Our Position & Policy on AI​​

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WHAT IS OUR CURRENT POSITION ON THE USE OF AI IN THOUGHT LEADERSHIP?

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In brief, at present, we do not feel that the quality of the material produced by current publicly available generative AI programmes is anywhere near the standard required for quality Thought Leadership marketing programmes (this being aside from our concerns regarding Authenticity/Copyright, see below). However, we are also mindful of the fact that there may be uses in generic Content creation where compelling originality and quality control are not mission-critical and where the intended readership is not requiring in-depth insight (for example, we see much more of a Business Case for local services such as hairdressers than for a professional services company involved in serious Thought Leadership). As such we do consider its uses in the 'Bootstrapping' section of our forthcoming book Thought Leadership Marketing: A Concise Guide.​ This will also always be helped where there is human oversight.

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In addition we are keen not to let our own experience cloud us to possibilities that might be useful to Clients. As such we continue to undertake experiments in possible uses of AI. We are also currently revising, updating and expanding our White Paper Thought Leadership in the Age of AI: A Guide for 2025, to be published in February, which will cover actual updates in AI training and also touch on latest broader reports including from Economist Impact.

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In general so far we have found that the concerns thrown up by publicly available generative AI currently exceed the benefits (in future they may not). Alongside quality, accuracy is poor: generative AI appears to ‘panic’ when confused and often spits out fabricated or incorrect References. In our trials on AI-Assisted Writing we have found the time taken for double-checking and verification (alongside concerns around IP and Copyright) have outweighed any time-saving benefits thus far. In addition ChatGPT (for example) has only been trained to April 2023 and so recent data is discluded.

 

​​​There are also Brand Perception and Ethical Issues: we touch on these in the forthcoming revised White Paper. For example, if your use of AI causes you to lay off staff, you have to reckon with how this may simultaneously affect your credibility on Social Value issues. From a Quality perspective, the prevalent use of AI in your written materials (and most with a trained eye can easily see this) may have impacts on your Brand Positioning in the same way that consumers see a clear difference and pay a premium for handcrafted and organic goods versus mass produced goods. These are all critical issues and will be considered in more depth in the revised version of the White Paper (please Subscribe here for Updates).

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WHAT IS OUR POSITION ON AI IN OUR OWN MATERIAL?

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At SLETL no material directly written or overseen by Susan Lawson has knowingly used AI textually - AI may have been used to generate research by a researcher which has then fed into posts subsequently written or heavily rewritten; otherwise all material itself is, to our awareness, human-authored.

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We do not wish to entirely dismiss the usefulness of AI however and so are looking into possibilities for deploying AI for both our Clients and ourselves in transparent ways which save time but which are in line with our Quality and Ethical positions: thus far, we cannot make a clear case for it.​ We may at some future point consider deploying AI in blog post campaigns to generate basic first drafts which are then heavily rewritten to save our Clients time and money but we are currently unconvinced that this fits with our Client profiles.

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Finally, we note that many are interested in the possibilities of AI in Content Management (for ourselves, this would be rather Thought Leadership Strategy) as for example with AI which 'hunts' to see where you may have ‘Content’ gaps. In practice we have only found programmes which merely point out what your competitor has included in a feature on a given subject versus yourself – it seems little more than an automated Editor. Should AI improve such that it can point to gaps in actual subject matter before we can, and this proves useful within a broader Strategy, we will consider using it on behalf of our Clients. We will also keep this page updated as our Stance and Opinions on this change and will keep testing what’s available and how ethically it might be used.

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Note: our Stance on AI and all material on this page is also fully human-devised and authored and is original and copyrighted material. Should you see the same AI policy elsewhere in future this has either been lifted from SLETL or else ‘trained’ and unwittingly reproduced by AI. SLETL AI Stance ©Susan Lawson/Susan Lawson Ethical Thought Leadership, March 2025.​​​​​

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