We love comfort. The familiarity of the known. The reassurance of the same-old, same-old. Think of your favorite hoodie or pair of blue jeans. You love them because they’re proven. They work. You can count on them to deliver.
The problem is: they can’t take you anywhere new.
As the world wakes up to the arrival of generative AI—applying it to everything from marketing copy to Ivy League college admissions essays—many of us are discovering: AI-produced text feels surprisingly… familiar.
Again and again, the report comes back that AI is able to compose something that, at a glance, sounds viable—it’s using all the right words and making plenty of logical sense—heck, we might even be able to get away with using this as is. But, when you dig a little deeper, something just fails to connect.*
It reminds me of a joke I heard a comedian tell once. While perusing Hallmark cards for a friend, he opens one up and thinks to himself: “Yeah. This sounds like something I’d say.”
If impersonal and generic writing comprises the lion’s share of what AI is producing at the moment, let’s not point fingers. Humans do it all the time.
In communications, we often cling to jargon and cliché. Because, in a sense, they work. They won’t get shot down by the boss. They’re safe, so they get shuttled down the production line. Even if you’re not sure exactly what you’re saying, at least you’re saying it in a way that won’t ruffle any feathers.
It’s understandable: hanging yourself out there is scary. It’s daring to say something different. You have to mean it—and if you’re in the vast marketplace, it’d better ring true. Approach your audience with hesitation—or hubris—and they just might have you for lunch.
But, if you get it right, fresh language forces others to see the world in a new way. It disrupts their current understanding of reality—which is inherently threatening. Like motorcycle riding or scuba diving, it’s exciting precisely because it entails risk.
The trouble is, finding something fresh and meaningful to say is difficult—let alone something unique to you, your brand, your organization. But in an increasingly machine-assisted age, novelty will be what the world demands. The rest we’ll learn to tune out; we’ve seen it all before.
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*Now, I will say that I’ve encountered some remarkable AI-assisted writings and I think there’s tremendous potential proportional to the degree of human involvement in an AI collaboration—but that’s another story.
