Can People Tell If My Copy Was Written by AI?
Yesterday was hot. Hot like, suddenly I’m thinking about body parts I don’t normally consider because there’s suddenly sweat there.
I’m sure my great-grandmother, Anna—the one who ran the family bootlegging operation—would have had many loud Italian words for me if she knew that I wet my hair before bed to cool off.
Because: When I woke up this morning, there was a tinnnnnny tenderness on the left side of my throat.
As such, I went into full-blown illness prevention mode and straight to my medicine cabinet to find many things…. A bottle of Pepto Bismol I’ve used once or twice since 2017. Enough allergy medication to kill a man.
And there it was—the artillery of cold supplements. Vitamin C, Zinc, Elderberry tincture, and Andrographis, which my pathologist friend told me has shown promise in clinical trials, soooooo, basically I’m just a little bit ahead of the curve. (Except that I almost wrote “curb.”)
But then, I had a thought.
>>>>> Does any of this sh!t actually work?
In the olden days, I may have Googled. But to Google all those things separately, read a WebMD article or three about each one = effort. And I know myself. My effort is in short supply.
But now: AI.
You can’t even do a Google search without AI butting in now.
And guess what? AI (and my own research) told me that out of all those things, Zinc is the only one that’s been shown to work….
Except I had the WRONG kind of Zinc.
So I rode my bike to the drug store to get the RIGHT kind, and now here I am.
Sucking on a lozenge and thinking about AI.
Like I do every single motherflippin' day.
Every single day I read a new article or see a new book written or hear a quote by a very high-up person in the world of AI. Ex-AI head developers. The CEO of Microsoft’s AI division. Bill Gates.
Some say AI is going to kill us. Maybe not all of us. Maybe not all at once. But they say it will come in the form of poverty from the sandblasted economy where we’re all fighting over cans of cat food, or superintelligence gone haywire, or environmental devastation from data centers making all the water brown.
Others say it is going to save us with medical advances, solve a little thing called climate change, get us to Mars. (Sure, okay, whatever.)
And then there’s a very special group of us when it comes to the topic of AI: Entrepreneurs.
There’s a whole lotta business owners talking a whollllllle lot about AI. And when you hear how people are using it—to run an entire multi-seven-figure business on twenty-five hours a week, it feels almost stupid not to use it.
And I do use it. For some things. And it IS mind-bending. And it does save money. And it does help me figure out that I had the bullshit Zinc that doesn’t work when I wake up with a sore throat.
But then why do I sometimes feel like I just personally ate an entire bucket of fried chicken afterwards?
Why do I feel like I just want to scream in the void and burn it down...OR that I am going to die eating canned tuna fish if I don’t use it?
Look, there’s been many a time in history where they predicted the world was ending. If you can remember New Year’s Eve 1999, you know what I am talking about. And if it turns out that the AI apocalyptics are right? Hey, at my age, I’ve already had a good run—just please make it swift and painless.
But for the love of god:
1 - Guardrails. The people pushing for speed and faster adoption and adoption everywhere need to chill the EFF out. We haven’t figured this out yet. It hasn’t even been long enough for us to even really know if we can get brain cancer from smartphones yet! NYC just rolled out a year-long ban on elementary school kids using AI. Good. More of that. This is toothpaste you can’t put back into the tube, folks.
2 - I’m going to say this as nicely as possible, which is actually a bit rude: All that AI-generated copy? Here's what I will die on a hill over...
Unless someone already understands what makes copy good enough to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL SOMETHING (BESIDES HATING WHAT THIS WORLD HAS COME TO WITH AI-GENERATED CONTENT EVERYWHERE)…. please, hold off.
Why? It has dead eyes. It’s obvious. People think no one can tell and we can all tell and that breaks trust instantly. And no trust equals no sale.
It sounds like bubblegum. And you are FAR TOO GOOD for bubblegum!
Here’s what you do do—get good at copywriting.
Learn what makes someone go HELL YES I NEED THAT NOW THIS IS PERFECT.
Understand what makes the limbic system go: That! Me! Want!
And then—and only then—if you want to give your copy—the stuff that’s based on YOU and your original thoughts—a little AI boost, go for it. Sure. Like a little shot of Botox.
But never forget: the name of the game when it comes to making money with words is making your reader FEEL something.
It’s never just content for the sake of content. I’m telling you, don’t waste your time. I’d rather you not send out your newsletter this week at all, versus putting out something that produces the emotional equivalent of a soggy cracker that makes people tune you out, maybe forever.
But of course I would 100% rather you write something GOOD and put it out every week so you can nurture your audience and warm them up to l-l-l-love what you’ve got and buy it from you...
And you can make you and your financial planner very happy....plus all the people who are going to have a much better life because of you!
So in short;
1 - Take Zinc lozenges at the first sign of colds.
2 - Let me know if you’ve got a Doomsday bunker and room for one more.
3 - A lifeless, AI-generated email may save you a half hour, but may cost you future clients because your readers stopped reading because they didn’t feel a thing from your copy and so they don’t read your next thing or your next thing and they definitely don’t buy until they eventually unsubscribe on a Friday afternoon when they’re trying to squeeze just onnnnne more hour of work out.
Instead: Take the time to learn how to generate obsession-worthy demand so you can generate revenue and grow your damn business.
Your biz is too important for a shortcut that backfires.
Until next time…
Gio
