This is my work. These are my words. That is a promise I make to myself.

I am 20 months into building a personal brand and a business while also living a full, rich life. A lovely relationship with a lovely woman. Family. Parents. Friends. A home. A career.

You get the picture because your life is probably as full as mine. Which means that when you see a post on my website or read a LinkedIn post or comment of mine, you have to trust it’s what I think.

Last week’s post wasn’t all mine. I cut a corner and never will again.

I knew it as soon as I read Paul Roetzer’s ExecAI Insider newsletter. He wrote about people using AI “…as a replacement for having to write and think for themselves.”

That got my attention because I often use Claude to brainstorm ideas for my posts. I find it often helps me push and pull on ideas so I can question assumptions or challenge points before writing.

Last week, though, it also offered to write the post for me. I let it. And I shouldn’t have because, as Roetzer concluded in his newsletter:

“…AI has the potential to make us better writers, deeper thinkers, and more inspired creatives, but only if we use it to augment our abilities rather than replace them.”

That stung.

The Hollow Truth

To clarify, I did not copy Claude’s work and post it. I spent considerable time revising and rewriting phrases, putting in my own voice and insights.

Regardless, no matter how much time I spent on it, reading the post felt like I had bitten into a hollow chocolate Easter bunny when I expected solid milk chocolate.

It looked alright. Read pretty good. But I knew it was not as substantial and substantive as it should have been.

And that’s the key.

Maybe you read that post and you thought it was fine. Likely most people did and didn’t give it a second thought.

But I knew. I knew they were not my words.

I’m not ever going to do that again.

The Lesson I Learned

I have learned firsthand that, while editing may help text sound like it’s in your voice, for me it will never replace pouring my whole being into something I attach my name to.

It can’t, even if, as Mark Schaefer wrote recently, we may be hard pressed to distinguish AI text from human text:

“AI is empowering. It can create spectacular, compelling content indistinguishable from human efforts, and you should use it wisely to help grow your business and your brand. Your competitors are.”

Fine, but I must and will do better.

No, I am not going to stop using AI as an assistant to help me think through and challenge ideas. Workshopping post ideas with Claude has been a real benefit for me. To stop using it this way would be foolish.

But I am never again going to hand Claude or ChatGPT or any LLM the proverbial wheel and let them put their machine-generated words into my mouth. I will be able to defend every word, every turn of phrase, and every idea because they will be my own.

And, to ensure I do exactly that, last week’s post now clarifies how it was created.

This post, though? My work. Promise.