Does GPT Stand for Gaslit, Played and Taken for a Ride?
Thanks to the wonder of AI, it’s never been easier to sound impressive. It’s also never been more dangerous to be inauthentic…
There is something quietly dangerous happening in business right now, and it isn’t AI itself. It’s the way we’re using it.
It has never been easier to sound articulate, considered, collaborative or visionary. A few blunt thoughts typed into a prompt box can be transformed within seconds into something warm, polished and strategically compelling. A direct request can become an “informal exploratory conversation”. A hard-edged pitch can be reframed as a mutually beneficial alignment discussion. Even a slightly chaotic idea can come across as structured, intelligent and calm.
And that is where the trap lies.
Because while AI can refine how something sounds, it cannot refine who you are.
If you use it to express what you genuinely believe – to tighten your thinking, clarify your message or remove unnecessary friction – it is a powerful ally. But if you use it to manufacture a tone, a personality or a level of emotional intelligence that does not actually exist when you switch your camera on, you are setting yourself up for a fall.
Picture it: you’ve made the email introduction using your best super-friendly-yet-engaging prompt, and they’ve agreed to the meeting. The second the camera goes on, you drop into your usual direct and to-the-point delivery, throwing in a few “zingers” along the way – nothing you haven’t done a million times. Except, this time, they were expecting something else. They were expecting someone super-friendly-yet-engaging and something here just isn’t clicking. The warmth from the original message is missing. The collaborative language is replaced by interrogation. The measured tone becomes abrupt. The strategic positioning dissolves under basic questioning. Nobody is doing anything wrong, it’s just not what they were expecting. And there it stands, you are no longer building trust – you are trying to repair it.
The real cost here is not embarrassment. It is credibility.
Now don’t get me wrong, we LOVE a bit of AI here at FAT Towers! We regularly use it to do the heavy lifting elements of a website build that our clients can struggle with:
- no more writing pages and pages of copy for your site
- trawling through stock photo libraries for the perfect image? Not now!
- trying to guess Google’s favourite click-bait word of the week? No need.
The difference is, we recognise AI is the tool, not the talent. So everything we create using AI is then carefully checked by our human eye before it goes anywhere near your site. Because we know that, once it’s out there, it’s what your clients expect from you when they meet you, so it has to be aligned with everything you represent. We understand that a website is not a piece of creative writing – it is a promise about what it will feel like to work with that business.
Sidebar: I explore the importance of congruence between who you are as a business and how you present yourself online in Chapter 8 of my best-selling book Website Mastery for Business Owners who Don’t Speak Tech: Without brand values, who will value your brand?
The businesses that will thrive in this AI-enabled world are not the ones who sound the most polished. They are the ones whose words and behaviour match – those who embody authenticity. When expectation consistently meets reality, trust grows. When it doesn’t, it jars – and you’ve already lost the sale.
Use AI to refine your message, not to disguise your intent. Because once you are face-to-face – whether across a boardroom table or through a screen – there is nowhere to hide.
Sound like yourself. Then show up as that person.
Anything else is borrowed credibility, and borrowed credibility always demands repayment.
Have you read our best-selling book: Website Mastery for Business Owners who Don’t Speak Tech?
Download a free chapter or buy your copy from http://www.websitemasterybook.com