😱 AI Just Came for Me

When people say, "AI can change everything," you are not prepared until it happens to you.

I'm in the AI space, but AI is going to AI.

Executive Summary: Last week, a friend shared a new AI tool with me that I thought would be fun to play with. Then, I shivered and could not stop thinking about the ramifications of what it was doing.

Please stay with me for a moment here because I need to provide some background.

⏱️ Content creation is costly and time-consuming

Recently, I wrote an article for this website titled "Why does AI seem so smart?" It took me six hours over four days to write, and our editor, Dr. Deborah Chen, reviewed multiple times with changes for me to incorporate.

Article: 6 hours over 4 days

I am also a podcaster and run the popular Agile in Action with Bill Raymond podcast, where I speak to industry leaders about creating safe and highly effective teams. My podcasts include a one-hour pre-interview, a one-hour interview, four hours of editing, and two hours to publish and share on social media.

Podcast: 8 (or more) hours over one month

✍️ Professional, scripted content creation is even more difficult

Two podcast hosts in a studio, one adjusting audio equipment, the other speaking into a mic. — Creating scripted and highly produced audio is time-consuming and costly for independent creators.

Producing a scripted, 1200+ word podcast with two hosts results in about six minutes of content. It means writing up each person's words with their unique personality, tone, and vibe. Each person will run through the script, do some test runs, and then formally record the podcast. Take a listen to the professionalism, tone, and voice required to deliver this 6-minute audio based on one of my newsletters:

Podcast short: Why does ai seem so smart?

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Scripted 6-minute podcast short: 20 (or more) hours
Cost for talent: $600+ per person

How will AI reduce time and costs?

A hand holding a pencil draws a straight yellow line under a sharp red downward trend line on a dark background. — It might feel like AI has a lot of hype, but it is on a trajectory to become more helpful.

After listening to that podcast short, you can only imagine the time, cost, and effort spent creating it. We required two trained actors to sit in a booth and have a conversation based on a script. They had to make it sound like fun banter while talking about me and my newsletter without it feeling like a sales pitch, and they had to speak at a pace that kept the podcast in the 6-minute range.

Despite all the time and effort we put into it, we had to remove outside noises and give the actors a few takes. Then, our audio person had to adjust volume levels and clean up some popping noises when an actor's mouth accidentally pressed against the microphone a few times.

I tell you all this because everything I just told you about that podcast short is untrue. It was one hundred percent AI-generated. That podcast only took six minutes to create end-to-end. No real people are talking, no human being wrote the script, and no people edited the audio.

Here was the process I used to create that 6-minute podcast short:

Open a browser, go to Google's Notebook LM, upload my newsletter, and press a button
Wait six minutes
Download the finished podcast short

That is it! NotebookLM generated a unique script based on my article, using its own words and concepts to create a really (really) convincing conversation between two people.

Scripted 6-minute podcast short: 6 minutes

Cost for talent: Free (as of this writing)

Synthetic content is becoming indistinguishable from human content

A close-up image of a roll of artificial (synthetic) grass, partially unrolled on a vibrant green synthetic lawn. — Soon, it will be nearly impossible to tell the difference between synthetic and human-generated content.

Have you seen announcements from friends and family online where they announce something important, but it feels a little off? You can usually tell AI wrote something when you see:

Big announcement: Our wedding
Am excited to announce...
At my training workshop, we will delve into the mysteries of building a great HR policy...

AI loves colons for titles, not starting sentences with "I" or "We" and using the words "delve" or "dive." But that will go away, and soon, like that 6-minute podcast-style summary of my article, it will become difficult to tell what was created by AI and what was created by a person.

Responsible use of synthetic content

The phrase "Be Responsible" spelled out with black round letter beads on a textured yellow background. — How I currently think about the responsible use of AI.

When I write these articles, they are in my unique voice and style. However, I do use AI to generate some synthetic content. For example:

To correct spelling and grammatical errors.
I suggest structural rewrites that follow my writing style guidelines.
To create alt-text for images for accessibility.
To help me with writer's block by offering guidance, words, or finishing a sentence so I can pick and choose some options
Create images that are not available in my stock library.
Write transcripts and clean up my podcasts (as mentioned earlier in this article).

The important thing for me is I am always in control. No matter what I generate, I do not put it into the wild without my review and edits.

That said, I have to roll with the times, so maybe that new audio feature that allows me to generate new content from my articles could become a podcast where I do not have to spend as much time editing and publishing. Even if I do so, I will still share that with you.

Nearly every field uses AI, from the mundane to creating new markets. Some uses will be for good; other uses will be dangerous. I want to be on the side of good while still embracing the tools available to me as a creator, so expect that if my content is "overly synthetic," I will be up-front about it while embracing the bleeding edge of what is possible.