The AI writing app fighting AI slop

July 9, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

John Steinbach, founder of the writing app Marker, spent years at Google DeepMind watching AI labs race toward ever-larger models. But when he sat down to build his own product, he started with a blank page—literally. Marker opens not with a prompt box but with an empty screen, a deliberate design choice that signals the company’s core bet: that most AI writing tools treat words as output to be generated, when the real value lies in supporting the messy, recursive process of figuring out what you actually think.

The writing process that software forgot

Steinbach argues that the dominant writing tools—Google Docs and Microsoft Word, each with billions of users—are essentially transcription and formatting engines that haven’t meaningfully changed in twenty years. “You open up a new Google Doc, and you have 39 buttons across the top, most of which have to do with where words sit on the page,” he says. “There’s almost nothing that helps you actually with the task of writing.”

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What you'll learn

1 (01:29) **Why Marker Exists** - John Steinbach explains the core problem: writing tools haven’t changed in 20 years, and LLMs treat writing as an output, not a process.
2 (03:31) **The Blank Page vs. The Prompt Box** - Marker opens to a blank screen, not a prompt box, intentionally pushing users to think before generating.
3 (05:46) **The Three Pillars of Marker** - John details the features built around pre-writing, writing, and rewriting.
4 (07:52) **The Facilitative Editor** - Marker’s editor doesn’t rewrite for you; it asks questions about your writing to deepen your thinking.
5 (09:19) **Voice Input and the Future of Typing** - John discusses how voice dictation (like Whisper) fits into the writing process, and whether typing will become obsolete.
6 (11:22) **The Problem with LLM Slop** - John explains why most AI-generated writing is boring and lacks new ideas.
7 (13:07) **Style Transfer Is a Myth** - John explains why AI can’t truly replicate your voice, even with lots of examples.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Alex Heath

Show Notes

Alex and Ellis sit down with Jon Steinback, founder of Marker, the AI writing tool that refuses to write for you. They get into why Google Docs hasn't changed in 20 years, how most AI writing tools are quietly making you a worse thinker, and what Marker does differently: an editor that asks questions instead of generating answers. They also dig into Alex's own AI writing workflow and whether outsourcing too much is slowly turning him into a slop version of himself, why voice input might replace typing for the next generation, and why the co-founder of Google Docs called Marker the first real advancement in writing software in years.

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