
Following all the recent advancements in generative AI, the creative internet split in two.
- Camp A, the pessimists, only saw problems, and braced for a tidal wave of auto‑generated “blah”: generic blog posts, cookie‑cutter carousels, recycled video scripts, etcetera.
- Camp B, the optimists, saw an opportunity and quietly shipped more content in less time, watching their engagement, and sales, climb.
The difference wasn’t talent; it was tooling. Camp B treated AI as the junior teammate who drafts content, researches new one, and repurposes the old, all while staying laser‑focused on delivering their insights to their audience, whilst continuously building their community through authentic connections and human-generated content (amplified by AI).
The productivity paradox
AI flattens the floor (anyone can press Enter) but raises the ceiling for those who already know the craft. More leverage means higher output and more creative head‑room.
It’s funny, but if you think about it, the same technology that floods timelines with sameness, buzzwords, and over-used em-dashes also helps spotlight the unmistakably human. And guess what: people still prefer to consume content created by other people! (As an aside, AI is trained on User-Generated Content, including books. Without fresh UGC, no new knowledge is created, and AI will train recursively on itself, creating a paradox.)
What AI actually commoditises
Layer | Pre‑AI scarcity | Post‑AI reality | Implication |
---|---|---|---|
Raw facts / summaries | Time to gather & paraphrase | One prompt away | Competes to zero margin |
Generic how‑to content | Personal experience writing effort | LLMs crank it out | Must differentiate via depth or format |
Original insight & narrative | Synthesising patterns | Still a human edge | Double‑down here |
Community & accountability | Hard to scale | Still not possible for bots | Critical advantage |
Take‑away: The closer you are to commodity information (i.e., something even a kid could find on dinosaur Google) the harder the squeeze. The more you move toward interpretation, context, and transformation, the safer and more valuable your content becomes and, as a consequence, the higher your sales and perceived authority.
Where durable value now lives
- Proprietary data or lived experience. Case studies, behind‑the‑scenes metrics, workflows that only you can share, drawing from your personal experience.
- Point‑of‑view curation. Audiences want why it matters and what to do next, not 50 open tabs and a lot of confusion and hallucinations on their favorite AI chatbot.
- Brand & personality. A trusted voice that makes customers say, “ChatGPT couldn’t have written this", not merely because you use hyphens over em-dashes (fun fact: I used em-dashes long before people noticed ChatGPT overuses them, and now I must try not to use them!).
How AI supercharges the creative stack
Workflow stage | Yesterday’s bottleneck | AI assist | Uplift |
---|---|---|---|
Research | Reading 40 tabs | Targeted synthesis, source triage | 4 × speed |
Ideation | Staring at cursor | Brainstorm variants, mind‑maps | Fresh angles |
Drafting | Structure & flow | Outline, first‑pass copy | 2 × speed |
Revision | Tone, clarity | Style guides, voice checks | Consistency |
Repurposing | Blog → Carousel | Automated format “translators” | Channel spread |
The net effect is simple: more done, for less, while energy is reserved for the parts that truly make your content stand out!
Guardrails against the AI glut
- Ship signature formats. Your experience, your jokes, your worksheet crafted on real use and experience: assets a one‑click LLM won't be able to replicate (yet, and maybe never?).
- Community touch‑points. Live sessions, office/consulting hours, peer reviews, exclusive community access (with real people inside!) Bots won't replace all of this.
- Invest in knowledge graphs. Map your domain so AI outputs align with your pastcontent and link back to source assets.
- Audit for originality. Run a “Could I have found this for free in ChatGPT?” test before publishing.
Bottom line: Human‑led, bot‑fuelled
AI is a productivity multiplier that widens the gap between those who use it from those who don't, and those who leverage it from those who merely rely on it. Keep anchoring in:
- Unique insight over bare-bones, commodity knowledge,
- Human‑led learning experiences over regurgitated or LLM-generated tips,
- Brand trust that algorithms can’t imitate
...and the bots won’t kill you; they’ll carry your bags while you climb higher.
Ready to put AI to work?
Sherpo gives creators an all-in-one platform with full control over their content distribution, with AI-first features to boost productivity. Join Sherpo today for free, and turn the AI boost into your unfair advantage.
Giacomo Di Pinto
May 2, 2025
3m reading time
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