Need to send a handwritten note? You can hire a robot to write it instead

Writing thank you notes might be one job plenty of people would be willing to let AI and robots take over.

Turns out, they already are.

The company Handwrytten deploys artificial intelligence to help customers whip up notes and then uses an army of robot scribes, gripping ballpoint pens, to write them.

“The vast, vast, vast majority of the time, you’d never have an idea that it’s written by a machine,” David Wachs, founder and CEO of the Tempe, Arizona, company, told Business Insider.

After all, we’re in a moment in which tech boosters say our digital counterparts will soon free us from work, scrub clean our to-do lists, and wade deeper into our personal lives.

Using technology to recreate the intimacy of a handwritten note also raises questions about authenticity, etiquette, and breaking through the everyday onslaught of emails, DMs, and text messages.

“Everybody’s getting so much electronic communication. What really stands out as old-fashioned communication,” Wachs said.

He founded Handwrytten in 2014 after leaving a text-messaging startup he’d launched a decade earlier. As he was departing that company, he wanted an easier way to send the handwritten goodbye notes he was drafting for employees and key clients because they would carry more weight than a digital message.

Avoiding the ‘uncanny valley’

In order to make sure the letters don’t look too perfect, Wachs said the robots vary letter shapes, line spacing, the left margin, and the strokes that join letters together.

“We do all this stuff to try to create the most accurate human writing, without falling into that uncanny valley,” Wachs said.

Using robots that can write in nearly three dozen styles of penmanship — some of which carry alliterative names like Enthusiastic Erin and Slanty Steve — the company sends about 20,000 cards a day to customers or, more often, directly to the recipient.

Most of Handwrytten’s customers are businesses, though about 20% to 30% are individual consumers, Wachs said. Clients include companies hoping to engage with customers, recruiters looking to soften up executive prospects, and nonprofits that want to stay close to donors. Sales grew about 30% in 2024, Wachs said.

In recent years, the company gave users the option of having AI write all or part of the messages.

“Our slogan has always been ‘Your words in pen and ink,’ but half the time now it’s not your words, it’s ChatGPT,” he said.

What matters, Wachs said, is that the resulting note looks real to the recipient. He said that many people assume custom digital messages like emails and texts have been written with AI, which, Wachs said, then discounts their effectiveness.

Does it count?

As a tactile throwback, a letter written by a robot is real enough for many Handwrytten customers, Wachs said.

While the intent of a letter meant to look handwritten might be genuine, Lizzie Post, great-great-granddaughter of protocol maven Emily Post and coauthor of the book “Emily Post’s Business Etiquette,” told BI she believes something is lost by using a robot.

Post said a note that someone actually writes by hand is special, not because it shows effort on the part of the sender, but because a person’s penmanship — even if it’s imperfect — is unique to them and to a moment.

“It makes that handwritten version that much more precious and amazing and special,” Post said.

Wachs said that critics have a point when they say part of writing a letter is to demonstrate that someone took the time to do it. Yet, he said, many people are simply too busy.

“Often, the choice is not Handwrytten note or actual handwritten note. The choice is Handwrytten note or nothing,” he said.

Wachs, whose business relies on 55 workers and 185 robots, said that the results are convincing enough to help job seekers, business owners, marketers, and others distinguish themselves.

“My wife will receive notes from her friends that use our service,” Wachs said. “And she’ll be like, ‘Wow, they have beautiful handwriting.”

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