I want to be honest with you about something. Like most, I have many concerns about AI, but I will never pretend that I don’t use it from time to time. There is so much noise around this topic right now and not enough genuine conversation from people who are actually working with these tools every day. So here is mine.
I use AI in my business… in specific, intentional ways that save me time and make me better at the parts of my work that actually matter.
But I also draw a very hard line around the creative and human work that no AI tool will ever do better than a person who genuinely cares about what the brand, website, and business they're building.
Where Does AI Actually Help in a Branding or Website Project?
If you're building your own brand or website, here are the few places AI can genuinely support your process without getting in the way of it.
Organizing your thoughts into something usable.
If you finish recording a voice memo, a Loom video, or a stream-of-consciousness brain dump and need it turned into something coherent and actionable, AI is genuinely good at that. I use it to turn transcripts into clean, organized notes for my designers and writers. It saves hours per week.Brainstorming and refining your processes.
AI can help you review how you onboard clients, communicate with your team, or structure your services. The behind-the-scenes operational stuff that nobody sees but everyone benefits from. If a process feels clunky or inefficient, AI is a useful thinking partner for identifying what to change.Making sense of data and analytics.
There is a lot of useful data out there, but only if you know how to use it. AI tools can help you interpret Pinterest analytics, Google Search Console, email open rates, and social media insights, and then help identify what's actually moving the needle versus what's just noise.Proofreading.
A surprisingly useful second set of eyes before anything goes out the door. I do not use this for rewriting, just for catching what I missed.
And that is it.
For everything client-facing, everything creative, everything that actually represents your brand, that is still very much human work. And yes, it matters greatly.
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Where Should AI Stay Away From Your Brand?
This year has been eye opening in many ways. But when it comes to branding and websites, I have been watching clients learn the hard way “what happens when AI gets too involved.”
AI is not inherently creative. It just reproduces what it has been fed from previous, past creations (without credit or compensation to the original designers). It isn’t making something new, it is regurgitating and combining the old.
So many parts of your brand are irreplaceable. When AI creates those parts, the results are always the same: generic, forgettable, and disconnected.
Design and Visual Identity
We can’t keep pretending that your logo, your brand identity, your color palette, and your visual presence are well done with AI. You can tell, I can tell… we all can tell.
Design is a deeply creative act. It requires taste, intuition, context, and care. It requires someone who has spent years understanding what makes a brand feel right versus what just looks fine on a screen for five seconds. The brands that connect, convert, and last are built by people who actually give a damn about what they're creating. They are thinking about what looks good now, but will still feel right to your clients in five years.
A note on what a logo is actually for
“We’ve noticed more clients arriving with AI-generated logo concepts they’ve fallen in love with. And while we understand the appeal, it’s worth understanding what a logo is actually supposed to do, because AI often overcomplicates this.”
A great logo needs to be four things:
clear (easy to recognize at a glance, even at small sizes)
memorable (distinct enough to stick in someone's mind)
versatile (works at multiple scales)
timeless (won't feel dated in a few years)
That's it. A good logo doesn’t need to tell you what you do, who you are, or even necessarily your industry. Think about the most memorable logos in the world:
the Nike swoosh doesn't tell you what Nike makes
the Golden Arches don't tell you McDonalds is a restaurant
the Apple logo doesn't say “technology”
An icon isn't meant to communicate everything about your brand all at once. It's a visual callback that becomes more powerful the more consistently you use it. The full brand story (your values, your community, and your voice) is why you need a complete brand system, built intentionally, by humans.
Your Brand Voice
If you're working with a designer or copywriter, please write your questionnaire answers in your own words. We don’t care if it seems messy or “not well written.” We are not looking for perfection, we are looking for you.
When you run your answers through AI before sending them, you filter out exactly the things we need most: your actual voice, your instinctive word choices, your frame of mind, and the way you naturally describe your work. That information is what allows us to create something that genuinely sounds and feels like you. Your clients and customers aren’t looking for a generalized, polished AI version of you, and neither are we.
Your messy first draft is more valuable to us than a clean AI version…every single time.
Copywriting Feedback
This one is for anyone who has hired a copywriter (including us) and found themselves running the delivered copy through an AI tool to see what it suggests for feedback.
Whether the impulse is to “make sure it’s right” or to “save time,” we are looking for your reaction and feedback. Experience has shown us that when AI reviews professionally written brand copy, it immediately flattens it.
It removes the specific word choices that make your brand sound like you. It optimizes for what sounds generically correct rather than what resonates specifically with your ideal client. It has no understanding of your brand strategy, your audience's psychology, or the years of experience that went into the original decisions. If something in your copy doesn't feel right, tell us in your own words. That conversation is always more useful than a chatbot's revision.
The bottom line? Human connection is what drives consultation requests, emails, and sales. You readers, audience, community, and clients want to see you, not a generic “optimized” version of who you think they want. Remember… if they aren’t drawn in by who you naturally are, then they aren’t your right clients.
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A Practical Guide: AI Use in Your DIY Website or Brand Build
If you're building your own website or working on your brand without a designer, here is a straightforward framework for where AI can support your process and where it's worth doing the work yourself.
Use AI for:
Organizing your thoughts before you write your website copy
Brainstorming page structures or section ideas to react to
Researching keywords and understanding what your ideal client searches for
Interpreting your website or social media analytics
Creating meta title and descriptions for your pages
Providing alt-tags for your website photos
Proofreading (not rewriting) your final copy before it goes live
Generating first-draft outlines you can rewrite in your own voice
Do the human work for:
Writing your actual website copy, especially your About page, your homepage headline, and your service descriptions. These need to sound like you, because your clients are hiring you.
Choosing your visual identity. Colors, fonts, and logo decisions require taste and strategy that AI cannot provide (or recreate).
Defining your brand voice. AI can help you organize your thoughts about this, or provide different samples of brand archetype, voice (personality) and tone (mood), but it cannot define or write it for you.
Any content that is supposed to build trust and human connection cannot be automated. The defeats the entire purpose of a unique brand.
Frequently Asked Questions
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For final copy? No. But you can use it as a starting point, for outlining, organizing your thoughts, or generating a rough first draft to react to. But the final copy that goes on your website should be rewritten in your own voice, with your own words, and using your own thoughts and feelings. AI-generated copy tends to sound generic and optimized for what sounds correct rather than what connects. Your potential clients can 100% feel that difference.
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As your actual brand identity, we'd encourage you to think carefully. AI logos are built from existing designs. They cannot create something genuinely new, and they are often visually derivative of work created without the original designer's consent. A professional designer brings years of strategic and creative experience, and creates something built specifically for your brand, your clients, and your long-term goals.
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Tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and similar conversational AI tools can be genuinely helpfu for organizing thoughts and transcripts, summarizing data, and brainstorming process improvements. They can also help with interpreting analytics, like those built into Google, Pinterest, and social media platforms. Where we'd encourage caution is anywhere the output is going directly to your clients or representing your brand publicly.
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A useful question to ask: would I actually say this?
If you read your website copy, your questionnaire answers, or your brand description out loud and it doesn't sound like something you would actually say, or something your clients would actually ask, that's the sign.
Another sign? If you find yourself wanting to keep going back to AI for help instead of creating on your own or relying on the advice and expertise of hired professionals.
AI is a tool. Like any tool, it can be useful for the right job and it can be genuinely harmful for the wrong one. If you need help with behind-the-scenes work and organization, go for it. But when something is supposed to be irreplaceable, human, and specifically yours… skip the bot and create from the heart.
And if you need help figuring out which path is right for where you are right now, that is exactly what we are here for.
