Don’t Let the Bots Write Your Legacy

How to protect your voice, scale your story, and show up human in the age of content outsourcing

Your voice matters. Your story matters. Your words matter.

These have been my career anthems dating back long before ChatGPT showed up on the digital landscape with its bag of tricks and silicon swagger.

Relatively speaking, we’re about five minutes into democratized AI (where us ordinary peasants get access to the tech). Yet Generative AI has already created a kind of content autonomy crossroads. Each of us now gets to decide how much we want to prioritize our own voice and perspective in everything we say, write, and share - and how much we’re willing to delegate to the bot.

The skeptical crowd says, “No AI.” The average content creator says, “Some AI.” And then there are the maximalist early adopters yelling, “Why write anything yourself when AI can do it for you??”

Feel free to draw your own handy pie chart of content origination: what percentage is you, and what percentage is AI-generated? Extra credit if it’s color-coded.

Generative AI’s biggest fans seem to be using LLMs as their personal copywriters (spoiler: this is not the same thing as hiring an actual professional writer). They lean on their AI buddies for idea development, writing, editing, posting, and sometimes commenting, too.

And the ones who choose not to curate or edit their AI outputs are more and more frequently accused of producing “AI slop.” Writing which, on the surface is slick and quite grammarly, but on closer inspection is devoid of a human point of view. Perspective is traded for an “if-then” writing cadence worthy of an algorithm posing as a human. Everything is inexplicably “dressed as…” or “in a costume” as if a Hollywood costume designer had a hand in programming ChatGPT. And, of course, the bedeviled em dash (as literary greats roll in their graves).

But beyond the AI gotcha game (which feels like a swarm of gnats hovering over our feeds, ready to pounce) - why does any of this matter?

Why does it matter how much of our voice we hand over to AI?

To answer that, we have to zoom out a bit.

Ask yourself this: Why do you think the most visible face of “AI,” as most people know it, was introduced through LLMs?

Well, imagine you were trying to train an alien species to be a reliable, intelligent, emotionally-attuned extension of humanity. Where would you start?

You’d start by talking to as many humans as possible and getting as close to their natural voice and patterns as you could.

Which brings us here: a pretty compelling case that LLMs exist, at least in part, to help build the ultimate collaborative dataset - a training library for AGI. One conversation, one prompt, one voice at a time.

We debate endlessly about the training data used to create LLMs. But what we don’t talk about enough is the ongoing training dataset we’re actively contributing to - every single day - with our inputs. The one being shaped in real time.

So here are my questions:

Where is your voice in this collaborative creation process?

What are you contributing to the collective dataset that may someday help shape AGI (or whatever we end up calling it)? What gets remembered, replicated, or completely overwritten if you stay silent?

Denying the impact of this moment is no longer an option. Your voice matters, now more than ever. Because the alternative is either:

• Waiting for AI to become 100% trustworthy and risk-free (ell me how many other things in your day check that box),
  or

• Abdicating your voice entirely by letting unedited, unreviewed AI outputs become your default.

Neither puts you in the driver’s seat. Neither ensures your voice is helping shape what comes next. And let’s be clear: LLMs are not the future of AI. They’re just one stepping stone.

But right now? They’re giving all of us a writer’s seat at the AI table.

As a professional writer of 24 years, I’m here to tell you, this is an insanely cool opportunity. One I don’t plan to sit out.

And I don’t want you to sit it out either.

I want to inspire and amplify as many human voices as I can at this table (a table, by the way, that is being built with or without our consent).

That’s why I made it my business to help people protect their voices while scaling their stories. That’s ABBI.

ABBIs (Author Brand Bank Intelligence) are AI-powered digital twins I train just as I’ve coached authors for decades, in the sacred art of writing. But let’s be clear: I’m not coaching ABBI to replace authors. I’m training her to be an accurate, authentic, legacy-worthy extension of each content-creating client.

Think of it this way: if you’re an author (or enterprise) who creates a high volume of content, you are already building your side of the universal dataset. I just make sure it actually sounds like you. Strategically. Creatively. Consistently.

But it starts with this: Do you know what makes your voice yours?

I’ve written before about using a personal SWOT analysis to uncover this. To understand your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats as a creator in the age of AI.

Try applying it to your writing voice:

• What are your uniquely human strengths?

• What part of your voice are you tempted to hand off?

• What doors could open if you collaborated with AI instead of competing with it?

• And what blind spots could leave your message vulnerable to distortion, misattribution, or just being forgotten entirely?

These are the questions I ask my memoir clients. And I’m asking them here, too:
How can your stories help others?
How can your voice represent humanity, not just your brand?

Because I believe that’s the key to this whole human-AI collaboration working. Not just technically. Ethically. Emotionally. Existentially.

The strength of the human-AI collaboration is only as strong as the tapestry of voices we allow into the process.

So here’s my plea:

Don’t sit this one out.
Don’t wait for the bots to get better.
Don’t silence yourself out of perfectionism, doubt, or convenience.

Instead:

Show up. Speak clearly. Write bravely. Share your weird.

AI can do a lot. But only you can teach it how to sound like you.