Your AI sounds like a robot because it’s never met you.
That’s not a dig at you. It’s what happens when you use ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini the way you use Google: type a question, take the answer, move on. Google is built for that. AI isn’t.
Google answers questions. AI does the work. But it only does the work as well as you brief it. Treat it like a search engine and you get search-engine answers: generic, beige and a bit robotic.
I did it too. Here are the 5 signs, and what to do instead.
Sign 1: You ask once and take the first answer
You type a request. AI hands back something that’s fine. Not great, not wrong. Fine. So you copy it, tweak 2 words and send it.
You wouldn’t accept a new hire’s first draft without feedback. AI’s first answer deserves the same treatment. It’s a guess based on whatever you typed, and the less you typed, the bigger the guess.
Try this instead: push back. Ask for 3 different versions so you’re choosing, not settling. Ask “What would my customer push back on here?” Then tell it what’s missing and what you’d never say. A minute of feedback is the gap between beige and useful.
Sign 2: It has no idea who your customers are
When AI doesn’t know who you’re talking to, it writes for everyone. And writing for everyone means it lands with no one.
Your customers have specific worries. They use specific words. A regional florist’s customers don’t talk like a city accountant’s. If AI doesn’t know that, it defaults to the most average version of your business it can imagine.
Try this instead: before your next task, tell it who buys from you, what they worry about and how they talk. 3 sentences is plenty to start.
Sign 3: You re-explain your business in every new chat
New chat, new explanation. What you sell, who it’s for, how you like things written. Again.
That’s onboarding the same new hire every morning. No wonder it feels like more work than it saves.
Try this instead: give your business info 1 home. Write a short brief once, then either paste it in at the start of each chat or save it in a project so your AI always has it. Most AI tools now let you save instructions or files that carry across chats. Use them.
Sign 4: You’ve never asked it to ask you questions
Most of us treat AI like a vending machine. Put a request in, get an answer out.
Flip it. AI is great at interviewing you, if you let it. It’ll ask the questions you’d never think to answer on your own: who’s this for, what have you tried, what would you hate to see?
Try this instead: before your next task, add this line: “Before you start, what do you need to know about my business?” Answer its questions honestly. You’ll get a better result in 2 minutes than you would after 3 rounds of “no, not like that”.
Sign 5: You only use it to look things up
If AI is mostly replacing Google for you, you’re using the warm-up and skipping the main event.
Answers are fine. But the real wins are the drafts, plans, reports and boring admin it can take off your plate. Quotes. Customer emails. Invoices. Website updates. The job you keep moving to tomorrow.
Try this instead: look at your week and pick 1 task that’s repetitive and annoying. That’s your first real AI job.
What changed when I taught AI my business
I run 3 businesses with no staff. None of what follows happened while I was using AI like Google.
- Farm invoicing: my partner’s invoicing went from 20 minutes to 2. No accounting software. We built our own invoicing tool with AI.
- Website updates: from an afternoon to a single prompt.
- Subscriptions: I cancelled 3, worth over $100 a month, because I could build what I needed instead.
Same AI everyone else has. The difference was the brief.
Your 1 thing to do this week: write your AI brief
If you only do 1 thing from this post, make it this. Open a doc and write a 1-page brief with 5 headings:
- What you sell: your products or services, prices and what makes you different.
- Who buys: your best customers, what they worry about and how they talk.
- How you sound: 3 words for your voice, plus words you’d never use.
- What matters: your goals this year and the jobs you’re sick of doing.
- What good looks like: paste in an email or post you’re proud of.
Stuck? Get AI to do the heavy lifting. Paste this in:
“Interview me about my business, one question at a time, up to 10 questions. After my last answer, write a 1-page brief I can reuse.”
Save the result. Paste it in before your next 5 tasks and notice the difference. It’s not a 400-word prompt template. It’s AI finally knowing who it’s working for.
Want to build it with me?
I’m running a free live workshop, Stop Using AI Like Google, on Friday 6 November at 11am AEDT, online. In 45 minutes we’ll build your AI brief together, give it 1 home and test it on a real task from your week. It works in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot, and you don’t need any tech skills.
Save your free spot at milkingducks.com/workshops
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