When the end of the year draws near, there’s one thing you can bet a lot of company leaders will be tempted to do: let AI write their holiday card. And it makes sense. In a matter of seconds, tools like ChatGPT can spit out a perfectly polished message “wishing you a joyful holiday season and a successful New Year.”
It sounds… fine, I guess?
The problem with this approach is that the message could come from anyone. There’s no mention of your team’s inside jokes, the big wins, the late nights or the weird Secret Santa gift that made everyone laugh. It’s doomed to be forgotten. And in a world where everyone knows how easy it is to generate content with AI, even a well-worded sentiment can feel hollow without a human touch.
A crutch isn’t always clutch
One of the biggest limitations of AI is that it can’t read the room. Take the political backlash against DEI programs this past year. In response, many brands have quietly shifted language away from “diversity” and “equity” toward softer terms like “inclusion” and “belonging.” That kind of nuance doesn’t always show up in AI’s training data fast enough – or gracefully enough – to reflect shifting social dynamics.
Now, imagine being reliant on AI when your company is facing a crisis. Could it help you draft a media statement and some social media posts? Sure. But its understanding of your organization’s culture, audience sensitivities and evolving industry dynamics is very limited. The result? Language that may sound professional on the surface, but ultimately lands as detached – or worse, tone-deaf – when your message matters most.
That’s why communicators must stay personally invested. Is the messaging not just accurate, but also true to the brand? AI can help you produce content, but it can’t be accountable for its impact.
Tool, not the creator
Another trap businesses fall into is mistaking clarity for quality. Yes, AI typically generates clean, grammatically correct content – but it often defaults to more generic, formal language. In today’s media and social landscape, that type of content can leave brands blending into the background.
What makes a message resonate isn’t just what it says – it’s the personality behind it. Think about the brands that have broken through recently: Wendy’s, Duolingo and Liquid Death, for example. That tone doesn’t come from AI. It comes from people who understand the brand, the audience and the moment.
Keeping it real
One of the most powerful tools any communicator has is their lived experience. Personal stories and anecdotes bring ideas to life and create real connection. The same is true for brands. AI can help structure or polish a message, but it can’t capture what it was like to pull off a last-minute pivot, or how a customer used your product to overcome a real-world challenge. That’s your story to tell.
And if you’re unsure about how to balance your human voice with AI support, the good news is that there are tools – like Grammarly’s AI detector or Originality.ai – available to assist. These apps won’t always generate perfect results, but they can help provide a solid gut check. If the content feels sterile or over-synthetic, it’s probably time to bring in more of your soul to the story.
Back to that holiday card…
Now imagine you write that holiday card yourself this year. You include a shoutout to the team for navigating that Q3 launch curveball and a joke about the breakroom coffee machine explosion. Then you run it through AI to polish grammar, tweak the transitions and tighten the closing. That’s the sweet spot for brands today: human-led, AI-assisted.