. That argues for “we”. Against it, the ideas, the voice, and the final say over every sentence were the author’s, and an AI cannot answer for what the text claims. That argues for “I”. Jamieson’s current credit line, “dictAIted by me, with Claude,” takes the first person and names the collaborator.

Comparisons

• Ghostwriting — someone else writes text credited to the author. In dictAIting the “ghost” is an AI and the arrangement is stated openly.⁴
• Amanuensis — a person employed to write down what another dictates. An AI amanuensis also rewrites, which is why a new word was needed.⁵

Usage

• “I dictAIted the first draft on my drive to campus.”
• “mAIde and dictAIted by me.” (credit line)

See also

• mAIde (Not Wikipedia)
• Ghostwriter · Amanuensis

References