Me, Myself, & AI

Yes, I'm a member of AI Anonymous. I've embraced AI tools to enhance my productivity and streamline my workflow. From crafting outlines for blog articles to managing emails and improving my writing, AI has become an integral part of my daily routine.

Tools like Grammarly , Superhuman , and Notion have become indispensable in my tech stack. Each offers unique AI features that help me work more efficiently. While I'm enthusiastic about AI's benefits, I'm also mindful of its limitations and potential drawbacks, especially in content generation.

The productivity tools with AI features I use today include:

• Grammarly - to help me fix typos and improve the overall grammar in any text editing tool I use, even on mobile.
• Superhuman - to summarize email threads and identify any unanswered questions.
• Krisp - to generate summaries and task lists of meetings I have participated in. Fun fact: I purchased it as a Lifetime Deal on AppSumo, but after 8 years, I switched to a paid version to export my meeting data to Notion.
• Readwise - to collect highlights from books, articles, and PDFs that I have read. I can also import my Kindle highlights into it.
• Snipd - to help me highlight interesting parts of podcasts and YouTube videos and turn them into short AI-generated summaries.
• Notion - is used as a database of my highlights from the tools mentioned above, a central place to store my project and other work-related notes.
• ChatGPT and Perplexity - although they differ in features and the LLMs powering their engines, these tools help me brainstorm ideas.

How do I integrate AI into my workflow?

The tools I use depend on the task at hand. Although I can access these AI tools, I do not use them daily. The two exceptions being Superhuman and Grammarly.

Superhuman has been my go-to email application for almost 2 years and is, without disappointment, of extreme value in remaining productive in communications. The embedded AI features help me generate summaries of email threads, identify unanswered questions in those threads, and generate replies (that mention said questions). Their marketing does not lie, Superhuman does save me a lot of time.

With Grammarly, I can vastly improve the quality and legibility of my self-written texts in emails, documents, and even LinkedIn posts. It offers suggestions for improving grammar, synonyms, and more. I can even instruct Grammarly to set the tone of the reply, such as casual, business, mix, or custom.

Being a curious person, I am interested in topics ranging from global to work-related news. In the past, I used Feedly often to help me discover websites of interest. However, I think that I have found all that I could.

Today, the apps Readwise and Snipd allow me to keep up with the great content you create and share online: podcasts, blog articles, YouTube videos, research PDFs, pretty much everything. These apps allow me to create highlights and snippets of interest. Additionally, by integrating my Kindle with Readwise, I can also sync the highlights from the books I have been reading.

So, what's next? The cherry on top for me is bringing all this data, highlights, snippets, and brainstorming ideas together in Notion. Again, I call on AI to help me find, cross-reference, and summarize insights from a specific source or all of my sources. I have adopted this approach for a while now, and it has already proven a worthy addition to my tech stack.

Talking about marketing, as some of you might have noticed, I have been using Canva to create media for my social media contributions and my website. AI features are available, but I have yet to investigate how best to integrate them with ChatGPT.

The downsides of AI for Martech content

Is working with AI all fun and games? No. Believe me, I have had my headaches and ‘WTF’ moments. I am definitely not the only one. However, after experimenting with various solutions, I am willing to go on a limb and say that I am starting to recognize AI-generated content more easily.

What baffles me the most is the blatant approach some major corporations, even CDP vendors, take to generating AI-fueled content. This is actually what motivated me to write this article.

I will not call them out by name, but ‘in this ever-expanding landscape and complex to navigate world of Martech content’ (AI-pun intended), it does not take a rocket scientist to identify it. My reaction? I stopped reading some corporate blogs and unsubscribed from various newsletters.

Again, I have been there, I am guilty, too. I have taken the short route to content generation. However, I honestly believe that because of this detour from the road of authenticity, I can appreciate the effort needed to generate solid content. This is also a motivation for me to create video content. Currently, it is still challenging to create convincing AI-generated video content.

So, when it comes to ChatGPT and Perplexity , I have mixed feelings. The content they generate, especially on Martech and customer data platforms specifically, is incredibly bland. I tried generating blog articles with it, only to discover that much of the content was ripped from another well-respected blog. That crosses a line for me.

Final thoughts

As a one-man army performing sales, marketing, operations, and (self)teaching tasks, AI has been a welcome colleague. I have set boundaries regarding where to incorporate AI in my daily workflow and am happy with the results. Content is no longer my primary goal; saving time, improving my writing quality, and referencing previously read content is where AI delivers for me.

I hope companies will also start to see that generating AI content can harm their reputation. Making a little more effort to write authentic content will outweigh all the benefits AI boasts. I know companies often incorporate LLMs with their knowledge bases in ways that I have mentioned above. Those are beneficial; that is where AI can deliver on its promise of helping humans be more productive.