Effort is Key
Don’t Be Too Smug. How AI Can Actually Ruin the Relationships You Spent Years Building.
AI can be brilliant when used properly. It can help you summarise, refine, and even inspire better communication. It can make you faster, smarter, and more efficient. But here’s the problem, somewhere along the way, people started using it as a replacement for effort, not a tool to enhance it.
And that’s where everything starts to fall apart.
Relationships, real ones, are built on time, consistency, and effort. They’re built on remembering the little things, following up, showing up, picking up the phone, writing a message that sounds like you. That’s what builds trust. That’s what separates genuine connection from superficial contact.
The second you send an AI-generated message, untouched, unedited, emotionless, you’re signalling to the other person that they’re not worth your time. You’ve automated your humanity. And no amount of perfect grammar or shiny emojis will make up for that.
I recently received an email from someone I’ve known for years, a serious business professional, someone I respected. But the email? It was straight out of ChatGPT, complete with cheery emojis and vague platitudes. It was instantly clear that no effort had gone into it. The moment I read it, every ounce of authenticity I associated with that person evaporated. Not because they used AI, but because they didn’t care enough to make it their own.
That’s the danger. AI can make things easier, but it can also make us lazy. And laziness erodes trust faster than any mistake ever could.
If you’ve spent years building your reputation, your network, your business relationships, don’t throw it away by outsourcing your sincerity. Go back to old school effort.
Pick up the phone. Write the email yourself. Take the time to think about the person you’re reaching out to, what matters to them, what you’ve discussed before, what connects you.
That personal effort is what made you memorable in the first place. It’s what made people want to work with you, trust you, and refer you.
AI can’t replace that. It can only imitate it. And the difference is obvious, instantly.
So yes, use AI as a helper. But never as your voice. Because effort isn’t old fashioned, it’s what keeps relationships human. And in a world that’s becoming increasingly automated, human effort is your biggest advantage.
