Let's Chat About AI

It feels like every day there’s a new post on LinkedIn warning that if you don’t completely adopt AI immediately, you’ll be left behind. Lost in the dust of the tech savvy who overtook you in the rat race.

I want to offer an alternative opinion.

AI is amazing. Okay, so that doesn’t sound like much of an alternative opinion yet. Stick with me.

It really has changed the game.

In my personal life, I use it for everything from creating shopping lists and meal plans to planning itineraries. Tools like ChatGPT have genuinely saved me hours. It has also pretty much replaced Google for me because the answers are far more specific to my (often very detailed and specific) questions.

As a business owner, it’s been just as powerful. I use it for data analysis, idea refinement and research amongst other things. Basically, the stuff that would normally take me forever now takes minutes.

Here’s where my opinion differs from those shouting aboout how behind you are if you haven't got a clone of yourself on your computer: Whilst I love AI and I think every business owner should be learning how to use it, I don’t think it should be your whole strategy.

When you start letting tools like ChatGPT be your entire marketing department, you lose the thing people are looking for from you.... You.

Your quirks, your personality, your perspective.

Potential customers stop seeing the human behind the brand. They stop hearing your voice. And before you know it, you sound exactly like everyone else in your niche who’s using the same prompts and the same “proven frameworks.”

The only thing left to differentiate you? Price. And we all know that's a race to the bottom.

It’s not the people who don’t use AI for everything who’ll be left behind. It will be the ones who do. Now, that's an alternative opinion!

Think about it. When everyone’s content starts to sound the same, the only thing that stands out anymore is the human of it all.

I'm already seeing a lot of people complaining that posts all sound the same now. Not only are they using the same words and phrases, they are formatted the same too.

I don't know about you but, certain phrases now make my eye twitch.

And don’t even get me started on what I call the "Marks & Spencer’s effect".
You know the one:

“This isn’t just any post. This is a post packed with value.”

Ugh.

Every time I see it, I can practically hear the M&S voiceover whispering, “This isn’t just any lasagne…”

Use AI as your assistant, not your identity. AI it’s a brilliant tool but that’s exactly what it is: a tool.

It’s here to support your creativity, not replace it. Use AI to speed things up, simplify your admin and spark ideas. But let you do the talking.

A few great AI tools worth knowing:

• ChatGPT – idea generation, writing drafts, research, itinerarys, refining ideas, repurposing content

• Descript – edit video and audio easily - brilliant for podcasting

• Zoom/Google Meets AI – summarise meetings and get clear action points

• Freepik - images that look (scarily) like you

AI is changing how we work, that's never been in question but, it won't replace the human bit (in my humble opinion). Your story, your experience, your emotion, that's what people connect with.