AI makes it easy to look good, and that’s bad

Bad, AI, bad.

I was chatting with a consultant the other day about possibly doing some business with his firm. I was intrigued by the possibilities and wanted to learn more about the company, so I went onto LinkedIn to investigate.

I was surprised by the makeup of people working for this company of less than 50. It seemed to be half men from Pakistan and half incredibly attractive young women. My b.s. alert went off. How is it, I wondered, that this small company employed so many attractive people? It’s not Abercrombie & Fitch, after all.

Upon further investigation, these young women all claimed to have degrees from run-of-the-mill schools: University of Illinois at Chicago, Ohio State, Trinity University, etc. No red flags there; most bots I see online claim to have studied at the Sorbonne or something like that.. But still.

I ran the photos through an AI detector site. Most of them were flagged as possibly AI generated. Not uncommon today, especially when people try to spruce up their headshots. Then I ran them through a Google Image search. Well, lo and behold, a fair chunk of them were stock photos or images of models.

And that made my choice for me. As much as I was considering doing business with this company, I don’t know who I’m working with. I don’t know if these people exist. Why would I part with my money, why would I risk my reputation doing business with stock photos?

That’s a great lesson for businesses looking to leverage AI. These new tools can be great – they can make things like writing social media copy or planning easier. They can do incredible things with photos and videos. Chatbots make customer service easier. I’m not 100% against AI tools.

But you know what? None of it is real.

Relying too much on AI means you’re dumbing down your work, even when you’re trying to get smarter. It means you’re tricking your audience and customers. And using stock photos? That means you think the audience is dumb.

At the very least, it means you don’t care enough that you’re pulling a fast one.

That might not be your intention. I’m willing to bet it’s not.

But in a time when we all risk being played by AI, when trust is at a low point, shouldn’t you operate with integrity at every step? I sure think so.

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