Ok so, let’s address the elephant in the room right now.. AI content is everywhere. And honestly? Most of it sucks. It’s bland, it’s generic, and it reads like a robot that’s been force-fed LinkedIn posts for six months straight.
But here’s the thing — ignoring AI entirely is just as dumb as overusing it.
I’ve spent the last few months experimenting with AI tools in my own workflow — for content, for product ideas, for speeding up the boring parts of creating. And i’ve landed on something I think is worth sharing: a practical framework for using AI to move faster without turning your content into the kind of soulless slop that makes people’s eyes glaze over.
This isn’t a “replace yourself with AI” guide. It’s a “use AI like a power tool, not a replacement for your brain” guide. Let’s get into it.
The Slop Problem: Why Most AI Content Fails
Before I get into how to use AI well, let’s talk about why most AI content falls flat. Because if you don’t understand the problem, you’ll just end up making the same mistakes everyone else is making.
The issue isn’t that AI writing is bad — some of it is technically fine. The issue is that it’s generic. AI models are prediction engines — they predict what word comes next based on what they’ve been trained on. This means they naturally gravitate toward the average of everything they’ve seen.
And the average of the internet? It’s not great.
When you let AI write without any human steering, you get content that:
- Uses the same 50 words over and over
- Has zero personal stories or real experience
- Sounds like it was written by a committee
- Lacks any personality, humor, or edge
as I mentioned in my article on building your personal niche monopoly, your voice is your ultimate intellectual tool. AI that strips away your voice isn’t helping you — it’s hurting you.
But that doesn’t mean AI is useless. You just have to use it differently than most people are.
The AI-Assisted, Human-Led Framework
Here’s my philosophy in one sentence: AI does the heavy lifting, you do the steering.
Think of AI like a really fast intern. It can research, outline, format, and fill in the boring bits incredibly quickly. But it has terrible judgment, no life experience, and zero understanding of your specific audience. Your job is to give it direction and then heavily edit everything it produces.
The framework breaks into three layers:
- Layer 1 — AI Territory: Research, data gathering, first drafts, formatting, image generation, headline variants. Stuff where speed matters more than personality.
- Layer 2 — Human Territory: Personal stories, controversial takes, specific examples from your own experience, humor, emotional depth. Stuff where personality IS the product.
- Layer 3 — The Edit Zone: This is where AI output gets filtered through human judgment. You read everything, cut the generic parts, inject your voice, add specific examples, and make it sound like YOU.
The magic happens when you’re disciplined about keeping these layers separate. AI never touches Layer 2, and you never publish anything from Layer 1 without going through Layer 3 first.
What AI Is Actually Good At (and What It’s Terrible At)
Let me break this down more specifically, because knowing which tool to reach for is half the battle.
What AI is great for:
- Research and summarization — AI can read 20 articles on a topic and give you the key points in 30 seconds. Tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT’s browsing mode are genuinely game-changing for this.
- Outlining and structure — Give AI your topic and rough thesis, and it can spit out 10 different outline structures in seconds. Pick the best one, rearrange it, make it yours.
- Headline generation — AI is surprisingly good at generating 50 headline variants. Most will be terrible, but you’ll find 2-3 gems that you can tweak into something great.
- Formatting and cleanup — Need to convert a messy brain dump into a structured blog post? AI handles this beautifully.
- Image generation — For featured images, diagrams, and visual elements, tools like Midjourney or DALL-E are incredible accelerators.
- Repurposing content — Got a long blog post? AI can help you extract the key points for social media threads, email newsletters, and short-form videos.
What AI is absolutely TERRIBLE at:
- Genuine insight — AI can’t tell you something surprising about your industry that nobody’s noticed yet. It can only remix what already exists.
- Personal stories — AI has never failed at anything, never learned a lesson the hard way, never had a “holy crap” moment. Your stories are irreplaceable.
- Controversial or opinionated takes — AI is trained to be safe and balanced. Josh Katherman doesn’t do “safe and balanced.” Your hot takes are your competitive advantage.
- Understanding your specific audience — AI doesn’t know that YOUR readers are bootstrapping solo founders who hate VC-speak. You do.
Here’s a simple rule I follow: If I could outsource it to a smart 22-year-old intern who’s never run a business, I’ll let AI handle it. If it requires judgment, taste, or experience — that’s on me.
The 5-Minute Human Filter Checklist
This is the system i’ve been using to make sure my AI-assisted content still reads human. Run your draft through this before you publish anything:
- The “Would I Actually Say This?” Test — Read every sentence out loud. If it sounds like something you’d never say in conversation, cut it. This alone will catch 90% of AI-isms.
- The Personal Story Check — Does your article have at least ONE specific story or example that only you could tell? If not, add one.
- The Hot Take Audit — Does your article have at least ONE opinion that some people might disagree with? If everything is safe and balanced, it’s boring. Go add some edge.
- The Tool Drop Verification — Does your article mention at least ONE specific tool or platform by name? Vague references are AI territory. Specificity is human territory.
- The Signature Quirk Scan — Does your writing have your voice markers? For me, it’s things like the casual “..” pauses, lowercase “i’m”, the occasional “(is that what they’re even called?)” parenthetical. If your draft is too clean, it’s probably too AI.
as I talked about in my article on identity marketing, people don’t just buy products — they buy the identity behind them. The same applies to content. If your writing has no identity, nobody will care.
The Tools I Actually Use
I’m not going to list every AI tool that exists. Here are the ones i’ve found genuinely useful in my own workflow, and what I use each one for:
- ChatGPT / Claude — For research, outlining, first drafts, headline generation, and formatting. Claude is better for long-form content and nuanced thinking. ChatGPT is better for brainstorming and quick iterations.
- Perplexity — For research with actual citations. If I need to fact-check something or find current data on a topic, this is where I go.
- Midjourney / DALL-E — For featured images, diagrams, and visual elements. A good featured image can double your click-through rate, and AI makes this nearly free.
- Notion AI — If you’re already using Notion for your content calendar and project management (which I’ve mentioned in my 24 hour product sprint guide), the built-in AI features are genuinely useful for summarizing notes and generating outlines.
- Descript — For video and audio content. If you’re doing YouTube or podcasting, Descript’s AI-powered editing is absolutely incredible. Cuts editing time by 80% minimum.
One thing I want to emphasize: don’t pay for a million tools. Pick 2-3 that solve your biggest bottlenecks and master those. Tool hopping is just another form of procrastination dressed up as productivity.
The Anti-Slop Manifesto & Your Game Plan
Here’s where I get a little fired up, because I think this matters more than most creators realize.
The internet is currently being flooded with AI-generated content that nobody actually wants to read.
Every day, thousands of blog posts get published that are just slightly rearranged versions of each other. The same generic advice. The same robotic tone. The same cookie-cutter openings that all blur together.
This is actually a massive opportunity for YOU.
When everyone else is pumping out AI slop, the creators who take the extra hour to inject their personality, share real stories, and write something that sounds HUMAN will stand out more than ever. The bar for “good content” hasn’t gone up — it’s gone DOWN. Most of what’s being published right now is mediocre at best.
Your job isn’t to be better than AI. Your job is to use AI to handle the boring parts, then layer your uniquely human perspective on top.
By the time AI gets good enough to replicate genuine insight and personal experience (if that ever happens), you’ll have already built a library of content that’s unmistakably YOU. A content base, as I’ve written about before, that compounds over time and can’t be scraped or duplicated.
Stop worrying about AI replacing you, and start using it to accelerate you.
Here’s your simplest-possible starting point:
- Today — Pick ONE tool from the list above. Use it for one specific task — outline a blog post, generate headline ideas, summarize research notes.
- This week — Integrate that one tool into your workflow. Notice what it’s good at and what it’s bad at.
- This month — Add a second tool only if it solves a real bottleneck. Don’t add tools just because they exist.
- Every time you publish — Run the 5-minute Human Filter Checklist. Never skip this step.
The key isn’t having the fanciest AI setup. It’s having a workflow where AI handles the boring stuff and YOU remain the creative engine behind everything you publish.
Now go publish something that sounds like a human wrote it. The bar is lower than you think, and the opportunity is bigger than it’s ever been.
Take care! 🙂
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