AI Generative Policy

The use of generative AI in marketing is growing at an accelerated rate these days. AI is becoming much more sophisticated each year, but of course, there is a question of authenticity and, in my personal opinion, of true energy behind AI; what is real? What is fake? Is it a choice to use AI to enhance whether you’re writing or your imagery reflecting the truth? Or is it cheating? Frankly, I have no direct answer to this.

All I can do is make some choices for myself and how I use AI in my business. Even before the introduction of content-generating apps like ChatGPT, there was always a little bit of AI used in tools that are much more popular among marketers or anyone who creates any imagery or video for their marketing needs.

For example, in Canva, removing backgrounds is an AI-based feature. There are hundreds of video editing apps that can trim or clean up your video from “um”s and “you know”s based on the transcription.

I have always used software like Photoshop and PortraitPro, as well as phone apps like Lightroom or Lensa, for post-producing my photographs. Actually, everyone’s phone camera app has filters by default, often built into your camera. Especially the selfie camera on so many phones enhances your appearance automatically.

AI has been part of our lives for much longer than we suspect, although I honestly resisted the urge to dive into it openly. What can I say? I am NOT an early adopter, and I think it saves me a lot of time.

It is now very clear to me that AI is not “evil” a all. In fact, when used correctly, it is an incredible tool that can help enhance one’s authenticity in a way that, sometimes, real life simply cannot.

My thoughts on AI and imagery

For a long time, I lived in a rural part of Ireland. There were not many branding experts there in terms of creating a really beautiful photography to represent my brand in the way that I imagined it.

As someone who is the face of my business, the images that I put out into the public domain have to represent and echo the power of the message that I am trying to share.

When I look at every prominent public figure in the world, I see that their imagery is massively enhanced. It’s not just about taking a good photograph. it is really about the postproduction enhancing the power of the impact of that photograph. It is art. It’s always been there.

As a child, I was fond of photography, and we used those chemical baths to develop photographs. As we did that, we were in charge of how much contrast we would achieve by deciding how long it would stay interacting with those chemicals before we washed them off. That could dramatically change the original photo. Enhancing visuals is something that’s been there ever since photography was created.

These days we don’t wash our photographs in chemical buths to develop them. And there are so many more sophisticated tools at the tip of our fingers to help us match the external image that we’re putting out there into the big world to attract people who we genuinely can help transform – whatever it is our gift is helping them to shift -with how we feel about our contribution. Or how we feel about what we’re called to do in this world.

And for me personally, it’s really really important that this match is a perfect match. Call me a control freak, but unfortunately none of the professional photo shoots have ever done have been able to achieve what I can achieve using AI tools somehow the AI is able to generate through multiple trials and errors of course how I see my public image, so I can be in control of my public image.

Do I look like this in real life? Let me first ask you another question in return. Have you ever seen a model outside the photo shoots?

So many of them look really washed out in their day-to-day life. But then in comes the makeup artist and the hairstylist and striking clothes and the skill to take a pose and look into the camera a certain way (all learnt skills, by the way) – and what we have as a result is a stunning visual piece.

My thoughts on AI and content

On the other hand, when it comes to generating text here, I have a lot of mixed feelings. I see too many websites generated entirely by AI. What scares me, is that some of them are actually educational websites.

I see how AI is used entirely with trying to educate readers about something quite intricate like the Human Design System and it is generating content that, at its core, distorts the message and the details of this concept.

And this is why we cannot trust AI to generate expert content for us. The AI that generates text is merely matching the most probable words together. It actually doesn’t understand what these words mean, and it’s really important to keep this in mind.

There are still uses for AI, and I want full transparency. I do use a ChatGPT-like tool called Merlin almost every day, but I don’t use it to produce content where I have to channel my thought leadership pieces, which pretty much is the most important type of content to nurture your audience.

What I use that kind of AI for is cleaning up transcriptions of my dictations (my Letterly app is perfect for creating on-the-go content). I go to AI for ideas around outlining sales pages, brainstorming different titles of catchy names, outlining structures for my email blasts. I then write them myself.

I have to admit that AI gets it wrong so much more often than when it gets it right. So using it is a massive time-suck.

But what it gives me is an ability to bounce off it so I use it almost like a brainstorming assistant rather than trusting that it will produce something that is better than what I can write.

This is what I see often happening when people don’t trust that their writing is good enough, and so they trust the AI to produce something that sounds confident. But if you really scrutinise it, it actually is very generic, doesn’t have any personal insights and doesn’t carry any energy at all. It just adds noise to the noisy world as it is.

So one of my missions is to encourage my clients and anyone to exercise more trust in their own abilities to write.

My first language is not English, and it took a very long time for me to believe that I am a good writer, and yet that belief is unshakeable right now. I am not perfect. I write pretty much as I speak. But it comes from the heart, and that is the most important part, and this is why my writing can be magnetic with one condition. I really care about what I am writing and I feel internally energetically activated by it (“in the zone”).

And sometimes I don’t write – I actually dictate! Just like I’m dictating this article right now. So, not only am I channelling this “zone” I’m in energetically, talking about AI in my business, but I’m also using my Throat centre to manifest this energy that wants to be shared.

Although for full transparency, there are some cases where I would use AI to summarise something or rephrase something. For example, I use AI often to create the text to go with my transit videos. As a Projector, the recording is where I shine, and I often exhaust the energy to write something original, too – because it is not as vital. It is the video that has the magic in it.

So yes, somewhere on this website, there could be AI-generated content. It’s just not my thought leadership content. I will not allow AI to THINK for me. And I highly recommend you don’t too.

And since AI is only matching words, it is not an expert at anything (except perhaps matching words). So, I would never delegate my expertise and thinking within my area of expertise to AI.

The bottom line is, as long as I am using AI as an enhancement tool – it helps me tremendously,especially to check grammar as I am dyslexic, and summarise things (I always check what it produces, and very often, I actually rewrite it anyway).

I sometimes can use AI to create small social media blurbs based on the articles that I’ve written or based on the podcast episode summary that I’ve recorded those things are not important. It’s what has been shared in the article itself or in the podcast episode itself that matters.

Final Statement

As long as I’m using AI as an enhancement to the visuals that I’m choosing to present to the world and as long as people in my real world confirm that the output looks like the main real life (if I had an awesome makeup artist and a photographer at the tip of my hands), I choose to use it as much as it pleases me.

I have no problem using it for my business, and I don’t believe that this is cheating or being fake for anybody. In fact, your business – your rules, so these decisions are not black-and-white. Every one of us takes responsibility for making up our own minds about how much or how little we want to use AI today.

I hope that in this statement I clearly expressed my attitude and explanation of how I use AI for my business in my business.