AI creates, but who consumes?

Humanity still matters

For all the hoopla about generative AI, I'd like to make the somewhat obvious point that we human beings are still the ones consuming all of this stuff.

I made the mistake of opening twitter recently to see that some business owners were boasting about using AI to write their tweets to peddle whatever software, courses, products etc. 

They were amazed at how easy it was to churn out content with little to no extra effort, but it seems to me that they’ve got it all wrong.

I’m the consumer of all those AI videos, newsletters, messages, tweets and podcasts, and if I have to consume AI generated content (and yes, its not actually as good as you think it is), I often am left with a bad taste in my mouth. 

I was curious though, so I experimented with using AI on my own marketing material and realized that, while it’s incredible to create the content so quickly, the result was actually rather gimmicky and soulless. Why would I subject my customers to that?

Could I theoretically spin up some generic ecommerce brand that is entirely generated by AI, run ads with content generated by AI and do well? Probably. But if everyone is doing that, using the same LLMs, what’s my enduring advantage? 

One major advantage we have as a small(ish) businesses versus trillion dollar market cap companies like meta, google and amazon is precisely our humanity. 

The reason I buy goods and services, especially larger ticket things that matter to me beyond commodities, is more often than not because I can see a genuine story behind the experience or product that makes me feel something. 

It could turn out that AI generated content eventually becomes so good that it incites real feelings. Feelings of genuine love and hatred, enough to start protests, movements, wars and everything in between.

Until then, let’s give our customers the respect they deserve, they are human after all.