I've been talking to an AI...
👉 I think so, at least
I’m pretty sure I had a conversation with an AI on social media today.
It started off as seemingly a conversation with a human being, But after a while I began to think “hang on, you’re just repeating back to me what I just said - you’re not adding anything new or useful to the conversation”.
It seems like the goal of the AI was to arrange a 1-1 call with me to find out more about each other. I guess that’s fine and it saves the person using it some time setting up calls and allows them to “scale” it.
But the minute you detect you’re not really talking to a human…my word it pisses you off. It sends a huge “you’re not worth my time” signal.
It’s a bit weird if you think about it. I’m happy to interact with machines for a whole ton of stuff from buying my groceries to recommending music to summarising documents for me
But some things feel wrong if they’re not real people.
Like direct messages on social media.
Or newsletters.
The reason I subscribe to someone’s newsletter is to get their unique insights. To hear their stories.
Not regurgitated ideas and phrases from an AI that’s scanning the web for “best practices”.
How can you tell when you’re chatting to an AI? Of course, there are tools you can use, but the main thing is that you just get a sense it’s not a human. It doesn’t feel genuine. There’s nothing new or original.
And I fear that if you look at a lot of email newsletters they might well fail the “AI” test.
Not that they’ve been written by an AI. But they might as well have been.
There’s nothing original - just regurgitated ideas that you can find elsewhere.
No strong point of view. No strong voice.
No real life examples. No mistakes or speed bumps. No truth.
If you read back a couple of your recent newsletters, are they filled with life? Are they clearly better than something that’s been written by an AI?
If not, you might want to beef up your skills with the Unsnooze Your Inbox course on Effective and Engaging Email Newsletters. It’ll show you how to get all the ideas you need and write a vibrant newsletter that will be valuable and interesting to your potential clients while building the credibility and trust needed for them to be ready to buy.
And definitely not a newsletter that could be mistaken for AI.
- Ian