Authenticity and Why It F*cking Matters

In a world full of AI, you kind of want to know when people are real and when they are not.

This was true before AI, but it is certainly true now. Regardless of whether you think AI has been an improvement or a detriment to humanity, there is one question that matters more and more:

Am I talking to a human right now?

Yes, I Actually Write These

I will be very blunt. I do write every one of these articles.

I use speech-to-text to get a lot of my ideas down because it is faster and easier for me. I clean things up afterward, but these are my thoughts, my stories, and my opinions.

And yes, I use tools to help me.

There is nothing wrong with using tools to make work easier. The problem starts when efficiency becomes more important than authenticity.

That happens a lot.

Efficiency Is Not the Same as Trust

I once tried to set up a service with another business. I was interested in buying what they offered and wanted to talk to someone about it.

Instead, I got an AI assistant.

And my first thought was: Why the hell would I extend my trust to a business that will not even give me a human to talk to?

That is the problem.

The AI may have been faster. It may have saved the company money. It may have answered every question correctly.

But where was the trust?

Where was the person?

Sometimes we become so focused on making something efficient that we forget why people wanted to talk to us in the first place.

People Need to Know Someone Is There

Use AI in your business. Don’t use AI in your business. That is not really my point.

What matters is that people can still feel the human behind the business.

They should know somebody cares about what happens after they click the button. They should know someone actually believes the words they are reading.

That is one of the reasons I cursed in the title.

I want you to know a person writes these things.

I have opinions. I have a way of talking. Sometimes I swear.

That is human.

Recorded Music Didn’t Kill Concerts

Think about music.

Once we figured out how to record music, you no longer needed a band standing in front of you to hear a song.

Today, that idea has been taken even further. You can pull out your phone and listen to almost any song ever recorded within seconds.

So why the hell do concerts still exist?

Why would someone pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to hear music they can already listen to at home?

Because being there matters.

There is a difference between hearing a recording and standing in a room with thousands of people while a real person performs something in front of you.

The recording may be cleaner.

The recording may even sound better.

But the concert is real.

And we value that.

Authenticity Is Going to Become More Valuable

As technology gets better at copying human communication, I think knowing something came from a real person becomes more important, not less.

Your marketing does not always need to be perfect.

Your videos do not always need to be polished.

Every sentence does not need to sound like it went through twelve rounds of corporate approval.

Sometimes people need to hear how you actually talk.

They need to see the people behind the company. They need to hear what you really think. They need something that feels like it came from somebody instead of something.

Use the tools that make your business better.

Use AI if it helps you.

Automate the things worth automating.

But do not automate the humanity out of your business.

Because people still trust people.

And that fucking matters.