If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?

We can do just about anything with AI right now. The question is whether we should.

As a brand, you're fundamentally trying to get people to trust you and like you at at every touchpoint.

It's fairly easy to get people to like you, but trust takes a long time to build. Think about any close relationship in your life. It takes a whole lot longer to earn trust than it does to lose it. Customer relationships are no different.

People trust AI less

Multiple studies show the same thing. When people think something came from AI, they like it less and trust it less. The quality might not be any different, but just knowing it didn't come from a human changes how they receive it.

So as a hypothetical, say you can produce a video internally with AI for $5,000. The alternative is paying a big name $100,000. The quality is identical. The only risk is someone finds out the cheaper one was made with AI. Which do you choose? And maybe more importantly, why?

More brands are coming for you

Barriers to entry are dropping fast. AI makes product development cheaper, content cheaper, and launching cheaper. Every category is about to get even more crowded than it already is.

When customers have more options, I'd argue that trust is what keeps them with you. Very few people switch brands because a product is marginally better.

When should you use AI?

I think you should use AI for systems, operations, data… all the internal stuff your customer never sees.

Where I'd consider drawing the line is when it becomes public facing. People want to know there's a real person on the other end.

When every competitor is using AI in their customer touchpoints, the brand that stays human will be the one people talk about.

Word of mouth is still the strongest lever for growing any business.

Don't stumble into an outcome

A lot of founders right now are worried about falling behind on AI. Nobody wants to be the last one to figure this out.

I'd posit that the real risk is doing things just to keep up. Without a why, it's easy to end up eroding trust you spent years building just because everyone else was doing it.

Like your mom used to say… If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?