Why AI is lobotomising creativity, and why we need to be more intentional about how we use it.
By Jon O’Donnell
I’m beginning to think the Matrix is real. And I think AI is the cause.
Before I begin, let me be clear. I love AI, I use AI and I think it’s the most game-changing innovation since the internet. And yes, I lived long before the internet.
So, hear me out. I recently attended an awards ceremony. I won’t say which one as it will be obvious to members of the UK podcasting community. Oh bugger…
Anyway….
At the awards I was taken by the fact that every announcement, every introduction and speech sounded eerily familiar to the point they all sounded near identical. And then it clicked. Everyone was using Chat GPT to write their scripts. And none were great. All were ok, but incredibly generic and fell short of any spark, or let’s call it out – life. They were all like a sort of Midwich Cuckooing of script creation.
I’ve been sensing this has been happening for a while. It’s pretty obvious on LinkedIn for a kick off.
People have long since stopped being delighted, excited and pleased to announce something or other, and instead are now giving us 15 lessons of leadership based on an encounter with a polite waiter, etc.
Either they’ve all got executive social coaches, or they’re bang on the Chat GPT. Every other morning, smashing out a leadership trope, accompanied by a full blown staged photoshoot pic, or a ‘real life’ image of a crushed tin can or something.
To reiterate, I love Chat GPT (disclaimer: other LLM are available). I started out like most people seeing it could write a song about the dog in the style of Taylor Swift to amuse my daughter, but fairly rapidly I was asking it to suggest a diet, plan my surgical recovery and to build a foolproof strategy for a multi-million pound podcast company in 3 minutes.
I was all in. I never really did the social media thing, so this was my first real digital addiction. First thing in the morning, last thing at night; give me my top priorities for the week; visualise this rug in the lounge.
But then the fog began to lift. I worked out early on that it wasn’t great at creativity. But that’s ok I thought, I could do that bit. So I would either dictate and transcribe, or sometimes write the bare bones of some work down and ask it to tidy it up a little.
And it was then I noticed what it was doing.
Every time I wrote a piece it would iron out all the wrinkles, squeeze out all the soul until all that was left was a feint ersatz version of the original article. It felt similar, and it sounded polished – but then, too polished on closer inspection.
The penny had dropped. Chat GPT was essentially the Mounjaro for personality reduction; shredding any life and soul in favour of a grammatically perfect version. Grayson Perry famously said that mistakes are the origin of your style and I think he’s 100% right. How you write and how you speak is a mish-mash of everywhere you’ve ever lived and everyone you’ve ever met. Lose that and there is just beige soup.
I read recently that Stephen Bartlett is now adding mistakes into copy so it looks less like AI. If true, this is quite possibly the most tragic news I’ve ever heard. That’s not authenticity, its obfuscation.
I don’t want fake mistakes I want real fumbled grammar, the occasional malapropism and ballsed syntax because that’s where the humour lives, and that’s what makes reading and writing joyful.
I no longer use AI to write anything for me. If I do I re-write the whole thing from scratch, and use only the basic framework that it suggests but even that has me suspicious.
At Viral Tribe we use AI to fast track certain processes such as episode transcription summaries, show notes, and have even built a tool to help chose the social clips most likely to go viral. We draw the line at and AI-centric client or customer outreach. Back office process-led work only. And it’s brilliant for that.
When it comes to any human facing work, let’s take back control of our mistakes and celebrate them, use our brains for creative thinking and problem solving and leave AI to do the process stuff, and choosing cushions. Otherwise it’s the blue pill and a life of waiting for Keanu Reeves to come and rescue us.
On a final note, and to prove a point… here’s the above put through Chat GPT.
The AI Matrix: Why We Must Hold Onto Our Imperfections
I’m starting to believe the Matrix is real — and artificial intelligence may be the cause.
Let me clarify: I love AI. I use it daily and consider it one of the most transformative innovations since the internet itself.
Recently, I attended an industry awards ceremony (I’ll spare the details). What struck me wasn’t the winners, but the words. Every announcement, introduction and speech sounded eerily similar, almost identical. It dawned on me: everyone was using ChatGPT to write their scripts. The results weren’t terrible, but they lacked spark, originality, and life — like a kind of “Midwich Cuckoo” of corporate writing.
This isn’t new. LinkedIn is full of the same phenomenon. Posts have shifted from simple announcements to formulaic “15 leadership lessons” inspired by mundane encounters, often paired with staged photos or symbolic images. Whether it’s executive coaching or AI, the sameness is unmistakable.
To be clear, I still value ChatGPT (and other LLMs). Like many, I began experimenting with fun tasks — writing songs for my daughter in the style of Taylor Swift. Soon I was asking it for diets, surgical recovery plans, even strategies for scaling a multi-million-pound podcast company. It became a digital habit: first thing in the morning, last thing at night, planning priorities, visualising interiors.
But over time, I realised something. AI isn’t great at creativity — and that’s okay. Yet when I used it to “tidy up” my own writing, it stripped out the quirks and imperfections, leaving a polished but soulless version. It was technically sound but personality-free.
Grayson Perry once said mistakes are the origin of style — and he’s right. How we write reflects the places we’ve been and the people we’ve met. Remove that and you’re left with beige soup. Even adding fake mistakes, as some now reportedly do, isn’t authenticity — it’s camouflage.
That’s why I no longer let AI write for me. I may use it for structure or basic frameworks, but I rewrite everything myself. At my company, Viral Tribe, we use AI to accelerate back-office tasks like transcriptions, summaries, show notes, or identifying likely viral clips — but not for outward-facing communication.
Human-facing work deserves real human voices. We should celebrate imperfections, use our brains for creativity and problem-solving, and let AI handle the process work — the maths, the admin, the cushions. Otherwise, we risk taking the blue pill and living in a world of sameness, waiting for Keanu Reeves to rescue us
Polished, tidied…..but I’ll let you decide whether you prefer me, or AI me…!