A few weeks ago, I got an email from an AI assistant trying to schedule a call with me. At first glance, it looked like normal outreach—professional tone and formatted well. After I replied, I realized the whole thing was automated. A bot was introducing itself, asking to book a call, pitching services, and trying to get time on my calendar, all without a single human having typed a word of it. I wasn’t surprised. Because that’s exactly where we are right now.
AI is Everywhere
The AI flyers, the copy-paste captions, and the outreach messages are everywhere. You’ve seen the AI slop on social media. And I bet you’ve received an email that used your name in the first sentence yet sounded like it was written for one of five hundred other people. People don’t think we can tell, but trust me when I say this: we can tell. The flyers and graphics are overly done, and the emails are so grammatically perfect yet completely hollow at the same time.
The push for AI is real. It’s growing fast, and it’s not slowing down. Billions are being poured into AI infrastructure and data centers, with more investment being announced every few months. Most of the conversation around that is about efficiency, scale, and what it means for business. Almost none of it is about the people on the receiving end.
For the Record, I Use AI Too
I want to be clear: I am not anti-AI. I build AI agents for clients and use AI in my work every single day. The way I run my business would look completely different without it.
But here’s something I see others not doing: use their own critical thinking skills and human connection first. Before they use AI. I use AI as my second brain, but it never has the final say. Everything that comes out of it goes through me first. The output always has my judgment and my voice. Before I put out any piece of content, I do a review to determine if it actually sounds like something I’d say to a real person. Nothing gets copy-pasted and sent with a once-over. And some major editing.
That’s not because I distrust the technology. It’s because I still have to be the human in the room. No tool can do that part for me.
The Distinction That’s Getting Lost
Using AI to free up time so you can be more present with people? Smart. That’s what it’s for.
Using AI to replace the presence you’d otherwise have with people? That’s a different thing entirely—and I think a lot of people are blurring that line right now without fully realizing it.
When you send an AI-generated outreach message, you’re not saving time you would have spent building a relationship. You’re skipping the relationship-building step and hoping the recipient doesn’t notice. They almost always notice.
When your captions are clearly generated and copy-pasted, you’re not just losing engagement. You’re slowly eroding trust with an audience that followed you because of how you sound.
And when a bot shows up in someone’s inbox trying to “get to know them” on behalf of a human who presumably does care about connection, there’s a gap between the message being sent and the message being received. That gap is where trust quietly walks out the door.
What Nobody’s Slowing Down to Ask
There’s one question I don’t see many people asking: What is this doing to how we connect as humans? The data centers are being built, and the tools are being deployed, but where is the human connection in all this? The money is moving at a pace that doesn’t leave a lot of room for this question.
And it’s not a technology question. It’s a human one.
What happens to a community when every outreach is automated? When every caption is generated and when the “personal touch” is increasingly something a tool produces, what’s happening to how people feel?
We’re moving fast enough that the answers aren’t obvious yet. But that doesn’t mean the effects aren’t already showing up. You’ve probably already felt it—the message that seemed real until it didn’t, the connection that never quite landed, and the follow-up that felt like it was sent to a list of one thousand and you happened to be on it.
Here’s Your Human Connection Challenge
Before you use AI to interact with someone, stop and ask yourself two things. Use it to build something, brainstorm, or save time on admin, but when you reach out, respond to, or connect with another person, ask yourself these questions:
Does this actually sound like me? If you wouldn’t say it out loud in a conversation, it probably shouldn’t go out with your name on it.
Am I using this to show up better, or to avoid showing up? There’s a version of AI that makes you more available, more consistent, more organized, so you have more capacity to connect. And there’s a version that’s a shortcut around the parts of connection that are actually your job.
You get to use it. I use it. Just don’t outsource the human part. Because that’s still yours, and honestly, it’s the part people actually come back for.
How are you using AI in your life or business right now? I’d love a real conversation, so drop a comment.
