AI, Me, and the Road Ahead: How I Use Artificial Intelligence to Create Content That Works

If you’ve read my work before, you know I believe technology should serve creativity, not replace it. That’s why in 2023, you’ll see two distinct kinds of content from me—each powered by AI in different ways, but with very different results.

Defining the Two Paths

Artificial intelligence can be an accelerator or an autopilot. When I talk about #AIAssisted, I mean I’m still in the driver’s seat—shaping ideas, fact-checking, editing, and adding that irreplaceable layer of human insight. When I label something as AIGenerated, I’m letting the AI take the lead, producing the content from a simple prompt with minimal intervention. Both have their uses, but only one carries my full creative fingerprint.

Additional Context: The Origins of the Terms

The distinction between AI-assisted and AI-generated content didn’t emerge with ChatGPT’s release. Both terms have been used in research, industry reports, and marketing circles for years.

AI-Assisted Content — This phrase appeared in academic and industry discussions well before 2022, often in contexts like “AI-assisted medical diagnostics” or “AI-assisted writing tools” such as Grammarly and Jasper’s early iterations. By the late 2010s, digital marketing agencies and SEO professionals were already using “AI-assisted” to describe workflows where humans retained creative control but used AI for research, outlines, and optimization.

AI-Generated Content — This term dates back to early experiments in automated journalism and text generation in the 2010s. Newsrooms such as the Associated Press used automated systems to produce financial reports, weather summaries, and sports recaps, labeling them as “machine-generated” or “AI-generated.” In the marketing world, the phrase was in use by at least 2018 to describe content fully produced by natural language generation (NLG) systems like Wordsmith or GPT-2, with minimal or no human editing.

By late 2022, the AI industry — along with journalists, academics, and marketers — was actively debating the quality, trust, and ethical implications of each approach. The public release of ChatGPT intensified that conversation but did not create it.

Why It Matters

The distinction isn’t just technical—it’s about trust, originality, and quality. Research from Nielsen and Spiegel Research has shown that authenticity and credibility drive higher engagement and conversion rates. AI can write fast, but speed doesn’t equal substance. Without human oversight, AI-generated work risks being generic, error-prone, and out of sync with brand voice.

B2B vs. B2C Impact

For B2B, AI-assisted processes protect the nuance needed to address complex challenges, long sales cycles, and specific industry contexts. In B2C, where speed and volume are valuable, AI-generated content can scale basic tasks—but human refinement still ensures emotional resonance and brand consistency.

Factics

Fact: Audiences rate content as more credible when they know a human was actively involved

Tactic: Clearly label content type (#AIAssisted vs. AIGenerated) to build transparency and trust.

Fact: AI-assisted processes can outperform human-only workflows for efficiency without losing quality

Tactic: Use AI for outlining, research, and draft refinement, but keep humans in control of narrative and tone.

Fact: Disclosure policies are becoming common across platforms and publishers.

Tactic: Adopt voluntary disclosure to get ahead of compliance trends and reinforce audience trust.

Platform Playbook

LinkedIn: Publish thought-leadership posts under #AIAssisted to signal human-led insight.

YouTube: Release behind-the-scenes videos showing how AI tools fit into your workflow.

Blog: Pair AIGenerated posts with human commentary sections to provide context and extra value.

Best Practice Spotlight

Nava Public Benefit Corporation’s AI Tool Experimentation — In 2022, Nava integrated AI into public benefits workflows to increase efficiency without losing service quality. By keeping humans in control of review and decision-making, they maintained trust while improving speed—proving that AI works best as an assistant, not a replacement (Nava, 2022).

Hypotheticals Imagined

The AI-Assisted Strategy Deck – You use AI to generate an outline for a client proposal, then add your case studies, data, and narrative. The result: a document that’s faster to produce but uniquely yours.

The AIGenerated Blog Experiment – You feed a topic into AI, publish the output with minimal changes, then compare engagement to an AI-assisted version. Data shows the AI-assisted version drives more shares and longer read times.

Hybrid Workflow – You produce product descriptions using AI, but manually craft the hero copy for the website. This blend saves hours but still delivers a branded experience.

References:

References:
AI‑Generated Content

AI‑Assisted Content / AI Assistance

ChatGPT Media, Press etc.

11. OpenAI. (2022, November 30). Introducing ChatGPT. OpenAI.

12. Lyons, K. (2022, December 1). OpenAI’s new ChatGPT bot: What it is and why it matters. TechCrunch.

13. Reuters. (2022, December 5). ChatGPT crosses 1 million users within a week of launch. Reuters.

14. BBC News. (2022, December 5). ChatGPT: What is it and why is it making waves?. BBC News.

15. Wikipedia contributors. (2022, December). ChatGPT. In Wikipedia.
16. Southern, M. (2022, December 6). The history of ChatGPT (timeline). Search Engine Journal.

Final Thoughts:

A Universal AI Perspective

For me, the use of AI is not limited to when I run prompts through ChatGPT or another named platform. It should be assumed that AI, in some form, touches every part of my work. From research and drafting to editing and formatting, AI tools—whether visible or invisible—are part of the process. Sometimes that means advanced language models helping refine a paragraph, other times it’s background algorithms suggesting the most relevant data sources, or automated systems streamlining workflow management. In short, my entire creative and strategic process is inherently AI-assisted, even when the final product reflects heavy human authorship.

I believe that everything we do is AI-assisted and has been since the first time we asked a computer to output anything after a prompt. The greatest example of this is the evolution of libraries’ card catalogues into searchable online databases and the ease of a simple Google search to find something. Whether we realize it or not, our digital tools—from spellcheck to search engines—are forms of artificial intelligence augmenting our thinking and expanding our reach. Recognizing this reality isn’t just a technical point; it’s a statement about how creativity, strategy, and technology have been inseparable for decades.