AI Can Write It Faster. But Can Your Team Still Think It Through? The Hidden Cost of AI-First Marketing

Every week, a new tool promises to “10x your output” or “automate your marketing workflow.” Founders rush to plug AI into their content engines. CMOs feel the pressure to scale faster, cheaper, smarter. And suddenly, entire strategies are being executed with minimal human input.

It sounds efficient. But something feels... off.

The content all starts to sound the same. Strategy sessions get replaced by prompts. And marketing begins to feel less like insight, more like output.

Recently, a study claiming AI might literally make people dumber went viral. Headlines spread fast, but what did the research actually say? More importantly, what does this moment reveal about how we’re thinking, building, and communicating in the age of AI? How does it relate to the future of AI?

This article takes a closer look.

AI Alarmism Gone Viral: “Will AI Make You Stupid?”

In July 2025, The Economist published an article titled “Will AI Make You Stupid?”, citing new research that sparked waves of alarmism across social media. The study (from MIT Media Lab, still under peer review) suggested that heavy use of AI tools might impair creativity and critical thinking – the authors even warned of “measurable cognitive decline” or “cognitive debt” when people relied on ChatGPT for an essay task. Posts warning of ChatGPT eroding human cognition circulated widely. 

However, multiple scientists warned that this viral narrative misrepresents what the study actually shows.

Neuroscientist Rachel Barr addressed the situation in a video on her social media, stating: “This study that’s been sensationalised all over the media and shared indiscriminately on social media was booby trapped.” She points out that sensationalization of scientific studies on social media is nothing new – and she warns against sharing research one hasn’t fully read or doesn’t know how to interpret properly. 

While most people fixated on the attention-grabbing summary of results (especially the part about large language models harming our brains), Barr dug into the paper’s methodology and data. Her interpretation diverged sharply: “I didn’t read the summary results... I just read the methods and findings. I reached the conclusion that the methods were not fit for the study objective.” 

In her view, the research merely showed that using different tools activates different brain states – a well-known fact in neuroscience, not proof that AI is making us “stupid.” “What they showed us was that different tasks are associated with different brain states. Which we knew.”

Barr doesn’t dismiss the possibility that AI tools could affect critical thinking in the future – but she’s clear that this study doesn’t offer strong evidence of that. In short, the scary “AI will rot your brain” takeaway made for viral posts, yet fell into the trap of misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the science.

What Actually Happens When Your Brand Over-Relies in AI? Why AI Isn’t a Cure-All for Marketers and CEOs

If a misleading summary about AI can go viral among the public, it’s easy to see how business leaders and marketers might also overestimate what AI can do. Today’s tools—like ChatGPT—are incredibly powerful for automating tasks, generating content, and analyzing data. But everything can’t be solved with AI—especially if you care about quality, brand identity, and long-term strategy.

We’re not neuroscientists and are not here to answer whether AI is making society dumber. What we do know—because we’ve been in this field for years and use AI in our workflows every day—is that yes, it makes things way faster. No question. But there are limitations. And there are warnings worth heeding—especially when it comes to how your brand thinks, sounds, and shows up in the world.

In marketing especially, treating AI as a magic bullet is a recipe for disappointment. Here’s why:

• AI can’t truly innovate or create the next big idea – it can only remix patterns from its training data. As experts note, generative AI draws on pre-existing datasets and trends, so it “can’t truly innovate or create something entirely new”. It’s great at churning out content quickly, but that content is by nature derivative. The moment you need a bold, creative leap or a novel strategy, human insight still carries the day.
  
  
• Over-reliance leads to generic content – Using AI for everything can make your brand sound like everyone else. AI models are trained on the same vast swaths of internet text, so their “creative” output tends to converge on the familiar. It’s like a painter who only knows how to mix the same few colors – eventually everything starts to look alike. If every company’s blog posts and ad copy are pumped out by the same algorithms, you get a sea of generic messaging. That’s a fast track to brand blandness, where no value proposition will stand out.
  
  
• It can dilute your brand voice and identity – Your brand’s tone, story, and values are unique… or should be. But AI isn’t great at nuance. It often defaults to the “average” style or safest approach. Careless use of generative AI could dilute brand identity and reduce creative originality. If everyone in your industry starts using the same AI-generated slogans and one-liners, customers will have trouble telling you apart from the next guy. Consistency is one thing – cookie-cutter sameness is another.
  
  
• AI can stumble with context, ethics, and judgment – Not every problem is a data problem. AI lacks the human common sense and context that guide good decision-making. For example, language models might produce factually incorrect or tone-deaf content if left unchecked. They also don’t inherently know your business strategy or brand values unless you explicitly train or prompt them on it. And as robust as AI models are, they carry biases from their training data and can sometimes make bizarre mistakes. In marketing, these blind spots can translate to embarrassing social media posts, off-brand messages, or even legal troubles. Without human oversight, AI’s “efficiency” can create as many headaches as it solves.
  
  

In short, AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement for human marketers or strategists. It’s superb at scaling up content production and handling repetitive tasks, but it won’t magically solve strategic questions like “What do my customers truly want?” or “What makes our brand special?” For that, you need cultural insight.

That’s precisely what our trend memos offer: sharp, actionable analysis of societal shifts to help you position your brand where relevance truly lives. Want a copy? Download them for free and start building a strategy that thinks beyond the algorithm. 

The Risk of “Brand Sameness” in the Age of AI

Let’s talk about one risk in particular that should give every brand-builder pause: the “AI sameness trap.” In plainer terms: if everyone uses the exact same generative AI in the exact same way, all brands start to sound the same. Fast.

Consider a quick scenario. Imagine a boutique coffee company known for its quirky, heartfelt storytelling suddenly using ChatGPT to generate social posts. At first, the marketing team is thrilled – content that used to take days to write now pops out in seconds. Soon, customers noticed the brand’s unique voice fading, replaced by a more generic, cheery-but-hollow tone. The posts read just like any other corporate account. What happened to the wit and local flavor? 

In chasing efficiency, the company traded away its personality. Across the industry, every other coffee brand using the same AI converges on that style that the model knows best. The result is a dull blur of uniform content, where nobody stands out.

This isn’t a fictional horror story – it’s a real pattern already underway. Generative AI often produces similar outputs because of how it’s built. Most models are trained on huge public datasets full of popular ideas and phrasing, not your brand’s niche voice. 

And it’s a vicious cycle: the more companies pump out bland AI-generated copy, the more that same style gets reinforced as training data for future models. We’ve already seen examples of AI-driven brand sameness creeping in. 

• Multiple tech startups started sending marketing emails with the exact same catchphrases (“Unlock your potential today!” etc.), likely because they all used similar AI prompts. 
• Customer service chatbots across different brands often apologize in nearly identical language. 
• Even product descriptions on e-commerce sites are beginning to read like carbon copies: “durable, stylish, built to last” – great keywords, but if everyone says it, it stops meaning anything. 

This homogenization isn’t just a creative issue; it’s a strategic risk. 

The good news: avoiding the sameness trap is possible. It requires a conscious effort to customize and guide AI outputs, infusing your own brand’s flavor into them. Think of AI as a junior copywriter with infinite capacity but no sense of originality – you need to give it the right creative direction (and a bit of editing) to maintain your distinct voice. The brands that thrive will be those that figure out how to marry AI’s efficiency with human-driven differentiation. Those that don’t, risk becoming interchangeable and forgettable.

Augment, Don’t Automate Away: Keeping the Human Touch

So, how do we harness AI’s advantages without falling prey to these pitfalls? The key is to use AI strategically – as an augmenter of human talent, not a wholesale replacement.

In practice, that means pairing the machine’s strengths (speed, scale, data-crunching) with the human strengths that machines lack (empathy, creativity, judgment). It’s not either/or; it’s both. Here are a few guidelines to consider as you integrate AI in your marketing and business:

• Keep humans in the loop. Always have a human review and refine AI-generated content before it goes live. AI can produce the first draft or three, but a human should craft the final message. This ensures nuance, accuracy, and brand alignment. Your team’s oversight is the safety net that catches tone-deaf lines or factual errors an algorithm might miss.
  
  
• Customize your AI if you can. If possible, train AI models on your own data or style, or use advanced prompting to imbue your brand’s voice. Using the out-of-the-box settings that everyone else has will yield cookie-cutter results. Even small tweaks – providing your unique product info, feeding in past successful copy, setting specific style guidelines – can help the AI generate more distinctive output.
  
  
• Use AI as a starting point, not the final answer. Think of generative AI as your brainstorm buddy or intern. It can generate ideas, outlines, or variations that save you time. But you’ll get the best results when you treat those as inputs to refine – not as finished strategy or copy. For example, let AI suggest 5 headline options, then pick the sharpest one and punch it up with your team’s creativity. Or have AI draft a blog post based on your outline, then you add the storytelling magic and expert insights that a robot wouldn’t know. For instance, that’s exactly how this blog post was written.
  
  
• Stay critical and curious. Don’t lose the habit of thinking just because an AI can spit out answers. Approach AI outputs with a critical eye – question assumptions, double-check facts, consider what might be missing. Encourage your team to treat AI suggestions as proposals, not gospel. 

Yes, AI can introduce new risks and unknowns, but with thoughtful use, it also offers tremendous rewards. The winners in this new era will be the brands and leaders who can navigate the nuance: leveraging AI’s capabilities where it helps, while mitigating its downsides and doubling down on what truly makes them unique.

Scale with Purpose (Don’t Just Automate for Automation’s Sake)

The bottom line for brand marketers, founders, and CEOs is this: AI is a tool, not a strategy. It can amplify your efforts, but it can’t conjure up vision or authenticity out of thin air. Not everything can (or should) be solved by an algorithm. Your human creativity, critical thinking, and deep understanding of your customers are irreplaceable assets – protect and prioritize them even as you embrace new tech. Use AI to free up time and spark ideas, but always reconnect those outputs to your core purpose and perspective.

At Postdigitalist, we help brands scale without becoming generic. Whether you're building a content engine, launching a product, or repositioning your company, we combine AI efficiency with human insight to keep your brand distinct and future-ready.

Here’s how you can get started:

• Download our free pSEO handbook to learn how to scale content with purpose (not just volume) using programmatic SEO.
• Browse our trend memos, where we decode emerging cultural signals to help you align your brand with what’s shaping society now.
• Book a free workshop with our team (we open 4 spots per month) to get tailored advice on your brand or content strategy.
• Explore our Brand Sprints, built to clarify your positioning and narrative in just a few focused sessions.
• Run an AEO & SEO Sprint with us to align your content strategy, technical foundations, and search opportunity around what truly drives qualified traffic.

The future of marketing isn’t about choosing between AI and humans—it’s about making them work smarter together. Let’s do just that.

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