Developing your voice in an AI world
Automation vs. authenticity
So many people are saying originality is key to standing out in an AI world that it’s starting to sound unoriginal. I don’t disagree, but as AI continues to evolve, the conversation can’t just be about standing out. It has to include what happens when the technology advances beyond what we currently expect.
In a recent episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on artificial general intelligence, Klein says we lack the compassion for what’s coming:
We are so addicted in this country to an economically useful tale—that our success is in our own hands—that it makes it very hard for us to react with either compassion or realism when workers are displaced for reasons that are not in their own hands.
Compassion is key to pro-worker solutions during this technological revolution. And compassion’s close relative, empathy, might be the skill that creatives and other communications professionals need to cultivate to stand out in more ways than just their content. After all, in a world changing at the speed of AI, what stands out is doing things that are fundamentally human.
This isn't about rejecting AI or pitting technology against humanity; it's about navigating the creative tension between automation and originality, efficiency and authenticity. It's about adapting, and not just creatively. The world needs your self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and point of view. It needs your voice.
Developing Your Voice
“You don’t find your voice—you develop it.” – Unknown
I regularly use ChatGPT and Claude as thought partners. If you do, too, you know how good they are, and you know they’re only getting better. I often use AI to support corporate content, like memos, where efficiency matters more than originality. But even then, I’m not mailing it in. A new study on prompting, reported on by The Neuron, emphasizes the need for human judgment:
[The] research suggests there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to prompting. Those universal prompting tips you see online? They may work in some cases, but not others … That’s also why we think you, an actual human, should always place yourself as a final check between whatever your AI creates and whatever goes out into the world.
As an editor, the idea of a final check is a no-brainer. Beyond looking at the accuracy and effectiveness of the content, it’s important to ensure the style and tone is on-brand and crafted to resonate with the right audience on the right channel at the right time.
Despite research showing prompts are hit or miss, I’m still curious how others leverage AI, and I’m even more interested in how people are choosing not to use AI. How are you relying on your own voice and personal experiences? And for those leading marketing and brand efforts, how are you helping others develop and refine their voice?
Joe Lazer has been covering storytelling in the AI age and has some insightful takes, like this one:
When we love a writer, we don’t just love them for their ability to string words together in a logical order or summarize information. We love them for their stories — and the voice, perspective, and insight that shines through those stories. As Ted Chiang wrote in his excellent New Yorker essay, what makes a story original and meaningful isn’t that the content is entirely novel …
What makes a story interesting is each choice that the storyteller makes. Every word and sentence is a choice. So are the plot twists and the little moments you zoom in on and blow up in technicolor. When you outsource your writing to AI with a prompt, you’re outsourcing these choices. It says nothing about you. AI tools like ChatGPT are probabilistic models that predict the most likely next word in a sentence. By design, they produce an average of everything on the internet.
This might explain why I like cover songs from Teddy Swims, and why shows like “The Voice” are such a hit. Teddy’s voice isn’t better than Mario or Chris Stapleton, but he’s making songs you’ve heard 100 times sound new. His version is original without being the original. Great writers and editors, like great musicians, make choices and employ taste. AI, by design, avoids choice.
Share Relevant Anecdotes
Early in my career in service journalism, I learned to get out of the way. Readers wanted to know about Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s workout, not about my experience renting a car to meet him in a Las Vegas boxing gym.
With rare exceptions, I never inserted myself into the story. The goal was to provide value—a useful tip, an entertaining story—with as few words as possible. Cut here, trim there, send to art, cut again.
Now it’s all about the personal anecdote, and frankly, it can be a bit much. Personal experiences are compelling when they’re relevant to the subject matter, not just because they differentiate the writing from AI.
My take: Share a story when it’s so relevant you can’t not share it. Your insight is still for the audience even if it’s also about you.
Nail the Basics
An editor once told me: Break the rules of writing only once you’ve mastered the basics. Clarity, concision, thorough research, avoiding cliches and passive voice and jargon—these are just some of the fundamentals.
Now, this is easier said than done. Tressie McMillan Cottom puts it so well in “Thick,” her collection of unapologetic essays, which predates ChatGPT:
Writing well takes research assistance, editorial expertise, copyeditors, lunch breaks, fresh air, desk space, peers, and LexisNexus subscriptions. Writing is democratic. Writing well is not.
Access to writing resources has historically been unevenly distributed. Professional editing, deep research, and time to refine ideas have been privileges. AI provides a new level of assistance. While AI doesn’t replace the insight, judgment, and expertise that skilled writers, editors, and researchers bring to the table, it can handle the basics.
Standing out = nailing the basics + adding the fundamentally human part.
Know Your Brand
Product companies and publishers live by the rule: Know your user/reader/audience. This is even more important in an AI world, yet most brands know surprisingly little about their audience. It can be especially tough for new projects. For instance, with this topic, my goal is to connect with writers, marketers, and anyone navigating brand-building in an AI world, but I can’t be sure who will read this or find it valuable. You can write for an audience, but you can’t totally control who you’ll reach.
Connection isn’t just about knowing who’s on the other side of the screen. Writers and brands need to know themselves. What I’m really getting at is about looking within more than looking all around. Define what’s true to you or your brand rather than following the fads and feeding the algorithm.
Brand definition is the process of bringing clarity and precision to the core attributes that distinguish your brand—mission, vision, positioning, values, purpose, personality, and more. It means not settling for what ChatGPT is good at: coming up with something that sounds ok but lacks depth and distinctiveness.
AI can craft a well-structured blog post in a known style, but it struggles with specificity. I’ve edited and ghostwritten for many CEOs, and when they’re vague, it’s often because an idea or emotion is unprocessed. AI can’t coax out the uncertainty, pain, fear, or heartbreak. You have to do the work of knowing yourself or defining your brand so you can say something that’s yours, something that connects on a human level.
Open to Grief and Growth
Here’s where things get tricky for me…
AI can handle many of the skills I’ve relied on like researching and editing. At times, that feels unsettling—threatening, even. But it’s also a push to sharpen what AI can’t do: bring real-world experiences into storytelling, connect with the audience on an emotional level, develop my voice, sharpen my point of view, and draw connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Helping others develop their voice has been a convenient way for me to hide from my own. I work with brands to articulate what sets them apart and how to tell their story while mostly staying behind the scenes. Now it’s time for me, and maybe you, to put more work into developing our own voices and the muscles that support them: compassion, self-awareness, perspective. Like I said, this takes practice. So here I am practicing.
Wrap-up
Perhaps it just so happens that the skills needed to stand out in an AI world, like empathy and perspective, are also what’s needed to stand together. I’m not advocating for or against using AI. It’s not a binary choice. The genie is out of the bottle.
I work with several AI startups right now, and AI makes me more productive. But when it comes to building remarkable brands and preparing for whatever is next, I also see value in an unprompted approach. My work may not be perfect, but in the words of Will Hunting, “at least I won’t be unoriginal.”