AI has killed my creativity (and I won’t use it any longer)

So, I've ditched this. This thing. This is a teleprompter, if you don't know what it is, and this has been a crutch of mine for the last year of making YouTube content. And I think using this little thing was probably the worst decision I made when it came to making YouTube videos, and it has made me completely creatively uninspired to continue to want to make YouTube videos. I suppose before we should go any further, I should give you a little bit of background.

I've been making videos for a hell of a long time before I started making videos on YouTube. I used to have a podcast. I live-streamed those videos on YouTube. In fact, I even interviewed Chris Williamson on my podcast that I was doing at the time. Before I started making YouTube videos, around probably a year and a half ago when I started promoting my business, I was on LinkedIn making funny sketch videos on there, which I had far more success at than doing these pieces to camera talking type videos that I've had on YouTube.

So, I made the big play about a year ago. I say big play, to decide to basically go all in on YouTube and make content. My rough idea was to make one video every week. It was going to be informational. It was going to be um useful, and every video would be designed to build goodwill, a thing that James Smith talks about about everything you should make should build goodwill.

And I think I did a pretty good job of that. But, I went wrong with the method of making those videos and the topics. And that's what I want to talk about now. So, when I made those videos, I decided that every single YouTube video should be so packed full of {quote} and {unquote} value and information and useful [ __ ] that no one should be able to turn it off. So, I went down the the play with YouTube of 12-minute-long videos, ish, packed full of information, and every single word should have meaning.

And to be able to do that, I meant I had to rely on one of these things. That was the first mistake I made. So, the second problem I made with that was I had to write scripts. And that meant that every time I wanted to do a YouTube video like this one, I had to sit down and write a script for a really long time. So, I was making the scripts, but writing the scripts became such a laborious, boring [ __ ] process that then I started handing more and more of the script writing off to ChatGPT and Claude and other services like that.

Yeah, you can probably see where this story is going now, right? And I wasn't happy with the results of what was coming out of them. So, I went deeper into Claude because I run a web agency, I run a design agency, I'm kind of clued up on this kind of stuff. We use it for clients. I thought I'd build a system.

I'd systematize, that's what everyone does, right? I'd systematize the YouTube creation process, the script writing process, and I'd write a system that made scripts that made me not sound like AI, even though AI was writing the scripts. That was mistake two or three, I don't know what we're up to now. And I used that for about a year, maybe, and the majority of the last videos, if you look back at the my channel, if you look at all the videos I've made fairly recently over the last year, they've all used that system to varying degrees. I'd watch another YouTube video by someone who was talking about how to make YouTube videos, and then I'd implement what they said into my script writing process.

And eventually I got down to a point where I could write pretty good scripts, AI could write pretty good scripts, but I didn't need to write them. Tick. That's the boring bit of the YouTube process off. So, then I would sit with this and stare at this and read a script and record a video and then done. I That's what YouTube is, right?

So, I spent the last year doing that, and I repeatedly said to the guy that helps me work on strategy for YouTube and video in general, that's Jack. I'm going to call him out in this video. That's Jack from the Content Club. I mean, I'm I'm saying an idea that's not even for my service. It's for the Content Club.

So, you know it must be good if I'm calling it out in a video like this and it's not even an ad. Anyway, ad over again. So, I was using AI to write scripts and I felt like I had a pretty good process down that didn't really take me very long to write scripts and it didn't take me very long to record and then I edited it and put it out on YouTube. Now, the problem with all of that that I've just been talking about there is that is exactly how 99% of YouTubers right now. If you watch any old YouTube video out there, everybody is using AI to write their YouTube scripts and it means that even though there's a human here talking to the camera, the words that are coming out of their mouth are not human because they're too polished, they're too neat, it's full of here's the kick here and it's not this, it's that.

And the cadence to where people speak, if you go back and watch my videos, you'll notice I talk much faster. It's weird. Anyway, go back and watch them. The cadence is the same in every video and what has developed over the last couple of years, especially as AI has become more and more popular, what has developed is a YouTube style and the YouTube style doesn't come from people copying a YouTube style. What it's come from is the way that AI writes scripts and everybody has copied that style and now everybody uses AI to write scripts to systematize their process and now the whole of YouTube is full of AI generated script slop that everybody sits on camera and reads.

And I was doing the same. And all it has meant when I sit and reflect, which I am doing in this video, all it's meant is that I have not been bothered to make a video because I stopped making the fun [ __ ] I stopped writing funny scripts. I stopped writing short form videos, which I did all right them. I never used AI for any of that [ __ ] I got more enjoyment from those than I ever have from talking to camera. And right now talking to you on camera in this video, I've got more enjoyment from this than I have over the last [ __ ] year and a half of writing, or rather AI writing scripts for me, and then me talking into a camera.

The The last video that I recorded written from an AI script, I have not even been bothered to edit, and I have procrastinated on that script for about 2 weeks now from editing the video, and I'll never edit it. Because I'm putting this statement out now, and I can't possibly put it out because of what I've said in this video. And all of that has come from AI. And I think we all need to reflect on that a little bit further than we probably have done since then, because we've all become, and me included, I've become obsessed with systematizing processes, and systematizing script writing, and systematizing the boring [ __ ] But in the process, somewhere along that, something gets lost, and it's the intangible bit that gets lost, isn't it? And the bit that's intangible is the soul of the person talking to the camera.

And that's what YouTube always was, right? YouTube was always meant to be people turning a camera on themselves, talking into a camera, and sharing some opinion that they believed. It was never meant to be some highly polished TV show. At least in the initial world, it was all about vlogging, wasn't it? It was all about talking to a camera, sharing a thing that you knew, and then putting it out for other people to view.

And when you remove yourself one step from that process and put one of these in front of the camera, there's something that's lost in that process, and it's that connection to the other person who's on the other side of the camera watching the video. There isn't a connection there anymore, because you've prepared the words, you've written the script, and often AI has written the script already. You've written the script, you come on and record and read the script. That's it. You're not interacting with the camera, you're not interacting with the person watching the video.

All you care about in that moment is reading the script, recording, getting done. And that's the mistake I have made over the last year. And even though my YouTube has grown somewhat, you know, I'm still only a small fry on YouTube. I won't pretend to be anything else. And I've had people tell me that they enjoy those videos that AI have written the script for, I know deep in my bones that they aren't right.

They're just not right. I don't know how to say it any other way. They It's like that uncanny valley thing where when a piece of animation or a human is rendered too perfectly, a human eyes knows it's not a human. And it's the same with AI scripts, and it's the same with getting AI involved in any of the creative process, which I've been so strict against for everything else in my job. But I let it write my words that I was going to say on camera, that I then recorded and put online, and then put my name to them.

Weird, isn't it? I don't know why I did that. And I'm not going to do it anymore. I've recorded this because I felt so strongly about this. And this isn't even about bringing leads into my business, which the whole point of the video stuff was in the first place, because my bet is this.

I think over the next couple of years the whole of YouTube is going to completely reject anybody who's using AI in any part of their process. Because humans can tell. Humans can tell when AI is being used. And if you go back and watch the last 12 videos that I've produced, you will be able to tell that I've produced AI in a lot of those videos to write the words that I then say to camera that then record and then put online. And I think people are rejecting it a faster rate than we realize because if I can notice it, you notice it, everybody else notices it.

And the only thing right now is we put up with it because everybody's doing it. And I don't want to be that person. Not only do I not want to be that person, I don't enjoy making that kind of content and I don't enjoy making that kind of art. Let's call this art cuz this is art at the end of the day and that's the way I see anything that I produce. I don't enjoy the art that isn't me.

And the only way it's me is if I say the [snorts] words and write a few things down on a piece of paper and then say things to the camera and then it edit it from there. And I'm vetoing it for anything else to do with video because I've learned my lesson the hard way that I have driven myself down a route that I don't want to go. I've seen the eventual solution of it. To be honest, I've seen it early enough for it not to have much of an impact and I'm completely changing what I'm producing on this YouTube channel. But I'm going back to the thing that I did before, which is sketches and funny stuff because that stuff brought more leads into the business than me just talking to camera and explaining my knowledge in wrote words to a lens.

Because anybody can do that now. The way that you say things matters more than the things that you say, which has been forever true, but I think right now we're at an inflection point where that's more true than it ever has been. Primarily because of AI, but not just because of AI, but primarily because of AI. I said AI weirdly then, didn't I? AI.

I want to promote my business and bring leads into it. The way that I do that traditionally is to show you my opinions, show you my knowledge so you can go, "Ah, Craig knows exactly what he's talking about. I'll purchase from him." But that format has just died a death because of AI and because everyone's got the same knowledge now. The only thing left is to show your personality, show your humor ultimately, and that's what I'm going to do because that's what I'm better at. I'm better in that than using this [ __ ] to read other people's words that I never even wrote.

But I think the lesson to take away from it and got I can't help myself going back to the traditional way that YouTube should be. Don't look at the rest of YouTube to figure out how you want to do it. That's the thing that I've learned over the last year doing YouTube. Doing YouTube exactly the same way as everybody else does YouTube and making videos exactly the same way leads you down a path that probably isn't the path that's right for you because it isn't you. I'm not a person really that enjoys being serious on camera and talking about my job in a serious way because the web industry, the creative industry, the marketing world is fundamentally ridiculous.

So, me presenting it in any other way wouldn't be true. And that's the way I'm going to present it from now on. And I am going for definite now cuz I'm bored of my own voice and you're probably bored of it, too. Go away.