What do you think – who does the job better, an AI essay generator or a human writer? Someone will say: “Of course, a human writer, what a stupid question! Humans are genuinely creative; they write original academic papers and can choose the most relevant citations.” 

Another person may have a completely different vision and say that AI essay generators win by 100 because they have access to the entire “knowledge database,” endless facts, citations, styles, and examples of similar essays. AI generators don’t make silly grammar, punctuation, and formatting mistakes and can humanize texts to a high level of precision. 

In this article, we aim to uncover the truth and determine which tasks are better suited for human intervention and which for AI essay generators. See whether you should entrust such tools to your academic tasks or not, and speculate on how to make AI-generated content sound more human and pass all the necessary checks.

What Kind of AI Essay Generator to Use

Before we move to judging the benefits and limitations of AI essay generators, let’s first make sure that we are talking about the same term. Because with so many LLMs in play, it is obvious that there are too many tools to choose from, and not all of them are created equal.

• Standard LLMs like GPT, Claude, Gemini. You certainly can give these LLMs a topic and ask them to write an essay for you. You will specify some details, preferred citation style, your level of education, and maybe even share some notes. And still, you will get a draft you can only use as a fundamental vision of what an academic essay should look like. Also, it will hardly be original. Classical LLMs, no matter whether you are using the latest pro model or a standard one, are good at sharing information, but they are not trained to write essays. There are various reasons for this – from ethical considerations, such as universities’ honor codes, to technical reasons, including the inability to find the most recent sources for citations. 
• “Essay-writing AI tools” based on standard LLMs. It works this way – someone creates a service that has all the “front end” of an essay writing service, but the “back end” is directly powered by ChatGPT or Gemini. So you pay more for the exact same result you get in Option #1. 
• Custom-trained AI essay writers. These tools are trained on academically enhanced, specially curated datasets, with access to the latest citation styles and formatting requirements. WriteMyEssay AI essay generator, for example, is undetectable and trained not only to write essays at the necessary level of academic proficiency, but also to humanize the final text and pass recently updated AI detectors.   

When speaking about who does it better: an AI essay generator or a human writer, we will first of all talk about the third option, because such tools give the best results, thus, can truly compete with human authors. 

Pros and Cons of Human Writers for Essay Writing

Human writers often rely on their personal experiences, which can enhance their creativity when incorporating personal anecdotes into various types of essay tasks. They may have access to links and books that AI tools haven’t indexed yet, use lecture notes, and adapt writing to the professor’s preferences. 

If it’s not the first essay you have written in this class, human writing offers more style consistency and understanding of what is required by a particular professor or teacher. Reflective essays created by humans sound more natural, even if an AI tool is told the same story to reflect on.

There is an opinion, though, that human-written essays are more original, of higher quality, and have a lower risk of being marked as plagiarism. This seems like a stretch to us. Humans are not better at day-to-day writing (we don’t mean professional authors), because without constant training, humans fail in logical essay structure, make mistakes even Grammarly misses, and tend to mix all the citation styles. It is more challenging for a human writer to maintain the tone in strict accordance with the required style. We, humans, tend to write everything as if it were a reflective essay.

Speaking of originality, the plagiarism problem has been with us for centuries. It was there before the Internet, it was there before AI, and it is there now. With modern trackers, AI tools are more likely NOT to plagiarize something, because they are tough to make any received information original, instead of repeating the original data source.

Benefits and Limitations of AI Essay Generators

Once again, let us remind you that we are talking about specially customized, trained AI essay generators, not general Large Language Models available for free.

They are precise, they are consistent, and they can offer different styles for the same task in a matter of a few minutes. AI essay generators don’t make mistakes, rely on the best academic writing practices, and continuously evolve with the help of professional writers, programmers, and even users.

When an AI essay generator is created professionally and is constantly updated and strengthened, it won’t cause any problem with AI detectors or plagiarism tools. These systems are built to humanize text, vary sentence structures, and even emulate specific writing voices, reducing the chance of being flagged as AI-written or copied. In fact, in many technical and academic tasks, AI-generated essays outperform generic human-written ones due to their clarity, structure, and adherence to formatting rules.

However, AI still isn’t perfect. While it can mimic a human voice, it may miss deeper contextual nuances, emotional tone, or cultural subtext – especially in topics requiring empathy, controversial standpoints, or lived experience. AI also struggles with highly specific prompts that require local knowledge or personal reflection. You won’t get a strong, original thesis unless you give one. And without careful prompts, AI may fall back on generalizations or overused examples.

There’s also the ethical debate. Many universities prohibit submitting AI-written work without disclosure. Even if the content is technically correct and undetectable, you could be violating institutional policies. While AI can help generate ideas, structure, and even full drafts, responsible use remains key.

So, Who Wins?

It depends on your task. If you need a reflective essay, an original thought piece, or something tailored to a specific class style – go with a human, or heavily edit the AI version. If you’re writing a structured comparison, a historical overview, or a basic research task, a custom-trained AI tool will save time and effort with reliable quality.

In reality, the best results often come from combining both: using AI to create a strong base, and then editing it with human insight. That’s the future of writing – not man vs. machine, but human plus machine.