Are AI tools actually useful for grant writing or does it just produce confident filler
Useful for the parts nobody enjoys and nobody reads closely: reformatting the same content into a fourth funder’s template, tightening a paragraph, drafting a first pass of a section you already know the answer to.
Actively dangerous for the part that matters, which is the argument for why this funder should fund this work. It will produce something fluent and generic, and fluent generic is exactly what gets rejected. A mediocre proposal in your own voice beats a polished one in nobody’s.
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it is also a genuine accessibility tool and this thread should say so. my written english is not strong. i use it to clean up my drafts and it has meaningfully levelled the field for orgs like ours against the ones who can afford a professional writer.
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agreed, with a caution: never let it near your numbers. it will confidently invent a beneficiary count. i have caught this twice in drafts from colleagues.
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the funders are using it to summarise our proposals anyway so we are just AIs talking to AIs and a child in maharashtra maybe gets a school
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