The AI Police... my thoughts. · The AI-Driven Business Summit

The AI Police... my thoughts.

Almost every day I go onto Threads I'll see someone complaining about the use of AI in copy, and I wondered today why humans are so obsessed with policing other people's use of AI... because I was thinking if the message comes across regardless, what's the actual problem?

So I voice chatted with my trusty bestie Chatty and here's what we figured (I paraphrase):

The brain is wired for pattern recognition - I knew this already from my work I do with people in the subconscious and I wondered how much of this was the reason, because there's a part of our brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) that's prime responsibility is to find patterns and I wondered if that's what was happening. And yes it's a part of it, you read something and it feels off somehow... you're not necessarily sure exactly what but your pattern recognising brain has flagged it. But this is just 1 part of a bunch of different things happening at once (read on).
Authenticity as a social cue - AI blurs the cues we're designed to pick up on, things like tone, pacing and word choice. Often it'll read too polished or lack substance and we're actually picking up on the discomfort with perceived inauthenticity. And, an even bigger part of the puzzle: if we connect our identity to our voice as a creative or writer (I've definitely noticed that often the people policing AI copywriting/design are writers or designers), there's a sense of threat if AI can mimic our uniqueness. Which leads me to my next point...
Cognitive dissonance and threat to creativity - we wonder "if a machine can do what I do, what does that mean about me and my value?". The ego pops up and goes into protection mode, resolving the discomfort with judgement of others and picking apart the structure or highlighting the emdashes as a way of self-preservation.
Lower dopamine responses due to the formulaic or predictable text - humans crave novelty and surprise but oftentimes the copy written by AI is flat and predictable, there's a bit of a formula to it, right? We've all noticed it. But the thing here is that if we can predict what's coming up in the next sentence there's no pay-off. Ever notice that your energy drops when that happens?
Policing instinct is tribal boundary setting - just like grammar snobs (which if you can't tell with my lack of correct grammar here, I don't care for either lol), the AI police are calling out the 'AI Tells' to signal their place in society: "I'm a *real* writer, because I don't use AI". Well congratulations, you're a special snowflake who isn't interested in evolving with technology because it makes you feel bigger when you put others down.

All this to say, IDGF if you use AI in your copywriting and I also don't care if you follow the formulaic sentence structure... so long as your ENERGY is in the writing. As long as YOU had the original thought and then had AI write it in a cohesive way, then it's come from you. It's when we give away our power and uniqueness or forget to inject our personality into our creations, that's when it's just adding to the robotic and regurgitating boring uninspired content that is flooding the internet right now.

So keep the emdash, the 3 bullet points with the ✨ emojis if that's how you would usually write anyway (or maybe it's how you'd like to write, which is also ok too). Don't be bullied by the AI police to change, but DO be responsible with your content and inject YOU into it.

Let me know, am I off the mark here or do we agree?

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