There is a growing backlash against something called “AI slop”.

And frankly, I welcome it.

AI slop is the flood of cheap, repetitive and often nonsensical content that is being churned out automatically and dumped onto the internet with little or no real human involvement.

You’ve probably seen examples yourself.

Strange fake images designed purely to attract clicks…

Formulaic social-media posts that all look exactly the same…

Articles that contain plenty of words but no original thought, experience or useful insight.

This kind of content is beginning to overwhelm parts of the internet, and the major online platforms are finally responding.

A recent BBC article revealed that Snapchat has joined YouTube, LinkedIn and Substack in taking action against low-quality AI-generated content.

But there is an important distinction here.

These companies are not rejecting AI itself.

Snapchat, for instance, has said that it will stop recommending videos created entirely by AI, while continuing to accept content that has been edited or enhanced using AI tools.

In other words, the problem isn’t using AI.

The problem is using it to produce vast quantities of soulless content without any meaningful human creativity, judgement or responsibility behind it.

And I completely agree.

I am passionately opposed to AI slop.

But I am equally passionate about the extraordinary opportunities AI creates when it is used properly.

Because AI can now help people do things that would previously have been beyond their reach.

Someone who doesn’t consider themselves a natural writer can communicate their knowledge, interests and experiences clearly.

Someone who only has a few spare hours each week can create and operate a publishing business.

Someone who lacks technical or design skills can produce articles, newsletters, images, reports and products that might once have required an entire team.

That is incredibly exciting.

Used properly, AI doesn’t replace the person creating the work.

It helps that person express their ideas, experience, personality and knowledge more effectively.

That is the principle behind everything I teach about using AI.

You remain the source of the ideas, the direction, the opinions and the responsibility.

AI helps you research, organise, develop, edit and communicate them effectively.

Which brings me to Substack which recently announced its own measures to protect the platform from AI slop.

And despite some of the worried reactions I have seen, it has not banned AI.

Far from threatening responsible AI-assisted publishers, I believe the new policy could help protect them.

Let me explain…

The New Substack AI Policy And What It REALLY Means

On the 21st July, co-founder and CEO of Substack, Chris Best, sent out an email with some news…

He announced that Substack was partnering with Pangram, an AI-detection tool.

It means that users can scan notes, replies, comments, and posts to “see an estimate of how much of the text was written by hand or with AI assistance.”

The reason, he says, was the rise in AI slop.

According to Pangram, as much as 40% of content on some social media platforms is now AI-generated.

Increasingly, people are complaining that they can’t tell what’s real, and what’s not.

He didn’t want Substack to become one of those platforms.

The whole point of Substack is to offer reliable, engaging and useful content that enriches users’ lives…

And to enrich the lives of those creators who wish to use it to find an audience.

“That means helping real people,” wrote Best, “who think, feel, observe, argue, experiment, consider, struggle, exhort, and care, to make money doing work they believe in.”

If readers can’t trust Substack then everyone using the platform will lose out – and the platform itself will take a nosedive.

The key is to have transparency.

Which is why they are linking up with Pangram.

This detection tool is effective on text longer than 100 words and will show an analysis of how much AI was used – but only to those who request it.

Yes, I can see why this news might panic AI users who want to make money on platforms like Substack.

But Substack’s Chris Best is very clear that AI usage is NOT the problem.

“Not everything made with AI is slop,” he says, “and not all slop is made with AI.”

The REAL problem, he says, “is when there is a mismatch between a reader’s expectation and reality, especially when they unwittingly invest their attention in something with no human thought on the other end.”

So it’s important to know that Substack is explicitly NOT against people using AI to assist their work.

They believe that writers should be free to choose whatever digital tools they like – whether that’s Google for research, Grammarly for editing or AI for content development.

Bear in mind that Substack itself uses AI for research, software development and platform features!

All they are trying to do is prevent the platform becoming flooded with soulless, mass-produced AI slop…. of the kind that has damaged the user experience on platforms like LinkedIn.

I fully support that aim.

In fact…

This is Actually Great News For Substack Creators

If you want to turn Substack into a long-term second income, it’s vital that the platform retains its integrity.

It lives or dies by the trust readers have in it.

So all Substack is doing is protecting the qualities that make it valuable: originality, human perspective and a genuine relationship between the publisher and the reader.

And I expect that other platforms may follow suit in the future!

But this doesn’t mean you have to ditch AI, or abandon your business plans.

In all my coaching and advice about using AI for business, I’ve never recommended that you just bang out a prompt and post whatever content Chat GPT throws up.

And I’ve never suggested that you pretend that no AI was involved.

The whole point is that you combine YOUR unique personality, experiences and opinions with the capabilities of AI.

The AI is there to help you research, organise, develop, edit and communicate your ideas more effectively.

It’s there to speed up the process so that you can operate a self-publishing business in your spare time.

So it should simply amplify the real human being (ie. YOU) who is behind the publication… rather than replace you.

That’s all Substack wants from its creators.

The Pangram tool isn’t going to mean that users ignore ALL content that has been aided by AI.

It’s there, upon request, so that users can make sure it’s not purely some auto-generated robot giving them advice.

Publishers can also add a “How I make this” statement explaining their creative process and how they use AI.

So this is an opportunity to be transparent and show readers that the ideas, direction and responsibility for your publication remain firmly with you.

This applies to ALL publishing side business projects that you are considering, whether you are on Substack or not.

How to Make Your Content Human

Always start with yourself when you make AI content.

That means feeding AI with as much of your personality, experiences and opinions as you possibly can BEFORE you prompt it to make content.

To do that, I recommend you go to this What Really Makes Money article HERE.

It contains a ‘Personality Questionnaire’ that will help you extract crucial details about yourself including your:

• personal history and childhood memories
• pet hates and irritations
• day-to-day life
• personal struggles and contradictions
• cultural preferences
• worldview & philosophy
• opinions & biases
• influences (in your personal life and in culture)
• experiences, mistakes and learned wisdom
• communication style

You can then use the AI prompts I provide to get results that express all the above in your written communications.

But it doesn’t stop there…

Because even when you do all of the above, AI tools have a habit of resorting to cliches, and ‘AI-speak’.

It’s very frustrating, but actually it’s a good opportunity to inject your own uniqueness.

So for every piece of text AI produces, you will need to do a light edit.

For help on that, read this WRMM issue which reveals the 55 tell-tale signs of AI that you need to remove or re-write.

Then there’s one more step you can take…

Go through the piece again, and see if there are any places you can drop in something that AI could not possibly come up with.

• A personal anecdote
• A quirky aside
• A joke
• A cultural reference of your own
• A mention of someone you know
• A test or trial you carried out
• A specific number or date

The more of these details you add, the more unique and human the result will be, until AI-detectors will really struggle to place your piece as AI at all.

Certainly, your content will become ‘AI assisted’ rather than ‘AI generated’.

And rest assured, that’s NOT a problem for most internet users!

Why You Shouldn’t Be Ashamed of AI

These days, AI is completely normal – unavoidable, even.

A recent government survey found that 59% of British adults used generative AI in the previous three months.

Among people under the age of 45, this percentage was 75%.

And that’s just the AI that people knowingly use.

Artificial intelligence is now integrated into almost every digital platform… search engines… email services…. smartphones… word-processing software…. design apps…. video editors…. social-media platforms…. online shops.

You’re probably using AI when your phone predicts the next word in a message…

When Google summarises your search results…

Or your email service filters out spam…

So nobody can claim that ANY assistance from AI makes a piece of work fake, dishonest or unacceptable.

That’s why you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about admitting that you use AI.

In an online side publishing business, you’re not pretending to be an award-winning journalist, celebrated novelist or top academic.

You’re just an everyday person communicating with other ordinary people about a topic that’s important to them.

You have knowledge, experiences, observations, opinions and useful insights that could genuinely improve their life, and give them companionship.

But you don’t have the time to spend three days writing an article. And you don’t feel confident enough to write everything yourself.

So AI can help you overcome those barriers.

Nothing wrong with that!

As long as you’re there at the heart of the business, your subscribers and customers will not mind.

I hope this removes any lingering doubts or anxieties about using AI.

It’s here to stay, and there’s so much to gain from using it, when done properly.