Making a Banana Split With ChatGPT

I wrote a post last year about ChatGPT. Mostly because my friend Karen, a leadership guru who has been incredibly generous in helping me with business planning and strategy, made me. I wrote about how the app was actually bringing me editing business, because unwitting (or maybe witting — who knows?) people were using it for content without checking its veracity or sourcing or really doing anything at all. Luckily, these people had marketing oversight that kept their companies from being embarrassed — or even sued — due to inaccurate or plagiarized or just bad content.

That helped me make peace with the existence of AI, but I refused to work with it. My long-term plan was to outrun it. Pardon the hubris, but it just isn’t as good as I am, and it can’t do what I do — yet. That will likely change, and it’s been my hope I will be retired by the time that happens.

This year, when I met with Karen to update my business mind-map (the woman is magic with colored markers), she was having none of my excuses around ChatGPT and its ilk. She put her hands on her hips, tapped her foot, and in a very striking Jersey accent, said: “LAURen, the train has left the station. [hard foot tap] You’d better grab onto the caboose!”

I know she’s right. While I still believe that someone who would use ChatGPT to create content would not have been my client in the first place, a majority of people are using AI content makers in some way or another: for research or an outline, or just some random content for the sake of having random content (eew — this is a bad idea; even Google is tuning its ranking systems “to reduce unhelpful, unoriginal content on Search and keep it at very low levels.”)

I won’t ever use AI for any of those things. I know ever is a long time. EVER. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t help people who do. I create business stories — otherwise known as content — with evidence, heart and soul. AI can gather evidence (for all that is good and holy, please double-check it is actual evidence), but it doesn’t give you heart and soul. It doesn’t capture the culture of your business. It doesn’t take time to understand your audience. And most importantly, it doesn’t communicate in your voice, in your tone, in your words. That’s what I do. And that’s why people hire me.

I always listen to Karen, even if it’s in a more roundabout way than I should. People are going to use AI regardless of whether I want them to do so. According to a Salesforce survey, more than three-quarters of marketers are using AI in some way for content creation. So be it. Karen, I will grab onto the caboose and work with ChatGPT. I will make AI my friend in an effort to best serve my clients.

Let’s make one thing crystal clear, though: AI generates vanilla content. While I prefer chocolate or pistachio (when in Sicily) as a base, I can work with vanilla. If you want to serve up plain vanilla content, that’s your prerogative. But I can make vanilla better. If you want to turn your vanilla AI content into a banana split with a cherry on top — which everyone will want to eat — let’s tawk.