Where is the Line of Being Too Online?

Will the AI wave atrophy our ability to tell stories the good old-fashioned way?

I write a lot of copy.

In fact, a sizeable chunk of my day-to-day life is spent writing copy. Long-form, short form, social media captions, you name it. To most people in my field, writing copy is likely viewed as a monotonous task—I’ll admit that some days, when the words just aren’t flowing, it can certainly feel that way. Outside of work, my social channels are inundated with carousels of different content creators’ favorite AI prompt hacks engineered to spit out content for you (ironic). But over time, the daily practice of weaving words together to tell a story—whether it’s two sentences for an Instagram caption, or an op-ed essay for Substack—has completely changed the way that I think and write, personally and professionally.

I so vividly remember writing my first installment of Insider Report. It was a story born from a conversation that Amy and I had about the color grey as a trend. At the time, it absolutely was—as if the fog had lifted and triggered a sudden mass awakening to the fact that grey is, without a doubt, an incredibly chic color. Now we know that it is, in fact, not a trend, but rather a Ring 2 tool to create a mood…I digress. Anyway, I was excited to get writing. Throughout my academic career, I never felt any sort of way about my writing. It came easily to me, and when measured against the metrics in which my teachers graded papers, I was a strong writer. I knew the basics—how to block out a three-pronged essay and crank it out like nobody’s business—thesis, and all. So, when I submitted my draft to Amy for her review, I felt pretty confident. I was wrong. There were some serious redline edits—but not in the way that I would have expected. Technically speaking, my draft was fine. It was grammatically correct, and it had a beginning, middle, and end. But what it lacked was something that no teacher ever tried to help me shape, and what no AI bot could ever generate: a voice.

Imagine this: Five essays stand before you, but only one of them is written by you—think America’s Next Top Model, Tyra Banks-style. Now ask yourself: if three of your closest friends read them, would they instantly be able to identify which one is yours? Could you even pick your own writing out of a lineup? It’s been almost two years since I wrote my inaugural post for this column, and looking back at my older articles, I can just pick out whispers of my voice—enough to know that it’s something I wrote. Whereas my recent articles almost sound as if I used the talk-to-text feature. My voice has become so clear over time. And that’s something that can only happen by stretching and utilizing that muscle in your brain—going over countless revisions, letting the words marinate (sometimes for days), and then finally hitting that “Aha!” moment. The process is arduous, the outcome is worth it, every time.

It’s worth stating that I’m technically a Gen Z-er. I’ve hardly known life apart from the digital age, and I got my first cell phone when I was 9 years old (it was a cobalt blue slide-up phone with a full keyboard and it was SICK at the time). My generation is one that began communicating through screens while our brains were still soft and mushy. With that said, it’s also worth stating that there are some truly phenomenal storytellers in my generation. I would argue that in some ways, growing up in an age where written communication was so accessible—so instant—provided some advantage in this arena, sure. However, with the AI revolution evolving faster than I think the human brain can even comprehend, are we at risk of reverting back to soft, mushy brains? Will our ability to organically and independently spin a story into existence regress?

One of my favorite thoughts to chew on is that people have always been people. I’ll explain what I mean by this—and I promise it’s relevant, so stick with me. In 1956, archaeologists were excavating in Russia and discovered a series of drawings and writing on pieces of birch-bark—they’d been miraculously preserved in layers of dirt and mud. The manuscripts once belonged to a child named Onfim, who is presumed to have been about 6 or 7 years old at the time the drawings were created. He had jotted down all kinds of things—from alphabet practice to sketches of wild animals with a caption that read, “I am a wild beast,” followed by a message to his friend, Danilo. What I love so much about this archaeological finding in particular is that it completely humanizes eras past. If Onfim existed today, he would likely be able to walk into a room full of other 6 or 7-year-old little boys, and they would probably enjoy drawing imaginative pictures of wild beasts together. They would find connectivity through putting pen to paper. Honest self-expression as a means of building community with one another.

Here’s where this relates to what we’re talking about here: if we gradually loosen our grip on honing our individual voices—if we begin to outsource critical thinking, or worse, our imaginations, to artificial intelligence, will we have voices at all? Will we know how to communicate with one another? Or will we lose all of the little human fingerprints—the signs of life—that make connectivity so special?

I’ll give another example, one that brings this conversation back to the circularity of concepts in marketing. We published an article a few months ago documenting the process of creating an ad promoting The Creative Pragmatist, 2nd Edition in The Wall Street Journal. The inspiration for the ad came from old Porsche ads—and these ads are fantastic. Strong, punchy, clever, completely timeless. Similarly, if you’ve ever seen a vintage Volkswagen ad, you’ll know they’re absolutely brilliant. None of these ads could have been possibly generated or even enhanced by AI—it didn’t exist at the time. These iconic pieces of marketing history were born from good old-fashioned human brain power and collaboration. They’re the direct result of people who bounced ideas off of one another to come up with creative concepts that would sell their product—and be referenced for years to come. There are certain results that are born only from live collaborations, where it’s nearly impossible to determine where one person’s idea started, was adopted by another, and delivered to yet another to bring it home. Working with actual intelligence rather than artificial means to share and grow each other’s ideas, as well as communicate the voice of an entire team beyond just the individuals.

I realize that I might be coming across as anti-AI. That’s not the case, or at least not fully. I do think that there are a number of wonderful opportunities that come with the capabilities of modern-day technology. If used responsibly, AI can help us save time, streamline processes, and generally be more productive—depending on how you measure productivity. My point is this: though the brain is technically not a muscle, it certainly behaves like one. And if you stop working a muscle, well…it stops working.