your presence cannot be automated

I'm typing these words by hand. I never thought "hand-typed" would become a feature like a "handmade" craft, but that's where we are. AI has flooded the spaces we used to go to read actual human thoughts.

Social media used to be social. That was the whole point. Now when I scroll often I feel the difference between a post someone actually wrote and one that was AI-generated.

Don't get me wrong, I use AI everyday. I've built a career in digital media and marketing. But at my core, I still feel like (to quote Erykah Badu) an analog girl in a digital world.

And I want to stay that way. I want to avoid rabbit holes and have relative peace of mind when I have to navigate these online spaces. For many people, participating in social media has become a critical part of doing business. Imagine if a business 40 years ago decided not to be listed in the Yellow Pages. I think a lot of us struggle to participate with both AI and social media in a way that doesn't negatively impact our mental health or get us way off task.

AI is one of the more significant shifts in how we work that I've seen in my career, and I'm genuinely excited about what it makes possible. So this isn't a post about why AI is bad or why you should use it less.

It's about something more specific: the difference between AI that enhances my creative thinking and AI that impersonates my presence.

When I dictate a rough stream of thought and use AI to help me organize it into something coherent, that's still my thinking. The ideas came from me. The voice is mine. What matters is that the dictation itself is an embodied act. I'm in my body when I speak. My nervous system is involved. The words are arriving from somewhere real, and the AI is helping me catch them and organize them, the way a good editor might help you see what you were actually trying to say.

When I sit down and write, that's embodied too. My body is processing thought and translating it through my hands onto the screen. When I stand in front of a photographer, I'm showing up in my body. One of my teachers, Kristine Weber of Subtle Yoga, put it plainly in a post she wrote to yoga teachers: "In some ways writing is just like yoga - it's an embodied process and experience. AI doesn't have a body. It's not a person. It is a tool."

There are uses of AI that feel like enhancements to my creativity, not replacements. Transcribing and organizing voice dictation. Brainstorming variations of a phrase when you know what you're trying to say but can't find the right words. Research, strategy, pressure-testing ideas. These all start with your thinking and extend it. They don't ask anyone to believe something that isn't true.

Then there are uses that replace embodied presence with a simulation of it. AI comments posted as you on someone else's work. AI-generated replies to messages. Voice clones. AI headshots. Everyone gets to decide what they do with their own likeness and presence online, and I'm not here to make that decision for anyone. But for me, these don't feel right. What they produce is a simulation of presence rather than presence itself. And I think people can feel the difference even when they can't name it.

The reason human connection matters online is the same reason it matters anywhere. It costs something: attention, time, a small piece of yourself. When this is reduced to a simulation, what's the point? Many people will say: money, duh.

I was at a conference recently where a speaker made a compelling case for human-written content and the irreplaceable quality of genuine human connection online. I found myself nodding. Later that day I tagged him in a post, and what came back looked a lot like an AI trained to respond the way he probably would, positive, encouraging, on-brand. Maybe I'm wrong. But if I'm right, he has made a trade-off. The irony is that part of his brand is authenticity, including handwriting his posts. But he's decided that it's ok for AI to write and post comments on his behalf. I understand why. It's just not the trade-off I would make.

I was talking to a colleague about this, and he laughed. "What do you expect? LinkedIn is a cesspool of marketing and sales." And I said: "What if some people don't feel that way and they actually want it to be a community where humans help each other out?"

We all have to draw our own lines.

AI is here and it's staying and it can help you. But your actual presence is irreplaceable. Trust your own voice.