I value AI, I just don’t want it to speak for you.

Before anyone pushes back on what I’m about to say, I want to make something very clear.

I value AI, I use it all the time. I’ve used Otter.ai for about five years. I use AI to transcribe my calls, turn transcripts into reports, think through ideas, research subjects, compare and benchmark websites, understand Bible scriptures, summarise sections of the Bible, design images so I can visualise ideas, think through event layouts and organise information. I’ve even used it for emotional support when I was going through my breakup.

I write with it, I think with it, I delegate to it. Basically, if there is something I can sensibly offload to AI, there is a very good chance I will.

Because I am a delegator. I have always understood the value of getting someone or something else to do the things that do not require me.

When my children were young, I hired a nanny. There were months at the beginning when almost everything I earned went towards paying her. I remember thinking about the maths of it: I could do the food shopping, cooking, cleaning and school runs myself and save the money, or I could buy back those hours and use them to build my business. The first month, I pretty much broke even.

Eventually, the business grew enough to pay for the support, pay me a salary and contribute properly to my household.

So believe me when I say that I am not against outsourcing. And I am definitely not against AI.

I think AI is brilliant at what AI is brilliant at. But there is one particular area where I think we need to be very, very careful.

Our stories.

More specifically, allowing AI to write the words we stand up and speak to other human beings.

 

✔️Our keynotes.

✔️Our presentations.

✔️Our scripts.

✔️Our sermons.

✔️Our stories.

 

And there is a reason I care so much about this. I train speakers because I absolutely love being in the audience.

In fact, I think I love being in the audience even more than I love being on stage. There is something incredible about sitting down and listening to somebody deliver a powerful story, keynote or presentation and leaving with my brain smiling. That is the only way I can describe it.

My brain has something new to think about, a new concept a  different perspective. I look at it like something to chew on. I feels a bit like an incredible meal. You are being fed all of this fantastic stuff. And even before generative AI became mainstream, good speakers were difficult to find. It was one of the reasons I loved TED Talks. There was a structure to them. Thought had gone into the idea, the story, the delivery and the journey the audience was being taken on. But recently I have started noticing something.

I can hear AI,  in presentations and speeches. A few months ago, I was sitting listening to a sermon. At first, I was listening to the person and then

The phrasing changed, I remember thinking: Oh my gosh. I can hear the AI.

Now, I wasn’t judging the person for using it. As I’ve already explained, I use AI myself.

What interested me much more when

I leant forward in my chair and looked at the people sitting around the room they

looked comatose and disconnected.

They might not have known why. They might not have been sitting there thinking, This sounds AI-generated.

But something had happened to the connection between the person speaking and the people listening.

It had gone. And that is the part I care about. Because I am a pragmatist.

If somebody can stand on a stage, deliver an AI-generated speech and the audience is moved, inspired, challenged, changed and completely connected to them, I have very little argument.

If it works, it works. The problem happens when a human being has to stand up and say it. Because something can look beautiful on a screen and still sound completely unnatural coming out of your mouth. And storytelling is about the strange little phrase you always use.

The sentence that technically isn’t perfect but sounds exactly like you. The detail nobody else would have thought was important.

The thing you nearly removed because you thought it was irrelevant, but when you tell it in a room, everybody leans forward. That is where I think we are getting confused.

AI can help you write. But that doesn’t automatically mean it should decide how you speak.

If you already understand storytelling, keynote construction and communication, AI can be an incredibly useful tool. You can throw ideas at it and

challenge your thinking, move sections around. Test different structures, research, tanscribe yourself.

But you still need to know what you are looking at. You need enough understanding of your craft to be able to say:

 

That’s useful.

That’s not me.

I would never say that.

That sentence is technically better, but mine sounds more human.

Keep this or delete that.

 

The danger is trusting it so much that you stop trusting your own voice. And that is the conversation I want us to have. We are entering a world where machines can produce more words than human beings could ever possibly consume. Which means I don’t think we are going to need more words. I think we are going to need more humans. And when you stand up to tell me your story, I don’t want the most polished version of what a machine thinks you should sound like.

 

I want you.

I came to hear you.

 

I wrote Storytelling for Humans to help