Low-quality AI Use is Driving Your Customers Away
I wanted AI to take over the boring stuff in life. You know, like scrubbing the bath, putting the rubbish out for collection, checking the oil levels in the car.
Turns out I’m pure shit out of luck.
Because AI is being sold to me as a tool to “run my business”.
But when we break that down – what it looks like is:
AI can do the ‘creative shit’ for me. But that’s not what makes mine – or your – brand stand out.
That’s not what customers come to us for.
And yet, every single which way I look – I see people using AI for creative purposes – for their newsletters, their content, their socials, their course creation – you name it, if it previously required knowledge and creativity – they’re churning out AI junk.
Which cheapens your brand and makes you indistinguishable from all the others in your niche doing exactly the same.
When readily-available AI came out, the general public “fell for it”. They believed those insane photos on Facebook showing “newly discovered ocean life”. Fast-forward to now and people know it’s AI BS and are (rightly) calling it out.
AI copy stands out a mile – if it’s not the same ol’ tired generic tropes – then it’s the formatting.
If you CBA to write a newsletter to me but instead just copy and paste whatever it was your GPT threw your way – well, don’t be surprised if I don’t throw my $$$ your way.
AI was supposed to help us
AI is being sold as the answer to our creativity. 🤮
Damnit – I don’t want to outsource my creativity and my thinking – I want it to pick up the laundry my teenage boys seem incapable of doing…
There’s a lot of moaning right now in the online industry saying “people aren’t buying” and “they’re holding on to their money”.
Well sure, nobody likes paying more for stuff than they did last year – but… maybe it’s because you’re using AI to write your blogs, your emails, create your programs, write your socials.
Is this what you want? For your AI-run socials to “intelligently” interact with other socials which were also created by AI? Is that really progress? “Have my AI bot talk to your AI bot” ?
I promise you – people are still buying. But they’re not stupid – and they’re not in awe of AI garbage – and you all sound the same.
I don’t care how “good” your GPT is – it’s still going to spit out the same junk that makes you sound like all the rest.
How to stand out from AI
If you want to stand out – then you’ve got to be you. Weird, unapologetic you – who goes off on tangents about a pretty flower you found out walking, or how you can’t walk past a dusty antiques store without your wallet falling open – or how you talk to your dog like it’s a real human. (Iona agrees with me woof!).
Do me a favour and write your own newsletter this week. I’ve been unsubscribing from any and all newsletters which land in my inbox which are obviously AI. Honest to God – we can tell when it’s AI.
I don’t care if it’s littered with SPaG mistakes.
I don’t care if it contains a weird anecdote – I mean honest to God, I’d LOVE to see a bit of your personality.
Marketing is all about your personality really. You might be the bestest best person in the world at what you do – but if you’re not letting that weird shit shine through, you may as well be just another bot.
Show your clients some respect and don’t make a fucking AI algorithm be the face of your business.
AI created content is getting de-ranked
ha! So it turns out that despite Google giving us Gemini and serving up AI overviews in the search results – it doesn’t much like AI… what I mean is, Google have stopped ranking and started de-ranking AI-created articles . Yep, they want your personality no matter how weird it is or the fact you can never spell the word indefactability (!).
Now, if Google are openly doing this – where does it leave the other search engines? Or even Meta AI? They’re all heading in the same direction – you’ll be penalised for serving up AI-created content.
Given that Google own Gmail, if your newsletter is landing in your customer’s Gmail inbox – then where are they going to be sticking the AI emails? Straight to junk would be my best guess.
Sure – it’s harder work to create your own stuff – but the pay-off is that it’s going to get seen – and it’s going to resonate because people (even those not in the ‘game’ like us) can spot it a mile off.
What’s the future of AI?
I don’t know. I don’t know where the big tech companies are taking us with this.
What I do know is that people don’t want regurgitated crap – innovative solutions will always win out.
Nobody wants to read a book written by AI.
Nobody wants to scroll past AI comments/ads/stories.
Nobody wants their inbox filled with AI.
Nobody wants to read an AI blog.
Nobody wants to pay $$$ for an AI-constructed course.
I firmly believe that people will pay a premium to access your brain – and sure, you can supplement that with some well-chosen AI strategies and brainstorming – but, you shouldn’t be replacing your brand with what ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude et al are throwing at you because the only way for your business if you do that? Down, baby down.
Then you can join the rest of the gang crying about nobody wanting to spend money in this economy.
Truth is – there are always going to be people with cash – but why would they buy junk?
When the economy is hurting people are still spending – but they are more discerning about their dollars. That’s the difference.
Nobody is going to pay you for what ChatGPT can do for them without going through you.
