Somewhere right now, a founder is asking ChatGPT to write their brand voice guidelines. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast.
The Great Sameness
Open LinkedIn. Scroll for thirty seconds. Count how many posts sound like they were written by the same person. The same cadence. The same "Here's what I learned" framing. The same relentlessly optimistic tone that sounds like a motivational poster gained sentience.
That's AI-assisted content at scale. And it's making every brand sound identical.
The promise was efficiency. Write more, faster, cheaper. And it delivered — if your goal was more beige content in less time. But brands aren't built on efficiency. They're built on distinctiveness. And you can't automate distinctiveness.
Where AI Actually Helps
I'm not a luddite. AI is genuinely transformative for specific tasks:
Research and synthesis. AI is excellent at processing large amounts of information and identifying patterns. Competitive analysis, market research, trend spotting — these are legitimate use cases where AI saves real time without sacrificing quality.
First drafts of structured content. Product descriptions, meta tags, email subject line variations — formulaic content where the structure matters more than the voice. AI handles this well.
Data analysis. Identifying which campaigns performed, which customer segments are growing, which pages convert. AI processes data faster than any human analyst.
Operational workflows. Internal documentation, meeting summaries, project briefs. Content where personality doesn't matter because the audience is your own team.
Notice what's missing from this list? Anything customer-facing that requires your brand's distinctive voice. Anything that builds emotional connection. Anything that differentiates you from competitors using the exact same tools.
Where AI Destroys Differentiation
Brand Voice
Your brand voice should be so distinctive that people recognize it without seeing your logo. AI-generated content trends toward the mean — it produces the average of everything it's been trained on. The average is, by definition, unremarkable.
When you let AI write your customer communications, you're not saving time. You're erasing the personality that makes people choose you.
Visual Identity
AI-generated imagery has a look. You've seen it. The slightly-too-perfect compositions. The uncanny lighting. The weirdly smooth skin. It's getting better technically, but it's all drawing from the same well. When every brand uses AI-generated visuals, every brand looks like a stock photo site.
Strategic Thinking
This is the big one. I'm seeing founders use AI to develop positioning, define target audiences, and create go-to-market strategies. The output reads well. It's structured. It sounds smart.
It's also generic. AI doesn't know your specific market dynamics, your team's unique capabilities, your founder's personal obsession with a problem, or the specific insight that makes your approach different. It knows patterns from thousands of companies. It gives you the average strategy.
Average strategies produce average results.
The Differentiation Paradox
Here's the paradox: the more companies use AI for brand-building, the more valuable human creativity becomes. When everyone has access to the same content-generation tools, the brands that stand out will be the ones with genuine human perspective, earned experience, and distinctive voice.
AI is creating a massive opportunity for brands willing to be authentically human. The bar for "distinctive" is dropping because the average is getting more crowded. A brand with real personality — messy, opinionated, specific — will cut through the AI fog like a searchlight.
The Framework for AI-Augmented Branding
Use AI for Scale, Humans for Soul
Let AI handle the volume. Let humans handle the voice. Every piece of customer-facing content should be touched by a human who understands your brand deeply enough to add the specificity, humor, and edge that AI can't replicate.
Develop a Stronger Brand Voice, Not a Weaker One
If AI is pushing everything toward sameness, your response should be to become more distinctive, not less. Double down on the quirks, opinions, and perspectives that make your brand yours. The things that feel "too much" are exactly the things that will differentiate you.
Audit Regularly
Every quarter, read your last 50 pieces of content. Do they sound like you? Or do they sound like everyone else? If you can swap your brand name for a competitor's and nothing feels wrong, you have an AI problem.
The Takeaway
AI is a powerful tool. Like all powerful tools, it's dangerous in the wrong hands and for the wrong tasks. Using AI to produce more content faster is a strategy for volume. It's not a strategy for brand.
The brands that win the next decade won't be the ones that automated the most. They'll be the ones that stayed interesting.
Don't let the robots make you boring.