We’re back with post six in my AI series, and this week I’m getting personal: my own journey of co-creating content with AI.
Before I get too serious, a shout-out to the best kids’ show of the last 20 years, Phineas and Ferb (sorry Bluey fans!), for this week’s title. Dr. Doofenshmirtz meets his doppelganger from another dimension, and the two of them break into a song that shares this post’s title. If you have 2:17 to kill, click here! Hold onto that doppelganger idea. It’s going to matter.
I’ve always been a content creator: this blog, white papers, presentations, webinars, proposals, reports. But it’s always been a pretty solitary exercise. Collaboration only showed up at the very end, when I’d get someone to proof my stuff.
In the early days of the AI revolution, everything was about content creation, mostly for sales and marketing. So once we got over ourselves and dove into the AI pool, that’s where I started too. I was skeptical, though. I’d seen so much AI slop out there that I wasn’t sure how much help I’d actually get.
Lucky for me, I had a head start: about 100 blog posts and a pile of other content on our website. I loaded it all into ChatGPT (what we were using at the time) and asked it to build a profile of my “voice.” I was surprised how close it came to how I’d describe myself. There it was, my writing doppelganger. My brand new best friend was me!
Time to give it a shot.
I should be clear about how I use AI: as a collaborator, not a creator. I write the first draft, hand it over for feedback, and we go back and forth until it’s ready. I know some people drop in a few bullet points and let AI write the first draft. No judgement. I’m not saying one way is better than the other. It’s just how I like to work.
Early on, results were good but not great. The suggestions helped, but things weren’t getting much better. So I set three ground rules to clear out what was getting in “our” way:
- Don’t blow smoke. If something’s bad, tell me it’s bad. You won’t hurt my feelings.
- Don’t make things up. No invented case studies or proof points. Leave a placeholder and I’ll add a real one.
- Don’t just change it, tell me why. Knowing the reasoning helps me understand where it’s coming from and makes it easier to agree or push back.
Not only have these rules of engagement made the collaboration better, they have made me a better writer.
With those locked in, the number of rounds “we” needed before I could publish dropped significantly. I still have a human read everything as a last set of eyes, but the quality of what I create has improved dramatically. Amanda, my editor, has a much easier time getting these posts ready for prime time than she did before.
Your homework: if you have a body of your own writing, ask your AI tool to profile your voice and see how close it gets. Then give it your ground rules before you hand over a single draft.
That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll pick up the story with how things have evolved since the early days and how (and why) I made the switch from ChatGPT to Claude. See you then!
