Is AI Killing Off Our Ability to be Original, Fresh, and Human?
If you’re concerned we’re using AI at the expense of our brains, I’m here to validate your feelings.
Humans have always gravitated toward the path of least resistance – easier, faster, cheaper. It’s rooted in our biology and psychology, and is a trait that perfectly explains the lure of AI.
A 2026 Stanford Daily article cautions about all the seemingly unremarkable but collectively troubling ways we hand over basic decision-making to AI every day through predictive text and assisted writing, suggesting that the “AI effect” could be narrowing our language and creative horizons.
A Cornell University study on whether LLMs restrict content diversity found that AI-assisted writing does risk an “algorithmic monoculture” in which AI can dilute our unique voice by prompting us with predictable, average, and widely used filler words.
In this post, we explore the notion of AI contamination of our authentic selves and explain how brands can retain their originality and human-ness, even while using AI.
A Comparison of ChatGPT to the 1945 Trinity Explosion
In 2025, technology experts Rajiv Pant and John Graham-Cumming drew a comparison between the impact of large language models (LLMs) on content and the contamination of steel following the 1945 Trinity nuclear test.
The Trinity test marked the first time nuclear radiation was released on the planet, and as a result, all steel produced after the explosion contains trace amounts of radioactive isotopes. This radioactive presence is a no-go for highly sensitive projects like radiation detection devices and medical diagnostics equipment, so we have to source “low-background steel” – pre-1945 steel – typically salvaged from shipwrecks or old rail lines.
So, what’s the connection to LLMs like ChatGPT?
Pant and Graham-Cunning made the profound point that, like contaminated steel, we can no longer guarantee or prove that anything published, written, or said after ChatGPT was introduced to the public in 2022 is not impacted by AI.
Comedian, actor, and author Stephen Colbert has termed this comparison between low-background steel and LLMs “the Trinity moment for knowledge”.
Hearing Colbert discuss this premise captured my full attention as a content marketer. Afterall, if AI is influencing everything we do and say today, how can we preserve novelty and authenticity – and prevent boxing ourselves into an echo chamber of regurgitated information branded as “new”?
If this sounds alarmist, it’s meant to. I admittedly spend a large portion of my time ruminating over the impact of large language models on writing, marketing, and society at large.
In a recent Search Engine Journal article, Reza Moaiandan expounded on the misperceptions companies have about AI’s qualifications as a content generator:
“If you can use AI to generate your content with minimal human input, so can everyone else. Very soon, everyone is generating similar content on similar topics to target the same audiences, with recycled information and reheated ‘insights’ drawn from the same online sources.”
That statement encapsulates my deep concern for whether we’re willingly putting authenticity and novelty (and frankly, our own brainpower) on the chopping block.
Content Authority is Earned, Not Given
When Colbert spoke about the Trinity moment for knowledge, he joked that all libraries should be collected and stored somewhere safe to preserve the authentic pre-AI knowledge they shelter (which he light-heartedly referred to as “low-background AI”).
He got laughs, but the message is a serious one. Using AI alone, you’ll never publish anything better than what’s already out there. And, importantly, you’ll never earn content authority.
If your content is generated from information that’s readily available online and you add nothing new or valuable to it, how – and why – would it capture a better ranking?
It won’t.
The secret sauce to search performance, clicks, and conversions is something no AI is capable of – genuine value, lived experience, original thought, topical expertise, authenticity and novelty.
After all, AI overviews excel at summarizing basic information; i.e., “what is SEO”. Individuals will see the generated AI answer and move on – zero-click. If your own content is nothing more than a summary, why would anyone need to see more?
The implications of zero-click are glaring, and force us to try and reconcile the need to compete in today’s AI search environment with maintaining our authenticity.
Zero-Click Results Are Reducing Web Traffic by 25%
Research conducted by consulting firm Bain & Company found that 80% of consumers use zero-click AI results 40% of the time, reducing organic web traffic by 15-25%.
This research demonstrates that AI is influencing consumer behavior in real, unignorable ways. And if you’re like me, you’re also seeing the slippery slope of people taking instantly-generated answers at face value and moving on.
In response, and rightly so, marketers are scrambling to rethink their content strategies to shift focus to generative engine optimization as LLM popularity continues to surge.
However, I see something of a grey area in trying to “play nice” with the AI algorithm; how much of our own creativity and individuality are we sacrificing to claw back share of voice in the name of views and traffic?
I suppose the bright side is that LLMs reward content built on information AI doesn’t already have in its coffers, and that will be compelling to users looking for more meat on the bone. This type of content includes:
- Firsthand accounts
- Original research and unique stats
- Interviews and commentary from industry thought leaders
- Case studies and use cases unique to your brand
- In-depth analysis of topics or events
Forbes has recognized a shift from traditional content marketing to “performance marketing”, explaining that the old keywords/backlinks/technical site health-based SEO playbook has been replaced with a playbook built on content relevance, authority, and quality. The more relevant, authoritative, or authentic AI deems your content to be, the more it gets cited and, ideally, clicked.
Can We Really Build an Authentic Algorithmic Relationship?
The equation we’re working with is: more impressions = more trust = better relationship with the AI algorithm. If we’re going to play nice with AI, we need to do it well. Whatever content you’re producing, make it the most qualified answer out there so AI will cite it and your audience will have a reason to click.
Optimizing for clicks has shifted to optimizing for influence.
The key takeaway here is that producing AI-friendly content isn’t just about adding AI-friendly “stuff”. The same emphasis on thought leadership and topic authority that has always driven content strategies is, arguably, now more important than ever in rescuing your content out from underneath a sea of zero-click overviews and summaries.
Some companies try to game the system with a tactic called scaled content abuse – using AI tools to generate low-quality “AI slop” at scale for the purpose of manipulating search performance.
To help manage some of the AI-generated “noise”, Google has taken action with new content ranking systems. Implemented in 2024 and updated in 2025, these systems are intended to weed out “unhelpful, unoriginal content”. Crucially, Google noted the effort is to remove content that feels like it was “created for search engines instead of people”.
It has become almost painfully obvious even to a casual observer when a piece of content is written for a search engine. The clear lack of authenticity results in a combination of words that sound robotic and without real purpose – nothing your brand should ever want to hang its hat on.
Furthermore, AI models are increasingly becoming smart enough to weed out this content on their own, reinforcing the need for high-quality, original content that reflects the human experience and demonstrates thought leadership.
In a perfect world, companies would understand that using AI to generate hundreds of unoriginal articles is not good for business, provides no brand equity or real value, and likely is taking more money and resources to produce – at least if humans are at all involved in helping to “zhuzh it up”.
Leveraging AI for Content Marketing Requires the Right Strategy
There are varying opinions about whether AI can still be considered just a tool. In many ways, it offers up a new form of intelligence, and the line between “creator” and “creative tool” has blurred.
For professionals, especially writers, how and when we use AI is a choice that comes with responsibility.
We may choose to use AI in a number of ways that make our content writing jobs a little easier:
- Conducting research
- Optimizing copy for search
- Brainstorming topics or ideas
- Performing administrative duties, such as creating quick summaries, offering best practices, or proofreading
- Providing suggestions to improve the readability of our work
In these instances, AI is essentially acting as a stand-in for a group of colleagues who would offer similar assistance. You’re doing the work and leveraging AI to enhance or support it.
However, it’s also easy to use AI to simply do the work for you, which is where things get murky.
The widespread opinion that AI is a necessity to progress is both correct and flawed. While a logistics professional might find AI helpful for streamlining a complex spreadsheet, saving herself a headache and her company money, there are also college students using AI to write their essays for them, and college professors using AI to read and grade those essays.
Without the right strategy and guideposts in place, there is a cost to using AI (not to mention its enormous strain on the environment). As humans, we have to be responsible for ensuring AI doesn’t shift from being a creative tool to being the creator.
Otherwise, we may begin to see authenticity and novelty fade into the background (in a chillingly ironic inverse of the radiation analogy), and be replaced by language that’s been used somewhere else before, and somewhere else before that.
And suddenly, “large language” becomes quite insular.
A Mandate to Preserve Brand Authenticity and Novelty
Do I sometimes lie awake at night contemplating a world that has replaced original writing with an LLM? I might.
But then I remember that we do all inherently want to create. It is in our DNA – it is our mandate as humans, dating back to the very beginning of life on earth. And it is exactly what got us here today, contemplating the consequences of our own creation.
In a 2025 article for Medium, Alice in Science Land expounds on an already popular comparison between Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and AI. Shelley’s 200-year-old manuscript poses a clear warning about the dangers of unchecked scientific ambition through the lens of a creature created with no regard for the consequences. Eventually, Frankenstein’s monster gains consciousness, self-awareness, and autonomy, a stark parallel to the way AI is growing more “intelligent” the more we give to it.
It’s important to remember that ChatGPT is still new – it’s a shiny tool offering an easier, faster, cheaper way to do things, but it is capable of being as powerful as we allow it to be.
I am optimistic, however, that if we choose to use it for an “easy way out” or without proper consideration, it won’t take long for companies, writers, and content teams to see exactly what turning fully over to the temptation of “easy, fast, cheap” really looks like.
In a piece for Psychology Today, writer and philosopher Liz Stillwaggon Swan, PhD, perfectly captures the thing ChatGPT can never, and will never, do that remains so intrinsic to our nature as human beings and writers:
“Writing is a process of making the subconscious conscious—of bringing hazy, half-baked assumptions, biases, intuitions, ideas, anxieties, and hopes to the surface. Often, we don’t know what we believe until we start writing. We put our feelings and experiences into words and stories, even arguments, and through that arduous process, we begin to feel utterly human.”
AI is only as smart as we are, and while it’s always learning, are we?
Let’s make sure that answer remains a resounding “yes”.
Want help understanding how to weave AI into your marketing strategy without losing the authenticity that makes your brand unique? Get in touch with the Fishnet team today to map out your next steps.
