The Authority Vacuum and How AI Is Changing Professional Reputation
Updated: 2 days ago
Taryn Lee Johnston is a UK publisher, writing partner, and integrated media consultant specialising in helping high-achieving professionals write and publish books that build authority. She is the founder of FCM Publishing, Chronos Publishing, and Taryn Lee Johnston Integrated Media Consultancy.
Something strange has happened to the way senior professionals write about their work. If you've read a dozen LinkedIn thought leadership posts, a handful of business books published in the last eighteen months, or any of the content coming out of the major consulting firms, you'll have noticed it even if you haven't named it. Everything sounds the same. The sentences are smooth, the arguments reasonable, the structure familiar, and you don’t retain what you’ve read after you've finished it. I’ve also heard it in audiobooks too.
This is the authority vacuum, and it's one of the most significant shifts in professional reputation over the last decade. It has very little to do with the quality of the thinking behind the writing, which in many cases is substantial, but has everything to do with the tools now used to produce the writing and what those tools do to voice when they're applied without proper editorial judgement.
The result is a strange paradox. The volume of professional content being produced has never been higher, and the opportunity for a senior professional to distinguish themselves through their thinking has never been greater. But the probability that any individual professional will actually distinguish themselves is dropping because they're producing writing that sounds like everyone else's through tools designed to make writing sound reasonable at scale.
What AI does to voice
The useful thing to understand about current artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools is that they're optimised for a particular outcome, readable, coherent, broadly competent prose that doesn't embarrass the person using the tool. They are not optimised for voice, a distinctive argument, or anything that would stand out in a room full of other professionals doing the same thing.
Voice, in the sense that matters for authority building, is the specific pattern of word choice, sentence rhythm, argument structure, and intellectual quirk that makes a particular person's thinking recognisable. It's what makes you sound like you and not like someone else. It's also what AI tools are designed to smooth away because the smoothing is what makes the output usable across the widest possible range of contexts.
When a senior professional runs their draft through an AI tool, asks an AI tool to produce the draft from a brief, or edits with an AI assistant that suggests improvements, the output drifts toward the average. The sharp phrasings get softened, characteristic constructions get normalised, and strong and deliberate arguments get rounded off at the edges. By the time the piece is published, it reads like it could have been written by anyone with similar expertise and a decent AI subscription.
Which, of course, is exactly what has happened across the industry at scale.
When I work with an author, the first thing I ensure is that their voice comes through. You want people to recognise you without you having to be in the room whilst they read your words.
Why this matters for building authority
Authority, at a senior level, is largely built through the specific thinking a professional becomes known for. Not their general expertise, which is roughly equivalent to that of their peers, or their credentials, which look similar on paper to those of their competitors. Their specific thinking. The way they see a problem, articulate a solution, or frame a question that others haven't thought to ask in that way.
What makes that particular person stand out?
This is the mechanism by which a senior professional moves from being competent at their job to being the person other senior professionals quote, refer to, invite to speak, and want to work with. It's also the mechanism that AI-smoothed writing destroys because, by removing the voice, it removes the specificity that would otherwise make the thinking memorable.
The practical result is that, in a market where almost everyone is producing competent, AI-polished content, the professionals building genuine authority are the ones whose writing is still identifiably theirs. They are, in effect, benefiting from flat professional writing by producing something that sounds like a real person thought it through. The bar for standing out is lower than it has been in years, but only for the small number of people prepared to resist the tooling pressure that makes everyone else blend in.
The trajectory from here
The next three to five years are likely to accelerate this pattern. More artificial intelligence (AI) tools will enter professional workflows, and more senior professionals will adopt them without thinking carefully about what they do to their voice. The content that will be produced will be indistinguishable from everything else. The authority vacuum will widen.
What this creates is a specific window for professionals who are prepared to think carefully about what they’re actually trying to build and are prepared to use their brains and personality to write rather than taking the quick fix.
If the goal is to be recognisable, quotable, and genuinely known for your thinking, the current moment is the best opportunity in a decade to make that happen. The competition for distinctive authority is thinner than it has been in years because the tools everyone else is using are flattening them into a crowd.
This isn’t an argument against AI tools. There are things AI does well, particularly on the production side of professional work, research summaries, drafting support, formatting, and administrative text. The argument is that the strategic and voice-level work has to stay human, and the professionals who understand that distinction are the ones who will build real authority over the next five years. The ones who don’t will blend into the smoothed average, regardless of how substantial their underlying thinking actually is.
What to do about it
The practical implication for a senior professional thinking about their authority positioning is straightforward, though it cuts against most of the current advice.
Write less, but write it yourself. One properly created piece of writing in your own voice will do more for your authority than ten AI-assisted pieces that could have been written by anyone.
If you don’t have time to write it yourself, don’t delegate to AI. Delegate to a human partner who can hold your voice while helping you produce the work. That partner costs more than an AI subscription for a reason, and it’s your voice that’s being protected.
Pay attention to the writing of professionals you admire. Notice what makes it recognisably theirs. Notice how the sharp phrasings, the distinctive argument structures, and the characteristic rhythm make the writing feel like it belongs to a specific person. That’s what you’re trying to produce in your own work.
If you’re known for being blunt or sarcastic, be that in your writing!
Resist the temptation to smooth. The sharp sentences that feel slightly uncomfortable are often the ones that stand out and make people remember you. The phrases that make you hesitate are likely to be where you’re hitting a point hard. The specific examples that feel too specific may well be what the reader needed to understand the point you’re making.
The authority vacuum is real, but the opportunity it creates is also real. The professionals who understand both will build reputations over the next five years that would have taken a decade to build in the previous market.
Read more from Taryn Lee Johnston
Taryn Lee Johnston, Publisher, Book Writing Partner & Strategist
Taryn Lee Johnston is an independent publisher, UK writing partner, and thought leader on artificial intelligence in publishing. Founder of FCM Publishing and Chronos Publishing, she has worked with clients including Tony Robinson OBE and Bob Champion CBE. Named Independent Publisher of the Year 2024/25/26, her authors have achieved six consecutive Business Books of the Year shortlistings. She is also a TEDx speaker and a former University of Lincoln lecturer.
