My personal brand on LinkedIn and in the networking groups I attend is fast becoming “that woman who yells about AI a lot.” I can’t say I’m mad about it. There are far worse things to be known for than taking a strong moral stance on something and being willing to defend it.
I’ve had a number of clients who come to me after using AI to create content and getting disappointing results. Fixing low-quality and AI content is one of my areas of specialism, and I love seeing a client’s eyes light up when they realise what’s possible with a writer who really “gets it.”
But you can avoid the disappointment and the headaches entirely. Let’s talk about why you really shouldn’t be using AI to write or create content for you… and what you can do instead.
Using AI is Antithetical to Running an Ethical Business
I specialise in supporting ethical business, sustainable brands, and entrepreneurs and creators who believe in doing the right thing. Once you know about the harms AI (especially generative AI) causes, you cannot keep using it while claiming to care about people or the planet. AI is polluting, resource-sucking, reliant on human rights abuses, and built on mass theft.
A big caveat to this one: if you used AI before you understood how harmful it is, please don’t feel ashamed. These technologies are being pushed incredibly hard by some of the world’s most powerful companies with almost unlimited marketing budgets propaganda machines at their disposal. Even many of us in the anti-AI movement played around with ChatGPT before we learned how evil it really is.
When we know better, we do better.
AI Steals From Creative People
If you’re a creative person, love a creative person, or even just value the work of creative people (hint: if you read books, watch TV, or watch films, you benefit from the labour of creative people) you should care about the fact that generative AI can only exist because of intellectual property theft at an unprecedented scale.
AI cannot think or create. It works by rehashing material that already exists—including copyrighted material that is being used without permission from the original creators and without compensating them. The legal term for this is copyright infringement. The simple term is theft.
If you think what creative people do matters, please don’t use technologies that rip off our work to make gazillionaire technofascists even richer.
AI is Destroying Real Intelligence
Generative AI has only been available to the general public for a little over three years. Would you be surprised to hear that it’s already causing noticeable cognitive decline? A study from MIT showed that, according to EEG results, ChatGPT users had lower levels of brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” compared to those who didn’t use it.
Again: three years. This technology has been widely available for three years. If it’s already having this impact, and if you’re using these tools every day or even every week, what is that doing to your brain? To your ability to think for yourself? To your ability to create and to use that glorious, incredible mind nature gave you?
AI Content is Soulless
You’ll find a lot of information out there about the “surefire tells” that content was written by AI. Large language models famously love em dashes, semicolons, groups of three, and the Oxford comma (see what I did there?) They also love certain words and phrases: “And honestly?” “It’s not X, it’s Y.” Clarity, synergy, leverage… it goes on.
I think those so-called “tells” are reductive and often inaccurate. The reason LLMs like those terms is because human writers use them (and, as we established above, AI steals our work.)
The real AI tell is more nebulous but, once you become attuned to it, you start to see it everywhere. That tell is that it’s soulless. There’s no rhythm, no musicality, no rise and fall of emotion. The spelling and grammar are likely perfect, but the work makes you feel absolutely nothing.
For all businesses, but for ethical businesses in particular, human connection is an essential part of the customer journey. Soulless, emotionally dead content won’t make that connection. It won’t make people care about you and it won’t make people buy from you.
AI Writing Damages Customer Trust and Engagement
There is a huge trust gap in the world of AI. Businesses and marketers have adopted it rapidly, but overall consumer trust is much lower. Many people view AI content as inauthentic, lazy, and generic. According to one study, 48% of participants said they trusted content less if they even suspected it was AI generated. And yes, despite what tech firms will tell you, most people can tell.
For customers who want to buy from ethical brands, this impact is likely to be even more pronounced. Your customers care about your values, your mission, and what you stand for. Using AI to write and create content is worse than just a false economy; it is likely to actively harm customer trust in your brand and lower your audience’s levels of engagement with you.
What To Do Instead: Hire a Writer for Authentic, Heartfelt Content
AI is not only harmful and not fit for purpose. It’s also completely unnecessary. If you want copy and content that reflects your values and gets real results, the best way to achieve this is to work with a human writer.
I specialise in supporting ethical business, sustainable businesses, and founders with a social conscience. Whether you’re after sparkling website copy, high-converting evergreen content, or SEO blogs that drive organic traffic, you deserve writing that’s as amazing as you are.
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