A friend of mine recently raised some REALLY important questions about the use of AI. A recent Adobe Creators' Toolkit Survey showed that 86% of global content creators (16K sample size) are using some form of AI in their content creation workflows.
It's my personal belief that those other 14% might not be telling the truth about using these tools, but that’s a topic for another conversation 😉
Here’s what he asked: "If I put things in to train the AI to be putting out content that isn't really me, will my audience think this is disingenuous? And if I disclose it, will it put them off?"
He went further - he's started unfollowing creators he's followed for years (Anik Singal) because they're openly talking about AI clones. He notices himself skimming past posts that feel AI-written. YouTube shorts and reels that look or feel AI-generated get an instant scroll-past.
And he asked the question that actually matters: "Is this really a viable path, and will there be longevity in it?"
These are VERY serious questions for content creators because he's not wrong ... about most of it.
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Most AI Content IS Garbage. Tommy's Right. 💯
The reason people scroll past AI content is because most of it deserves to be scrolled past. Same generic phrases. Same safe structures. Same "In today's fast-paced world..." energy. It's AI writing as AI. No wonder people tune out. I tune out too. 👉🙄👈
So when he says "putting out content that isn't really me" - I hear him, loud and clear. That IS what happens with most AI tools. You give GPT a topic, it writes something in GPT's voice, and you slap your name on it. Your audience can smell it. 👃 You can smell it. 😷 Everyone can smell it. 🫢
That's the problem I set out to solve with SelfScale
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The Difference Between a Clone 🤖 and a Mirror🪞
Tommy mentioned unfollowing people who are openly talking about creating AI clones. I get it. A clone replaces the creator. It produces content the creator never actually thought, from perspectives they don't hold, using examples they don't have. That feels disingenuous because it IS disingenuous.
SelfScale does the opposite. You feed it your YouTube videos, your writing, comments, voice memos, chats, transcripts, any of it/all of it.
It builds what we're calling your Voice Blueprint - a computational fingerprint of how you actually communicate. Your sentence rhythm. Your go-to phrases. Your storytelling style. What you never say. How your voice shifts depending on the topic. Then every piece of content gets filtered through a pipeline where your voice profile acts as guardrails the AI literally CANNOT ESCAPE. 🚧
The more you put in, the more it sounds like you - not less. The training is what prevents it from being generic.
It's not a clone. It's a mirror with perfect memory.
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"Will My Audience Think This Is Disingenuous?"
This is the most important question, but I’d like Tommy (and all of us) to consider a reframing of this question…
The real question might not be "did a human type every keystroke?"
Maybe it should be reframed as, "are these my ideas, my perspective, my energy, my way of saying things?"
When a CEO has a speechwriter, nobody calls the speech fake - as long as the ideas and personality are genuinely the CEO's. The speechwriter studies them, knows their voice, and amplifies what's already there. That's what SelfScale does. It's a speechwriter that's studied everything you've ever created and knows you better than you might even know yourself 💥
The content our audiences are rejecting is the hollow kind - generic advice, no personal stories, no unique angle. SelfScale front-loads your real examples, your specific experiences, your domain vocabulary that only YOU would use. If someone reads a post and it contains your specific story about a specific client in a specific situation - that's not disingenuous. That's you, amplified 📣
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The Platforms Are Making This MORE Necessary, Not Less
Tommy also asked about longevity. Here's the irony - the platforms themselves are accelerating the need for this.
Google's latest AI content filtering introduces signals that specifically penalize generic AI content:
1) Net Information Gain (NIG) - Does this content add something new to the conversation? Generic AI scores zero. Content infused with your unique perspectives and specific examples scores high.
2) Semantic Precision - Are the claims specific and real, or vague and interchangeable? "Successful entrepreneurs know..." FAIL. "When I worked with [specific person] on [specific project]..." PASS.
3) Authority Signals - Does it demonstrate real experience and expertise? First-person proof points are what the algorithms are looking for.
Shout out to @Des Dreckett for bringing this update to my attention. The instinct to avoid generic AI content is literally being codified into the algorithms (anybody remember Google's PANDA update? Same thing, but it's new AI spam filtering layer).
The direction is clear - platforms will increasingly reward content that carries authentic human signal and will suppress everything else.
Generic AI tools have a shrinking window. Tools that help you be more authentically you at scale have MORE longevity, not less.
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Keywords and Repurposing - Halfway There
Tommy also suggested that maybe the opportunity isn't mimicking voice and tone, but amplification through strategic keywords, content formatting, curated topics for the ideal audience, and automation to chop long-form into shorts customized for YouTube, Insta, TikTok - pointing it all back to Skool.
All smart. And yes, the system does all of that.
But here's the gap. Without voice fidelity, all that distribution just produces well-formatted generic content on 8 platforms instead of 1. A perfectly formatted LinkedIn post that doesn't sound like you is still a post your audience scrolls past.
Tommy's describing the distribution layer. SelfScale gives you that, but more importantly, it gives you that critical voice layer blueprint. The voice layer is what makes the distribution worth anything.
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On Disclosure
He asked if disclosing AI use would put people off. Two things on that question.
First - you don't have to disclose, because the ideas, expertise, and voice are genuinely yours. This isn't fabricating. It's expressing your existing thoughts more efficiently across more platforms.
Second - if the content is good enough, nobody cares about the tool. Nobody asks what word processor an author used. Nobody asks what teleprompter a speaker reads from. Your audience cares about the value and the authenticity, not the production method.
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Bottom Line
Tommy’s instinct that hollow, generic AI content is a losing strategy? 100% correct. That instinct is actually the strongest validation for what we’re building. SelfScale exists BECAUSE that instinct is widespread and growing.
The question isn't "should creators use AI?" The market already answered that. The question is which creators will use AI that preserves who they are, and which will use AI that erases who they are.
The first group builds leverage. The second group is losing their audiences … losing them as we speak.