If AI wrote your thought leadership, is it still your thought leadership?

I should probably start with a confession. 

 

I used AI to help me write this article, which, given what follows, might sound slightly hypocritical – but I don’t think it is. Not really.

 

Like many people, I’m a regular AI user. It's great for research, helping me get to grips with technical subjects and challenging my arguments. It’s even pretty good as a sounding board (professionally and personally).

 

But there's a difference between using AI to help articulate an idea and asking it to have the idea for you. 

 

AI has changed the economics of communications

 

I’ve worked in communications for 25 years. And for most of my career, producing content required effort. 

 

I had to work out what someone actually had to say. I then had to spend time with a client, understand what they thought and frame it in a way that would resonate with the reader (in my case, that often meant turning something quite technical or, dare I say it, dry, into something simplified and engaging). 

 

Then I had to sit down and write it, which was typically backed up by research I’d generally carried out manually. 

 

But now, AI has changed the economics of all that. Today, anyone can open ChatGPT, Claude or any number of other tools and ask for 800 words on virtually any subject. Seconds later, they'll have something perfectly competent.

 

However, the problem with that is that everyone can do it. The result? A sea of sameness and reams of content that is, at best, generic and, at worst, instantly forgettable.

 

Thought leadership starts before the writing

 

Ask AI to write an 800-word thought leadership piece about the future of sustainable construction or innovation in the marine sector and it will happily tell you about innovation, collaboration, technology, changing regulation and the importance of working together.

 

Now, that’s undeniably useful. But whose thought is it?

 

Not only that, but it’s unlikely to include the personal touches from the CEO or senior leader it’s being attributed to. Things like lessons learnt, their frustrations, their first-hand experiences of what’s changed (for better or for worse) and the mistakes they’ve made along the way all contribute towards a piece that’s worth reading.

 

For me, the personal anecdotes and real-life examples are what bring thought leadership to life and make it credible.

 

AI’s very efficient, but it’s not very authentic.

 

The value of a good ghostwriter isn't the typing

 

Over the years, I've ghostwritten several hundred opinion articles for business leaders.

 

And yes, the writing bit is very important. But it’s the bit before the writing that provides the building blocks for an engaging piece of content. 

 

It’s the conversations, the funny stories that would never emerge from a simple prompt and the ability to challenge something that doesn’t quite make sense.

 

Or even the ability to pivot away from what you thought the main theme of the article would be because of a throwaway point the CEO made during the conversation.

 

The finished article is really just the product of that process – and yes, it’s a process that takes time.

 

Could human writing become more valuable, not less?

 

There's an understandable assumption that AI will make professional writing less valuable. 

 

As the owner of SHIFT, I’ve seen and felt it first-hand. We’ve had clients leave because they’ve heavily invested in Claude, for example, and there’s internal pressure on employees to use their credits rather than outsource their communications function.

 

If the client’s requirement is simply to produce 500 words explaining a straightforward subject, then AI can already do that remarkably well. There’s really no denying that. 

 

However, amongst the AI explosion, I think that maybe we’ve been valuing the wrong thing.

 

The value of a communications adviser was never really their ability to type 800 words into a document. It's knowing what an audience might find interesting and recognising the argument or salient points buried inside a 60-minute conversation. 

 

Perhaps more importantly, it’s exercising judgment and understanding when something doesn’t sound like the person who’s supposedly saying it.

 

And yes, occasionally it's having the confidence to tell a CEO that the subject they desperately want to tell everyone about isn't actually that interesting.

 

Is an AI backlash on the horizon?

 

I'm a big fan of AI. Who isn't? So, I'm not suggesting businesses should stop using it. It's a great tool. I've recently fallen foul of it myself, though.

 

Having just acquired Surrey Hills Mushrooms, a producer of fresh Lion's Mane and Lion's Mane powder, I launched a new subscription service. As it was a new business and I was trying to keep costs down, I turned to AI to produce the creative for an Instagram campaign.

 

It looked pretty good to me. So, I put some money behind it and boosted the post. The result? Lots of negative comments accusing me of producing ‘AI slop’.

 

Now, I can't say that using AI was the reason the campaign didn't exactly set the world alight. But the reaction certainly made me think that things are changing. And for all our enthusiasm about what AI can now produce, people seem to be craving authenticity again.

 

But back to the world of comms. There's a considerable difference between using AI as part of the thinking process and attributing its output to a senior leader and then publishing it.

 

And those who do may even leave themselves exposed. Claude, for example, is now introducing watermarking into its output, which is a statistical signature that can indicate whether Claude was likely involved in producing a piece of text. 

 

It doesn't mean that every piece of AI-generated copy will suddenly carry a written by a machine warning. But if the provenance of the words we claim as our own becomes increasingly detectable, will audiences begin to care more about who – or what – actually wrote them?

 

If that happens, then maybe words written by humans will become more, rather than less, valuable. And maybe the craft of writing (and everything that goes into it beforehand) will once again be celebrated rather than devalued. 

 

Making every word count

 

For years, SHIFT has used the line making every word count.

 

When I first started using it, I meant it quite literally: good communications should be clear, concise and purposeful, although today it means something slightly different.

 

Words are no longer scarce. We can produce more of them, faster and more cheaply, than at any point in history.

 

Which means the interesting question is no longer whether a business can produce enough content – it’s whether the human beings behind that business have something worth saying.

 

And perhaps that's where communications needs to shift its attention next.

 

About the author

Stuart Pearson is the owner of SHIFT, a strategic communications consultancy working with founders and leadership teams on thought leadership, messaging and reputation.