Showerthought: That 'AI will replace all marketers' thing ignores a core truth I learned from a client in Tokyo

I was at a marketing meetup in Tokyo six months ago, and this older guy who runs a local bakery told me something that stuck. He said he tried five different AI tools to write his social posts, and they all sounded like a robot trying to be a cheerful human. He showed me one post the AI wrote about a new matcha cake, and it used a phrase like "elevate your snacking journey" which nobody in Tokyo would ever say. I realized then that AI might be great for crunching data or drafting outlines, but it can't replace the gut feeling you get from actually talking to customers face to face. He told me he still writes his own posts, just uses AI to check spelling or help with scheduling. Ngl, I think the whole "AI takeover" narrative is way overblown for small businesses that rely on real local connections. Has anyone else run into a situation where AI just missed the mark on cultural tone or voice?

2 comments

2 Comments

uma_wilson791mo agoMost Upvoted

But isn't the whole point of AI to get better over time with more data, not stay stuck at the level of "elevate your snacking journey"? That baker's story sounds like a snapshot of tech from maybe two years ago, not where we are today. The thing about AI models now is they can be trained on specific local slang or industry vocab pretty easily if you feed them the right examples. I'd argue that most small businesses don't want to spend the time to train a model properly, so they blame the tool for being bad instead of learning how to use it. I've seen local shops in my area use AI to nail regional phrases by just giving it a few of their old posts to learn from, and it saves them hours a week.

hart.ryan1mo ago

yeah i get what youre saying @uma_wilson79 but i think the problem is deeper than just not training it right. most small businesses are running on like 4 hours of sleep and a prayer, they dont have time to feed an AI a bunch of old posts and tweak prompts for days. and even if they did, the core issue is that AI doesnt actually know what makes their customers tick. a bakery in a small town relies on word of mouth and personal relationships, not SEO-optimized buzzwords. so when an AI spits out "elevate your snacking journey" instead of "hey marge we got fresh cinnamon rolls today" it just feels wrong. training it on a few posts doesnt fix that gut feeling of what fits the neighborhood.