What’s Really Happening When you Let AI Write Your Content
Sometimes it feels like I’m the lone old lady with her horse and buggy while everyone has a shiny new Model T.
If AI can do THIS and THIS and THIS for you…and save you TIME…WHY would you still do it the old way?
There’s a lot of FOMO and shame attached to it too.
If you’re not using AI, you’re going to get left behind!
Look how good it is!
If you haven’t gotten great results from it, you’re just prompting it wrong/using the wrong tool/missing the wrong system/etc., etc., etc.
So I HAVE been using my ChatGPT lately quite a bit, as a thought partner, to draft emails (which I have ALWAYS rewritten), to imagine new offerings, brainstorm metaphors, etc.
And I can literally notice my brain and behavior changing in real time – in a matter of weeks.
I went from using it sporadically on a weekly basis to ask for metaphor examples for an email or rewrite a paragraph, to multiple times daily use having hours-long conversations with it about my future.
And that’s without having a Claude account or ANY other tools, just ChatGPT.
HOW the heck did that happen in a period of just a few weeks?
Meet My Invisible AI Friend, Chatty
I’ll try to document what I think happened, both so I can make conscious adjustments to my behavior AND serve as a wake up call for anyone noticing this happen to them.
1. Chatty is addictive.
Not only does the “instant result” give us a dopamine hit, vs. doing the longer, harder work of writing or researching by yourself…it ALSO builds these crazy feedback loops where we get addicted to its approval.
2. Chatty has a people pleasing problem.
Ever notice that anytime it answers you it says something like, “Great question. Now we’re really getting somewhere.” Or “I love that!” It’s the same mechanism that pings in your brain when you get a like or a comment on a social post, or a notification on your phone.
Except it’s even more sinister because it feels like you’re talking to a real person.
Make no mistake: no matter how much we thank our LLMs (Large Language Models), they’re still not human. And yet we’re treating them like they are. Giving them personalities, names, specific tones.
I’m reminded of the line from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where Dumbledore says: “never trust something that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”
And it’s easy to forget that the words appearing on the screen aren’t written by the imaginary friend we’ve named and fed our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and IP to. (And that we don’t know what’s happening to that information and how it will be used.)
3. Chatty tries to save me time.
And then there’s the time-saving argument. “It saves me SO much time!” I get it, I do. If it saves you time, really saves you time, that’s great.
I have, on many occasions, gone down a rabbit hole where I need to keep asking it for what I really want, and it just doesn’t GET it.
And by then, there’s the sunk cost of how much time I’ve spent TRYING to get what I want without succeeding, when I usually go to write it myself – it would have been faster had I just drafted the damn thing myself in the first place – and a lot more rewarding.
Very often I’ll read something the AI wrote and it will look and sound nice on the surface. And then on a second re-read, with my critical thinking cap on, I’ll be like, what even IS this?
It’s meaningless. Trite. Empty of any kind of innovation, emotion, or clarity. Empty of, dare I say, humanity in its imperfection and idiosyncratic syntax, weird word choices made by a real brain with real memories and thoughts.
Now, you may come to me and say, “but MY ChatGPT has been trained to be BETTER than my voice!” I get it. And if you’ve done that, great. Most people haven’t.
And, I’d still argue, it might still be missing that tiny spark of humanity, the energy of “a human being typed these words.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
But regardless of how well we have our ChatGPT pets trained, there’s still one major unspoken cost.
The Unspoken Cost of AI
Let’s put it this way – if we outsource our critical thinking skills and our creativity to AI, if we let it polish our raw ideas and turn them into a template of something that’s meant to mimic your voice, and we do that every day…
What’s left of us? Of our ability to determine what’s GOOD anymore?
What happens to our creativity? Our ability to write and ideate and put thoughts and ideas together WITHOUT the ChatGPT crutch?
Our ability to EDIT? To critique?
I know that my ability to put together thoughts and turn them into words has always been my passion. I’ve turned it into a successful career, made lots of money for my clients and myself, and I don’t want to lose that – ever.
Let me quote my favorite essay of all time: Politics and the English Language by George Orwell:
“Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient.
Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one’s elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.
By this morning’s post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: ‘[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany’s social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’
You see, he ‘feels impelled’ to write — feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern.
This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain.”
I encourage you to read the entire essay in full, because like much of Orwell’s work, it’s more relevant than ever. The empty phrases that Orwell talks about are alive and well – and we are at risk of anaesthetizing a portion of our brains every time we ask Chatty to “write us an email.”
We Get To Choose Our Hard
Am I being overdramatic? Maybe a little. Will I stop using it? Probably not. But there are certain things that I will continue to insist on doing in “longhand”.
Just like ANY tool or technology, make sure that you’re the one in control and consciously calling the shots, not the other way around.
And if you feel yourself overwhelmed by the slippery slope of AI, or find your results dropping off because you outsourced TOO much to the robot, let me remind you of this:
We need to struggle. We need a challenge.
If something is too easy, we feel no sense of reward or accomplishment or ownership.
Overcoming obstacles, accomplishing hard things builds confidence. We admire people doing hard things, we look up to them.
So, the way I see it: we get to choose our hard. And I want mine to be building something real, with the power of my brain and my voice and myself.
For marketing purposes, the easy button sells.
But in real life, REAL confidence and self-worth comes from doing hard things and coming out the other side.
Am I The Only One?
But I have to wonder – is it just me? Am I fighting against an irreversible current? Am I the only one thinking these things?
I hope not.
All of this to say, if you found yourself AGREEING with anything that I’ve said here…
- if you’re the type of business owner who relishes the process of finding your own voice
- if you don’t want to outsource the important stuff to the robot
- if you want to keep the clarity of thought in the clarity of your language (as Orwell says)…
I invite you to do what I’m calling Message Therapy: a detox from all the bad messaging advice and AI-generated mush that’s been ingrained in you, and reconnect you to what you actually want to say and express in a way that’s real and powerful…
And rediscover YOUR sweet spot between creativity and sales for your next launch.
That’s why I’m opening 12 spots for my LaunchFlow® Accelerator 6-week cohort.
This will be a small, tight-knit group, so the program is by application or invite only. You don’t have to decide right now if you’re in or not – you just have to decide to have a chat with me about it. 👋
If this feels like a HECK YES to you, simply CLICK HERE to fill out the application, grab a spot on my calendar and we’ll talk soon!
Doors close May 8th, 2025.
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