Are You AI-ing Yourself Out of Your Own Show?

Have you ever heard a parent or had a parent

say, "Man, you would forget your head if it wasn't connected to

your body" Well, buckle up, Buttercup.

Welcome to your podcast consultant: small

lessons with big value. With more than a decade of experience

and millions of downloads. This Hall of Fame podcaster is a

featured speaker, author, and mentor to 1000s. Now he wants to

work with you. He's your podcast consultant, Dave Jackson.

So I'm on Reddit, and somebody says, "Does anybody

know of a tool that I can use to write my script, and I didn't

mean to be snarky, honest. Well, maybe a little. I said yes, I

do. Your brain, and what I'm seeing more and more is that

people are AIing. We're going to use that as a verb themselves

out of their podcast. Let me give you an example. People are

going to YouTube, finding a YouTube video that worked for

somebody else, and then instead of watching the video and going,

"Now, how can I do this slightly different and still be me? They

go to YouTube, they grab the transcript from the video and

then throw it into their favorite AI tool and say, "Write

this in my voice, and it kind of does. And the sad thing is, this

kind of works at least on YouTube. And then they will say,

"Make something very similar to this thumbnail because we all

know it's about the thumbnail on YouTube, and their little AI

tool will. Now the problem with that is this person doesn't

really maybe understand what they're saying. Let me give you

an example. When I was in my 20s, my first degree before I

got into teaching was in electronic engineering, and I'm

here to tell you, I would not have an associate's degree in

electronic engineering if it wasn't for my lab partner Gary,

because Gary was brilliant. And while I really got all the math,

the electronics part sometimes kind of threw me for a loop. And

so Gary was my lab partner. He would do all the hard work. I

would look at his stuff. I would copy it, and I got the degree.

Now, in the end, I wasn't very good with electronics, and I

ended up going into teaching. Well, if you let AI be your

thoughts, and that's the thing that drives me nuts. The person

that does this, that copies somebody else's words, put it

into AI, and then they read it with the warmth of a bored

McDonald's drive-through worker, and then wonder why it doesn't

work. Because what do they want to do? They want to be a thought

leader with somebody else's thoughts. Think about how insane

that sounds. And if they actually got hired or asked to

speak, what are you going to do? Well, they're going to have to

go have AI write the speech. Let me ask you this question, and I

get it. AI helps me get so much more done. I'm so much faster.

Great, and I've talked about this in the past. You got one

bowl of potatoes, mashed potatoes on the left, and

another one on the right. The one on the left came out of a

box. The one on the right came from Grandma, who hand smashed

the potatoes, threw a gallon of butter in there, and a bunch of

salt. Which one are you going back for seconds and thirds? And

you will eat till the bowl is empty, even though it feels like

there's a rock in your stomach. It's not the boxed potatoes

because I grew up on box potatoes and they were awful,

but you could make them. They're super easy and it's super fast

to make boxed potatoes. But nobody wants them, and so what

I'm seeing, and this is what I'm worried about, is people are

again. I'm going to use this as a verb, AIing themselves out of

their own show, and I'm like, wait, what are you doing? And

you're losing that unique perspective. We've said it

before. You'll hear podcasters say this. They come for the

content, whatever your show is about, but they stay for the

host. I'll give you an example. My very first podcast was for

musicians. It was called the Marketing Musician. Four months

later, I started the School of Podcasting, and what I always

found very strange was I would have somebody talk about my

musician show from the School of Podcasting, and I'd be like,

"Oh, I didn't know you were a musician. What instrument do you

play? And they go, I don't. I just think you're funny. They

come for the content. They stay for the host. And if you have

AI'd the host out of the show, you are left with what? Just AI.

And if I don't need you, then I don't need your show.

I can just go to AI and ask a question. Think about that. So

here's what I do: I don't let AI write the script, get the

content. I love it for research, but my next episode of the

School of Podcasting is my reflections on the Empowered

Podcasting Conference, and I talked into a microphone. It was

just a brain dump, just like I was brainstorming. And I took

that recording. I had it transcribed. I put it into, in

my case, Otter to transcribe it. And I said, "Hey, pick out the

main topics because I I knew the main topics I just said them I

said pick out the main topics and organize them in a fashion

that might flow a little better because I remember my last point

I was like oh I should have said this earlier and it did that and

I said give me a list of bullet points again I don't want it to

write the content I want that to come out of my head and I did,

and it was better than the original brain dump. I use AI to

write pictures. Why? Because if I have to make the picture, it's

going to be stick figure theater. So let it do the things

that you're not good at, but make sure to keep you in your

podcast. And if you're just starting one, you're like Dave.

I don't even know where to start with this stuff. You know where

to find me. schoolofpodcasting.com. Use the

coupon code Listener for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly

subscription, and then you can work directly with me as well as

the amazing community over there. We've got step by step

tutorials to walk you through everything. I'm Dave Jackson.

I've been doing this for over 20 years, and I love helping

podcasters. I really do, and I can't wait to see what you and I

are going to do together because I want to be your podcast

consultant.