AI can save you time, but don’t let it steal your reps
ChatGPT should create space for the work you love — not replace the practice that makes you better.
When I came up on Twitter, I was starting from abundance and I had the psychological safety to grow through trial and error. I had stories I’d never told and threads itching to be written. Same time, while I was in a job that would benefit from my growing a personal brand, my day-to-day paycheck wasn’t counting on it. So every post I wrote was another rep. I got better at copy, faster at framing, clearer about what lands. Twitter was my writing bootcamp.
If AI (or LLMs as we know it) had been what it is today, I’m not sure I’d have taken that path. Not because I’d have gone full AI bro. More likely, I’d have thought, everyone’s using AI, so why shouldn’t I? And then I’d have skipped the hard part: the countless, often-bad drafts that sharpen your instincts for what’s actually good.
This is my working theory: AI reduces friction, and friction is where craft is forged.
Remove too much friction and you don’t just make work easier, you risk making your work indistinguishable. Because you won’t have the sense for what’s good, bad, cute, cringe, effective, bland. You’ll sound just like the average joe who posts online: passable. Or, passable — with an em dash. (Yes, I use em dashes because I like tiny daggers that point at my words.)
Instead, use AI to reduce just enough friction. Just enough to make your life a little easier, to create a little more space for yourself. Not so much that it takes away the reps that make you get better. Use ChatGPT to draft the note to your kid’s teacher (and yes, obviously, review it before sending). Let that AI tool summarize the staff meeting or help you beef up a presentation outline. Then spend the saved 20 minutes on something that actually compounds: go for a jog, take a power nap, conceptualize a better hook, or run a small experiment in your marketing.
Because the reps still matter. Taste isn’t prompt-able. You can’t outsource your “what’s good” instincts. You earn them by making a lot of things, getting feedback, hearing crickets, banging your head on the keyboard, experiencing the hard-earned dopamine of your epiphanies, and being the one who’s closest to your own work.
And audiences can tell. Readers brag that too many em dashes is sus— even though I’m keeping my miniature swords, thank you very much. They note concise structures = AI. (But… maybe some people are just succinct?) And they cringe at the overuse of emojis. All of these things — they say — scream ChatGPT. (Heck, I’m starting to thikn I ought to keep in my typos.)
But the reality is that nearly 40% of Americans sometimes use AI tools; more and more people are going to use this technology. I think it’s unlikely that AI is going to decimate our jobs; instead, it’s more likely that a marketer using AI is going to make the talent pool more competitive.
“Mechanization really did take jobs from farm workers. Automation took jobs from manual laborers. The PC took jobs from clerical and communication workers. But, all of these resulted in greater productivity, employment, and more optionality for workers. It’s both anti-historic and anti-evidence that AI will somehow prove to be the exception.”
So here’s my rule of thumb, an attempt to have it all:
Use AI to remove admin, not identity. Offload the drudgery; keep the decisions that shape your voice. Remove the rote tasks that suck up too much of your time and energy without teaching you anything.
Keep the reps sacred. First drafts, headline passes, interview questions —these are where taste gets trained. Resist the urge to outsource to your ChatGPT intern.
Ship human. If AI can say it for you, ask why anyone should listen to you. Think: what can I say that AI can’t — because I’m the one who lived it?
So yes. Use AI to offload what’s reasonable. Just don’t lose sight of your vision, your style, and what you ultimately want to be known for.
If you’re a marketer wrestling with this balance, Typeform is collecting candid takes right now, (they’re also a proud sponsor of this newsletter).
» Take the “Get Real” survey by Typeform: they’re trying to capture how people really think about the trends and tensions shaping modern work for an upcoming report. This edition looks at generative AI in marketing.
And if you want, share your additional takes in the comments below. I’ll be reading responses and summarizing my favorites in a future post.
Great points, Amanda! This is something I think about a lot, and am actively trying to keep the "real me" of writing as I use AI more and more.