Is obvious AI copy laziness, lack of time or just carelessness?
That question got minds clashing pretty quickly in the latest Live Extra I hosted with Alicia Teltz , Anjeanette Carter , Claudia Faith and Cory Blumenfeld .
Alicia thought obvious AI copy from someone she knows looks lazy. Anjeanette’s first instinct was more generous: maybe they were just busy. Cory admitted some of his earliest writing was “fully AI slop”, but said it gave him the confidence to start.
The argument really came down to standards 👇🏻
When does saving time with AI become an excuse for work you wouldn’t have accepted from yourself before?
When anyone could have written it
Anjeanette calls it the “robot voice problem”.
“If literally any other human in my position could write this post, then it’s probably not good enough.”
Alicia put it another way:
“AI says something that anyone could have said. Oftentimes it says a lot without saying anything whatsoever.”
Her other test is simpler: would you actually talk like that to someone over lunch?
The copy can read perfectly well while leaving almost nothing recognisable about the person publishing it.
You don’t need a personal revelation in every paragraph, but something of you should survive the process.
And you still need enough judgement to notice when the person has disappeared from the work.
Can AI teach you to write?
Alicia thinks people who are still learning to write should be particularly careful.
“If you don’t know what AI copy looks like, you don’t see it. Then it’s really hard for you to take the AI back out of it.”
Cory disagreed based on his own experience. He used to think he was a terrible writer, and AI gave him somewhere to start.
“The content I used to put out was just fully AI slop. But it gave me the confidence to get going.”
He used it to understand how other writers structured things and learn techniques he hadn’t picked up before. He doesn’t rely on it in the same way now.
Claudia is comfortable letting AI into the process earlier.
“It really comes down to the human editing.”
She’s happy for AI to help with an early draft, provided she goes back through it, changes the tone and removes what doesn’t belong.
Cory learnt as he used it. Alicia’s concern is what happens when somebody never builds enough judgement to know what needs fixing.
That gets easier when AI has something truly yours to work from before it starts writing.
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Start with something that’s already yours
Cory now starts with material that already belongs to him. He records conversations, pulls transcripts into his system and uses AI to find ideas in things he has actually said.
“I don’t want my content to be written by AI. I want it to be the actual words that I say.”
Claudia often starts by dictating an idea into AI and using the conversation to think it through rather than asking it to produce something from nothing. That’s my preferred method too because it captures more context and more of how you actually speak.
I’ve ended up doing much the same with my inbox. I recently connected ChatGPT after spending an unreasonable amount of time building SOPs and rules for how I deal with guest pitches, requests and follow-ups.
The first draft is based on my existing logic. I still review it, and if the action is wrong or the reply doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t go out.
That source material matters. A transcript or voice note gives AI words and thoughts that already came from you. An SOP gives it decisions you’ve already made instead of asking it to guess how you behave.
Seven writers started sounding like one robot
At one point, Anjeanette had seven writers working across completely different industries, and their work started sounding strangely similar.
“It didn’t matter what industry it was. All of a sudden, the same stuff started coming in.”
She was fine with them using AI.
“I don’t care if you use AI, but don’t let me know that you used AI. Trick me.”
What frustrated her was that some writers had discovered they could produce in ten minutes what previously took two hours, then hand over the first thing AI gave them.
“If they had just spent the time to master the tool and get a little better at it, I would never have known.”
Their output pushed her to learn the tools herself. Eventually she started asking why she was paying people for work she could produce better on her own.
What cost them was handing over work that made the shortcut obvious.
Sometimes the right move is not to post
Later, I brought us back to the question behind the whole discussion.
When do you look at something AI helped create and decide you’d rather skip the post than attach your name to it?
Anjeanette’s line is whether she can still recognise the person in the work:
“If you can’t recognise yourself in it, or your client in it, I’ll scrap it.”
Alicia had posted on LinkedIn that day for the first time in a week because she hadn’t had the headspace.
“I would never put my name to something just for the sake of posting content.”
Claudia’s test is whether something personal still made it into the work.
“I draw the line when there’s no personal touchpoint.”
That could be something she’s experienced or actually happening in the business. AI can help shape it, but she still wants something there that belongs to the person behind it.
I’m also not convinced humans have some protected monopoly on creativity that AI will never touch.
I pushed back on that towards the end of the Live too. A lot of what we call original work is already a remix of things we’ve seen and learnt from before.
AI can absolutely throw out an idea I hadn’t considered, even if nine of the ten suggestions are mediocre.
Fine. I’ll use the spark. Once the draft exists, I still want to decide whether it’s something I actually believe and whether the standard is good enough for my name.
If my name is on it, I want the judgement behind it to still be mine.
