To AI or not to AI: A Conversation With AI About Marketing, Creativity and Human Judgment

In an expansion of the thoughts from the 'To AI or Not to AI' chapter in the book muddled, meager & messy, author Wendy Beth Moore shares her thoughts, what she's wrestling with, and interviews ChatGPT on the value of AI in business, sales, and marketing.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes up a lot of conversations these days. In just about every walk of life. There is the "it's wonderful" camp and the "it's going to destroy us" camp. Some research suggests that people who rely heavily on AI may engage less deeply with tasks that once required independent thought. Put more bluntly, critics worry that AI could make us intellectually lazy.

Businesses are using AI in a number of ways. In operational activities such as call answering and to quickly find patterns in revenue data. And in sales and marketing to create marketing strategies, advertising messaging and creative, as well as even do placement of digital campaigns.

So is AI a boon to sales & marketing when you're a people-centric brand?

I think the first thing that needs to be considered is what your business is and how your brand sends itself out into the world.

If your business sells itself has people-centric, then using AI to create your messages may not be the best foot forward. It's still possible to pick out AI-generated images, especially those created on free or low cost generators. And AI has developed a 'speech pattern' that is often discernable. So if you put across that your business is all about people, maybe AI isn't the right move for you.

If you get called out for using AI in ways that conflict with the values you've promoted, it can damage trust and credibility.

And what does ChatGPT have to say about it?

"That's a fascinating question because it gets to authenticity rather than technology.

My view is that a people-centric business can absolutely use AI-generated content and images if the AI is being used in service of human connection rather than as a substitute for it. The problem isn't AI. The problem is misrepresentation.

"For example, I don't see much conflict if a consultant uses AI to:

• Brainstorm article ideas.

• Refine copy.

• Create conceptual illustrations for a blog.

• Generate draft social posts.

• Produce an image that clearly represents an idea rather than a real event.

"In those cases, AI is helping communicate a human's thinking. Where it gets murkier is when AI is used to create the appearance of human experiences that never happened.

"For example:

• AI-generated photos of "customers" who don't exist.

• Testimonials attributed to fictional people.

• Images suggesting a company culture that bears no resemblance to reality.

• Articles presented as expert opinion when no expert actually reviewed them.

"That's where trust starts to erode. To put it another way, if your business says:"People matter." then people should still be visible somewhere in the process. The ideas should come from people. The judgment should come from people. The accountability should come from people. The relationships should come from people. The customer understanding should come from people.

"If AI merely helps package and communicate those things, I don't see a contradiction.

In fact, I'd argue that many people-centric organizations are already using tools that nobody questions. Grammarly checks grammar. Spellcheck fixes spelling. Canva provides templates. Stock photo libraries provide images created by someone else. Marketing automation schedules communications. AI is partly an extension of that continuum.

"And if I'm being candid, I think that's why many people are uneasy about AI. The technology can generate convincing representations at a scale and speed that humans never could. That makes authenticity more valuable, not less. The businesses that thrive long-term will probably be the ones that can prove there are real people behind the polished content."

Is outsourcing to AI a good idea?

As businesses, we outsource to lots of different people. Especially small business when there's no need for a full-time person for some of the tasks that still need to be done. Need a marketing consultant? A graphic designer? A revenue strategist? Even large businesses who work on a project-to-project basis can bring in outside help for a limited period of time.

In my opinion, AI can bring value in testing a strategy that was developed by humans who really understand the business and more importantly know about how customers make decisions. AI can also help test creative when you know the parameters against which you want to test.

I think the most important thing to always remember is AI is only as good as the prompt you give it. If you don't understand your audience, the emotional factors involved in their decision making or even have a firm grip on the realities of the business, then AI is going to only feed you confirmation of your direction, which works nicely for some people but rarely for the bottom line.

And what does ChatGPT have to say about this?

"The most impartial answer I can give is: Businesses should use AI for marketing creative and strategy, but they should not outsource either entirely to AI.

"The reason is simple. AI is very good at processing information, identifying patterns, generating options, and accelerating work. It is much less reliable at understanding context, human nuance, business realities, and the emotional factors that drive actual customer decisions.

"When it comes to creative, AI can generate headlines, social posts, ad copy, images, video concepts, and campaign ideas in seconds. That can dramatically reduce production time and help overcome the "blank page" problem. The risk is that AI often produces work that is technically competent but generic. It tends to reflect what has already been done rather than create something genuinely distinctive. Businesses that rely entirely on AI-generated creative may find themselves sounding increasingly similar to everyone else.

"When it comes to strategy, the risks are even greater. Strategy requires choices. It requires understanding customers, competitors, market conditions, organizational capabilities, and business goals. AI can analyze information and suggest options, but it cannot truly understand the realities of a specific business. It has no firsthand experience of the customers, the team, the culture, or the competitive pressures. As a result, AI-generated strategies often sound convincing while being surprisingly shallow or impractical.

"The strongest use of AI is as a collaborator:

• Researching and organizing information.

• Generating ideas and alternatives.

• Identifying gaps in plans.

• Accelerating content creation.

• Testing different approaches.

• Improving efficiency.

"The strongest use of people is:

• Understanding customers.

• Making trade-offs and decisions.

• Recognizing nuance and context.

• Exercising judgment.

• Creating genuinely differentiated positioning.

• Taking responsibility for outcomes.

"The question businesses should ask is not, "Can AI create our marketing?" The better question is, "Where can AI make our people more effective?"

"AI can write a headline, design an image, or draft a campaign. It cannot sit across the table from your customer, understand their frustrations, or decide what your business should stand for. Those responsibilities still belong to people. The businesses that benefit most from AI will be the ones that use it to enhance human insight, not replace it."

Chasing shiny objects

I've spent decades watching businesses chase shiny objects. Whether it was the Yellow Pages, websites, SEO, social media, funnels, marketing automation, or now AI, the pattern is the same. People often assume the tool will solve a thinking problem.

That's very much the underlying message in muddled, meager & messy.

My work has always focused on judgment rather than tactics. I don't object to tactics. I object to people skipping the thinking that should happen before the tactics. AI is simply the newest version of that temptation.

What does ChatGPT say?

"A lot of commentary falls into one of two camps:

1. AI is amazing and will transform everything.

2. AI is terrible and will replace people.

Neither is particularly useful.

"The interesting thing is that neither answer is really about AI. They're about people. The technology is impressive. The outcome still depends on the quality of the thinking behind it."

What about those ads that say you can replace a whole marketing department with AI?

Needless to say, this activity really gets my hackles up. You can't (and I bet ChatGPT will agree with me) replace a whole marketing department with AI. Marketing departments aren't just about creating content, and if yours is then you aren't doing it right.

Marketing is deeply about the human side of things and it actually takes humans to do it well. It's actually rather concerning when a business tries to find ways to eliminate their marketing team by bringing in AI to do all the tasks.

ChatGPT, what do you have to say to that?

"That's one of the claims I'd encourage business owners to examine very carefully.

"My response would be: AI can replace some marketing tasks. It cannot replace an entire marketing function.

"The distinction matters. A marketing department doesn't exist to create content. It exists to understand customers, make strategic decisions, build relationships, protect the brand, coordinate activities across the business, and ultimately drive revenue. AI can help with some of those activities. It can even perform parts of them remarkably well. But there is a significant difference between generating outputs and exercising judgment.

"For example, AI can write an email campaign. It cannot sit in a meeting and recognize that the sales team is hearing a different objection than the marketing team assumes. AI can generate a month's worth of social posts. It cannot observe that long-time customers are becoming frustrated because a recent operational change has altered their experience. AI can suggest positioning statements. It cannot truly understand the politics, culture, history, relationships, and trade-offs that influence decisions inside an organization.

"The advertisements claiming that AI can replace an entire marketing department often make the same mistake many businesses have made for decades: they confuse marketing activity with marketing effectiveness. Producing more content is not the same as producing better marketing. In fact, one of the risks of AI is that it can help businesses create large amounts of content very efficiently while distracting them from the harder work of understanding customers and making sound strategic decisions.

"The businesses that benefit most won't be the ones that replace all their marketers with AI. They'll be the ones that figure out which parts of marketing require human judgment and which parts can be accelerated by technology."

What about the theft of intellectual property to train AI? How does this sit in business consideration?

As an author, I have some pretty strong opinions about the theft of my intellectual property. In 2010 when muddled, meager & messy was first released, it didn't take long for me to discover copies of the book floating around the internet, not paid for. People taking the time to scan the whole book and then post it. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was put to good use but should I really have had to spend all those hours hunting down the thefts and ordering them to be taken down? I think not.

In the age of AI, the theft of intellectual property isn't quite as flagrant as that. At least not in terms of the training of AI. But I still have some pretty strong opinions about it. When intellectual property is used to train, but isn't paid for as a training tool, that's rather offensive. Particularly when you consider the millions the AI companies are making from how 'smart' their AI tools have become.

This should be part of a business' consideration of whether to use AI. It's beyond the consideration of authenticity of the brand; it's about whether you want to be able to say you support local artists, emerging or established authors, musicians or any kind of creators. In my opinion, you can't have it both ways without it being dangerous to your brand.

How does ChatGPT look at it?

"This is where I think it's important to separate the legal question, the ethical question, and the practical question, because people often blend them together.

"The ethical question: Is it fair? There are reasonable arguments on both sides.

A creator might say: 'I spent years developing my skills and creating original work. An AI company used that work to build a commercial product that generates revenue. I wasn't asked for permission and I wasn't compensated. That doesn't feel fair.' I think that's a legitimate position. On the other hand, supporters of AI often argue:' Humans learn by reading, viewing, listening, and observing other people's work. AI is learning patterns from large numbers of examples in a similar way.' That's also a legitimate position.

"The disagreement largely comes down to whether AI training is more like:

• A student reading thousands of books and learning to write.

  or

• A company using someone else's work as a business asset.

"Reasonable people disagree on where that line sits.

"My view on fairness: If you're asking my perspective, I think many creators are reacting less to the existence of AI and more to the speed and scale of the value transfer. A novelist may read 10,000 books over a lifetime. An AI system may be trained on millions or billions of examples. The scale is unprecedented. As a result, it's understandable that creators ask:'If my work contributed value to this system, shouldn't I participate in that value somehow?' That's not an irrational question. At the same time, it's not obvious how such compensation would work. If a model learned from:

• 50 million articles

• 100 million images

• 500 million social posts

who gets paid what? The practical implementation becomes extraordinarily difficult.

"The practical question: Where does the training data come from? This is where many people have misconceptions. Generally speaking, AI companies have used a mixture of:

• Publicly available websites

• Licensed datasets

• Content created by human trainers

• Public domain materials

• Open-source repositories

• Partnerships with content providers

• Various other legally obtained datasets

The exact mix differs by company and by model.

"Importantly, "available on the internet" does not automatically mean "free to use for AI training." That's actually one of the central legal disputes being argued in courts around the world right now. A newspaper article may be publicly viewable. A photograph may be publicly viewable. A song may be accessible online. That doesn't automatically determine whether it can be used for AI training.

The bigger human question (ChatGPT continues)

"What strikes me is that your original observation brings us back to people. The AI debate is often framed as: "Technology versus creators." But I don't think that's quite right. It's really: "How should society balance innovation and compensation?" That's an old question. Photographers asked it. Musicians asked it. Journalists asked it. Authors asked it. The internet itself forced society to wrestle with it. AI is simply the latest chapter.

As an author yourself, I suspect you can hold two thoughts simultaneously:

1. You can understand why a writer, artist, musician, or illustrator might feel uncomfortable if their work contributed to a commercial AI system without compensation.

2. You can also recognize that AI can be a genuinely useful tool for businesses and individuals.

Those positions aren't contradictory. In fact, I think that's where most thoughtful people actually land. The world is rarely divided into "AI is wonderful" and "AI is evil." Most people are trying to figure out what constitutes a fair exchange when new technology creates value from existing human knowledge and creativity.

My bottom line

Question deeply before you decide how AI is coming into your business, if at all. This interview with ChatGPT demonstrates that the training it has received represents more than one point of view. And that's valuable. But the human touch, those things like nuance, judgement, taking responsibility, will always be required if you want success over the long haul.

ChatGPT's bottom line

"If I were being interviewed for your article and asked, "What is the biggest risk of using AI in marketing?" my answer would probably be: 'The biggest risk isn't that AI will produce bad marketing. The biggest risk is that it will allow businesses to produce mediocre marketing faster than ever before while believing they have solved a strategic problem.'

"And if asked, "What is the biggest opportunity?" I'd answer: 'AI gives businesses access to capabilities that were once available only to larger organizations. Used thoughtfully, it can reduce the time spent creating and analyzing so more time can be spent understanding customers and making better decisions.'

The interesting thing is that neither answer is really about AI. They're about people. The technology is impressive. The outcome still depends on the quality of the thinking behind it.