Personal branding | writing | Marketing | Best Practices | Artificial Intelligence
In 2025, we have a choice of how we create. Will you pay attention to what matters, draw from passion and personality, adding dash of artistic flair to create something beautiful? Or will you dash off an AI prompt, push a button, and barf up something just okay?
My photo of a remote Vermont pond was shot in an early morning in late August when I was several days into my 273-mile hike of the Long Trail, the oldest long distance backpacking trail in the country.
The pond is in the far north, maybe a dozen miles from the Canada border, a half day’s hike from the nearest road. I love the details: subtle ripples on the water; dead trees that didn’t make it together with the vibrant green and gold of plants thriving on the perimeter; drips of moisture on branches; interesting but not overwhelming fog.
This image is my computer wallpaper and I'm constantly drawn to it as a reminder of my journey.
Could AI have created the image?
In the deep Vermont forest far from roads and houses, there were no human sounds other than my own breath and footfalls. No TVs, no voices, no leaf blowers. No computerized beeps, dings, or buzzes. No sirens, train whistles, or car horns. It was calming all alone in the Vermont woods as I hiked, an opportunity to be at peace, for this environment delivers an utterly different experience than what I’m used to.
Could AI have crafted the paragraph above?
We're in a tsunami of AI-generated dreck cranked out by millions of marketers that appeals to nobody.
2025 will reward creativity, individuality, and passion. It’s the interesting angles, wonderful nuance, and powerful conflict that will generate attention this year.
That’s not to say we should abandon AI.
In fact, I’ve doubled down on my use of Artificial Intelligence.
I use AI to brainstorm, to summarize, to transcribe, and to help with article titles. I use AI to turn my long form blog posts into short form social posts. AI helps me make sense of the huge amounts of data generated by this blog, my social feeds, and my various websites.
I’m a content creator. It's my art.
Yes, I use AI daily. However, I avoid using AI to create content that’s important to get right. So this year, I am focused even more on being original.
If you want to dig deeper into this topic, here are a few articles I’ve enjoyed in the past few days that helped me think this idea through:
Bob Lefsetz on Artistry: “All great art has an edge. It doesn't go down easily, or if it does it engenders feelings that never go away. Art makes you feel something, it could be anger, it could be love, but it's not mindless drivel, to be heard today and forgotten tomorrow.”
Seth Godin on Orchestras: “Coordinating our tone and our tempo creates magic, and yet we often fail to lead, preferring to follow instead.”
Ann Handley on Craft: “Spam has morphed into slop: Garbage. Excreted waste. A generated image of a hand with 7 fingers. The cut/paste soulless text.”
Christopher Penn on AI: “Spend more than 5 minutes on the social network of your choice and you will see a flood of AI generated content. Some of it's harmless and silly, like my post the other day featuring a rutabaga sitting on the throne of England. Much of it is obnoxious, like the infestation of comment bots on networks like LinkedIn ("Insightful post {your name}. {Two sentence trivial recap of your post adding nothing new} 🚀"). All of it makes us wonder what's real and what isn't, what had human origination or supervision, and what is just machinery operating independent of supervision.”
Here's to a creative 2025!
