> The stuck-in-slop state of LLM writing is not from lack of trying. AI labs already tried hard on improving prose and hit a wall. LLM giants would have loved to ship better writing capability to conquer marketing, copywriting, and publishing at zero marginal cost.

This doesn't ring true to me.

LLM prose can be greatly improved with the right prompts.

Now, prose with the right prompts may well still not be as good as a good human writer would write – but it is a lot better than what LLMs produce by default.

If the model can perform better with the right prompts, it suggest they haven't actually done everything they could in the post-training to maximise writing quality.