The Importance of Authenticity

Over the last year or so, AI-generated content has proliferated across the web in a massive way. You see it everywhere: copy, images, video, emails. For the marketer, it makes planning, creating, and publishing content almost effortless, and it feels amazing.

However, from an end-user perspective, as soon as it becomes clear that something is AI-generated, it immediately loses a ton of value. You can imagine users glazing over and clicking away.

I'm so tired of seeing heroic copy everywhere. Here is an example post written by Claude, promoting a fictional SEO service called SEO Bang:

We're done with SEO that takes 18 months to "maybe" show results.

Introducing SEO Bang — Indulge Media's no-nonsense SEO service built for businesses that want impact, not excuses.

Targeted keyword strategy that actually matches how your customers search
Technical fixes that stop Google ignoring your site
Content that ranks, converts, and compounds over time
Clear reporting — so you always know exactly what your money is doing
No fluff. No jargon. No 12-page PDFs full of nothing.

Just SEO that hits hard.

Ready to make some noise in search? Drop us a message or head to indulge.digital to find out more.

#SEOBang #SEO #DigitalMarketing #IndulgeMedia #Guernsey

The heroic tone, the short sentences; it just stinks of AI and you can see it a mile off. I call this "Claude-speak", and you see it everywhere. But it's hollow, it's meaningless — no one is going to sign up for your service.

If you find yourself leaning on Claude and it is producing content like this, don't use it!

And then there is this guy:

He is following me around the Internet. I call him Gerry Gemini. He is everywhere. Ask Gemini for a photo of a man doing something, and Gerry will appear in whatever scene you desire. I feel a bit sorry for him, like a sort of failed actor doing a crap job to make ends meet.

There is serious value these days in certain human-crafted things.

But there are other areas where you can use AI to create the entire thing, benefiting from both the time-saving and the improved quality of the end result.

And there are also areas where you can retain that human-crafted element, but accelerate the process using AI tooling in a clever way.

So, where can you use AI, where should you produce human-crafted content, and where is the middle ground?

Ultimately, it comes down to just one thing: do you need the content you are producing to generate an emotional response? If the answer is yes, then you need a human driving the creative process. Let's look at some examples:

• A short LinkedIn post promoting your new SEO service - Human first - definitely write it by hand. It will come across as more authentic, and more people will engage with it. If you are planning to put some budget behind it, it will drive way more traffic. Use AI to help with structure, perhaps, or maybe the wording of the odd paragraph that you may be struggling with, but don’t let AI take over.

• Software documentation for your SaaS portal - 100% AI all the way. Writing good documentation is a pain. An agent can be configured to use your software and write all of the documentation for you in a clear and structured manner. In this context, users just want clear documentation, irrespective of how it is produced.

• Photography for your website - Human first - if you are trying to sell your services, please try to get a proper photographer to take some real photos. Maybe use AI to help write the brief, but with real photos you will genuinely stand out these days. Once you have those photos, you can tweak them with AI, but the core photos should be real.

• Articles for your blog - Human first - use AI to help you research, plan and critique the article, but do not use it to write the article. I know from experience, your human-written articles will get more engagement, guaranteed.

• The backend for your new web-based portal - AI first - a developer building effectively with AI will produce more robust and complete code in a fraction of the time, the client will be happy, and the users of the portal will be none the wiser. The art of building software with AI is becoming quite an advanced skill in its own right.

• The design for your new website - Human first - If it’s a marketing-focused website, then a human-crafted design will stand out against a sea of AI-generated slop. An experienced designer using AI tools like Figma Make or Pencil will be able to accelerate the design process whilst still retaining that human creativity, but fundamentally, it should still be created by a human.

These are just a handful of examples, but this rule can be applied across the board. The next time you need to produce something, and you want humans to engage with it, ask yourself whether you want an emotional response, and if you do, engage a human to produce it. It will be worth the time, expense and effort.