Why AI Has No Voice. And Why Yours Matters
Today we’re talking about the pros and cons of letting Artificial Intelligence speak for your business or for you. This applies to most writing and communication needs – social media updates, emails, websites, even scripting video content.
Increasingly, people are ‘outsourcing’ their writing, and by extension their self-expression and identity, to Artificial Intelligence. On the face of it, AI does a passable job.
The writing style of AI is inoffensive. Longer-form stuff is grammatically correct. AI generated content is superficially accurate. The time taken to produce AI content is negligible compared with writing it manually.
At face value, AI seems like the perfect writing companion. Right?
Do you want to read AI?
Let’s start with two basic questions:
Do you like AI generated content?
How do you feel about brands who use AI?
Imagine your audience. There’s likely to be a range of responses to these questions. It’s safe to assume a continuum: anything from ‘I love AI’ to ‘I hate AI’. A middle-ground position might be, ‘I don’t mind AI content, but I want a brand to be original’.
Because AI use often elicits a strong emotive response, there is a possibility those in the latter two camps will be alienated from your brand or business if you choose to use AI.
From that line of thought, here are the next questions:
Are you willing to risk alienating a segment of your audience in exchange for the ability to create quick content?
At what point does using AI to produce content become counterproductive – especially if it’s estranging the very people you’re trying to reach?
Low risk, low effort
The next topic to consider is the significance of your communications. Here’s a guiding question:
Can I allow this piece of writing (social media, email, website copy, etc.) to represent me or my business?
For writing tasks of little consequence and minimal risk, AI is probably suitable. An example might be using it internally for brainstorming copy ideas, which are then customised, or writing copy for a birthday party invite.
Conversely, if the task has significance or it can impact the perception of you and your business consider taking time to get it right. This may mean carefully editing the AI output to make sure it is specific and correctly aligns with your voice and your identity. Or it might mean avoiding AI entirely.
Put it this way. If you strive to make your service, your product, or your business excellent in every other area, why risk undermining that hard-earned reputation for a quick AI output?
We can summarise this approach with the following maxim: low risk, low effort. Use AI for things that don’t matter.
Outsourcing Your Style
Since the late 1990s, expedited by the birth of the Internet, there has been increasing cultural globalisation. Particularly in the Western world, things gravitate towards mono-cultural. Most countries have iPhones, McDonald’s and Facebook. Where international borders used to demarcate culture to a greater extent, now there is less variety.
Things have only become more diluted with AI, although this relates more to online personas. People start to sound the same.
A tangible social phenomenon is that accounts on LinkedIn often adopt the same style. It’s probably worth querying whether that person ranting on Facebook generated their politically-impassioned monologue with a few seconds of AI help.
If everyone sounds the same, no one stands out. Here are a few more questions:
Can you afford for your business to blend into everything else on the market?
Can you risk sounding like everyone else by using AI?
What does that do to your chances of having a distinct style and voice?’
One of the biggest issues is that out-of-the-box AI is easy to spot. Here’s the social media style:
Opening statement that’s intended to get you reading. But doesn’t say much.
It’s not that it’s bad. It’s just that it’s vague. No personality.
The sentence structure. Is clipped.
The sentences. Are short.
Too short.
Shortest.
Finish with something vague that hints at being profound. But never reaches the goal. My goal.
Longer form AI writing is less egregious, but it largely falls into average and uninspiring. The writing style tends towards high-level, non-committal, and innocuous.
Curiously, both signal a loss of unique identity. The writing largely gets skim-read or scrolled by because it’s homogeneous. It’s homogeneous because it’s inhuman.
Keep it human. Don’t outsource your style.
No Slop For Me, Thanks
Communicating is ideally sending a specific, clear, and understandable message to an intended recipient. As a tool, AI is good at assisting with this, ironing out your ideas, and crystalising how you say something. This requires specificity. The output still needs oversight from a human.
An example of this is the AI generated email response. Without oversight, AI will provide an ambiguous reply, often adding extra verbiage to the conversation that is either irrelevant or does not relate to anything previously discussed.
Left to its own devices, AI has no problem spitting out large (or short) volumes of text. Without firm editorial oversight it can easily become slop:
Writing is off-topic
The core message is buried in the text
The writing is so vague or basic there is essentially no message
The impact of this is:
· Exhausting the reader
· Wasting their time
· It’s sloppy
· It doesn’t make sense
· It can feel inauthentic
None of these are conducive to effective communication.
Make it Weird
A joy of interacting with different people is discovering their idiosyncrasies. We all know someone who swears profusely, using the f-word as their go-to adjective or adverb. Some people have a nervous twitch or clear their throat frequently. Others bounce along on the soles of their feet, use an outdated saying, or talk in clichés.
Idiosyncrasies make people unique. They’re often endearing and make us smile. There’s an emotive response.
Think of your voice and your brand in the same way.
What are your idiosyncrasies?
How do you celebrate or lean into those?
Your writing doesn’t need to be perfect. Imperfection actually makes it stand out from the crowd.
Keep it In-House
If you find writing your own content too difficult, find a trusted writing partner to interpret what you or your business needs. This could be an employee or someone like us!
If you’re committed to practicing, you’ll get better. For some guidance you may like to read our article Tips for Better Writing.
Another option is to spend time as a team developing an in-house writing style. Think about what makes you unique, your key messages, and what tone you’re trying to use. Document the results. Having some kind of framework will guide your writing and keep your communications consistent.
Remember, your voice matters!
