You may be in a bubble of smart, educated people. Either way, one of the key ways to "put in the effort" is practice. People who haven't practiced often don't write well even if they're trying hard in the moment. Not even in terms of beautiful writing, just pure comprehensibility.

I may be in a bubble of smart people, but IMO AI consistently far worse than many high school works I’ve read in terms of actual substance and coherent structure.

Of course I’ve had arguments where people praise AI output then I’ve literally pointed out dozens of mistakes and they just kind of shrug saying it’s not important. So I acknowledge people judge writing very differently than I do. It just feels weird when I’d give something a 15% and someone else would happily slap on a B+.

My experience has been

(ordered from best to worst)

1. Author using AI well

2. Author not using AI

3. Author using AI poorly

With the gap between 1 and 2 being driven by the underlying quality of the writer and how well they use AI. A really good writer sees marginal improvements and a really poor one can see vast improvements.

you cannot write well if you do not read a lot (you need to develop taste). this disqualifies most people. i included.