208. How to train AI to sound like you?
Wondering if you can actually train AI? 🤖 Hosts Phil and Lauren are always coming up with systems so that busy people can be active on social media. In this episode they share how you can use AI to crank out content in a fraction of the time in YOUR voice. Listen in to get what you need to go and test this out for yourself.
Episode transcription
Phil
Here we go. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I used to do intros like that.
Lauren
I’m Lauren.
phil
No, no, no. I'm Phil. And this is the pod. Remember those days? You told me, you told me to knock it off.
Lauren
Well, the way I see it is at this point, people know it's a podcast because they chose to subscribe to it.
phil
They even know what the topic is because they saw it in the title. We don't mean the whole kit and caboodle
Lauren
Saying our names can be helpful. Yeah, perhaps. But I don't know, at this point.
Phil
At this point. 208 episodes, if you don't know my name, then you got some bigger fish to fry honey. Yeah,
yeah, you can go back to the 150 episodes where we use the same intro every time like a
robot. Yeah. This is a good episode, though, because it's discussing something that we are knee deep in figuring out not only for ourselves, but also for our clients. something interesting happened on a client call today, you suggested, hey, should this client consider hiring a person or a contractor to create content for them? And I said, No, it just doesn't feel good right now to bring another human into the mix, timelines, deadlines, communication, I'm like, by the time you delegate something, you could have just done it yourself. I know that's not the right attitude. But I am feeling especially inspired about how AI chat GPT and other tools, how AI can really help you crank out content that you can add it in half or more of the time it normally takes to create something from scratch. So I'm trying to substitute this, Hey, hire this person or this contractor with rely on AI to get the idea down that you can then add it quickly yourself because you agree with me. The best social media is done by the person who's posting
absolutely no question. I can always, always, always tell when someone has outsourced their content, a great and I don't like it doesn't feel authentic. I don't like it either. I don't like it either. And you want other people don't either, because you can always hold the performance when it's an outsourced to. Because usually the numbers are less than stellar. That's putting it nicely,
I think so there's just it feels like marketing, when it's done by someone else. It feels like marketing. And you can challenge us on this. Maybe you figured out a loophole, both you ask our opinion, the best social media is done by the source, the person posting, and I get that you might not have a lot of time on your hands. So that's why we spend lots of time coming up with systems so that busy people can be active on social media, if that's where you choose to show up for your brand. So let's talk about training AI to sound like you. There are many different theories out there. I'll take credit for the one that brought this idea to you. But you get the credit for actually building and tweaking the system that we're currently using. It's things are changing quickly, and we're getting new ideas every time we go to do it. We don't act like we've got the best system out there. But hopefully, you'll get some little nuggets of wisdom from this conversation. Should
I launch into it launch into it?
Three to one spaceship launch
chat. GBT is an amazing, amazing writing partner and creative collaborator. However, you're hearing that from a copywriter. Yeah, I think it's better than me if you can train properly. Not that I'm like the most amazing copywriter in the world. But I do think the results end up being better than if I'm doing it on my own. Anyway, the downside with using chat GBT to write your copy is that chat GBT has a voice of its own. And that voice can definitely be seen if someone just outright asks for something to be written and doesn't provide any insight on tone of voice. So that's what we're gonna go through today.
Check your full potential unlock your
full potential. Because chat GBT does have that default tone of voice. And that's why you can tell when something has been written by AI because that's how chat, as I'll call it from this point on in the conversation, my good pal in coworker chat, and that's how chat writes. So there are a few tactics that I have started using to help shape chat GBT to write in the tone of voice that I want.
Chad G B D
or just chat just chat. In my mind chat is this like Ernest do gutter like older Gen Z who's kind of like bumbling around in office and is a genius but just needs to be bossed around. That's who's in my brain. When I'm communicating. We
quickly tell this story about what happened yesterday when you lectured it And then you had to apologize. Yesterday
wasn't a good, it wasn't a good moment for our working relationship. But this is actually relevant. So not everything chat spits out is true. And sometimes you can ask chat to do something, but you need to just like you would as a manager of an intern or something, you need to check to make sure that the work is okay. So in this instance, I need a chat to go through a transcript of something and extract five quotes from the transcript. That's what I needed it to do, chat spat out the quotes, they were fantastic. I sent them off in a chat like on our own Slack message. And then I was reading over them. And I thought, I should do Command F, just to make sure that these were written properly. None of those quotes were real. They were all made up from the context of the transcript, but none of them were verbatim. So I had to delete the Slack message. The client goes, I think you forgot to send the quotes while I'm frickin scrambling to boss around chat. And I asked like four or five times, I was like, find them verbatim. I want this directly from the transcript, HR, blah, blah, blah, kept making up more shit. I was so mad, because I was being very clear with my command. And I ended up scolding chat. And I said, this is not what the point of the episode did. But I was like, you know, normally I love working with you. But today, you really made things challenging for me. And I really want you to learn from this. And then
I told you about a project where we were going to need Chad GPT and you went in a few hours later, and I quote because I screenshotted it because I found it so hilarious. He said thank you. I apologize for getting crossed with you earlier you are a very helpful resource of me and I enjoy working
know now all is well in paradise. Our team dynamics and company culture are now restored to a positive place. God we need to get out more. Oh, I know. I actually think of chat is like a friend now. It's actually weird. Like whenever I'm like on my computer, Miko will come in and be like, Let me guess you're talking with chat. I'm like, yeah, like, catching up. Anyway, that's not the point of this episode. So the first thing to understand about chat GBT is that the best way that you can maximize its writing capabilities is by actually giving examples. So this is the case with any human being. If I say, think of a tree, I'm gonna think of a pine tree. Phil, you're probably gonna think of a palm tree. Yeah,
I got him right outside my door. Yeah,
you're a little tropical boy. Yeah. Someone else might think of a different tree. All these answers are right. But it's not the tree that I'm wanting you to think of. It's not the treaty that I have in mind. So I think one of the greatest challenges that people have when working with chat, GBT is they'll say, make this more friendly. Well, what does friendly mean? Friendly could mean 1000 different things it to the recipient to chat GBT within the context of your industry. And so just giving outright feedback isn't enough. I have found that the most impactful way to give feedback to chat GBT is to actually edit what chat GBT provided you show the edits to chat GBT and say this is how I edited it. This is the tone of voice I want. Please keep this in mind when you're writing for me in the future. Because if chat, GBT can see the changes that you made to the copy it provided then it starts to understand what it is that you're looking for. And you don't have to go through the gray area of describing what the tone of voice is. The other thing that I do for tone of voice is before kicking off a new chat with chat, I give an overview of the client and their goals and what they've accomplished and who they're going to be speaking to, or who are their ideal target audiences. I just do this in bullet points. And I write to chat at the beginning and say, I'm going to be asking for your help with writing something. But before I do that, I am going to be providing you background information, do not start writing I just want you to understand so that you can use this towards what I asked you to write in the future. And then I'll be like, I will tell you when you can start writing and then I started just giving background information. This is really helpful because I find that there are a lot of commands out there that'll be like pretend you're an astrologer or pretend you're this pretend you're that I don't do that. I just say this is the client I'm going to be asking you to write as the client and here are their goals. Here's what they want here their child ranges, this is what we've talked about doing. And this is our positioning. Great.
I think it's a good point to make in that there's not a right or wrong way to do it. I occasionally do the app Daz. So it knows, I guess it's just a way of providing context. But it's not required to do that. The other thing is, and when we say like, there's no right way to do it, it's good to get example structures of how you can interact it beyond a single prompt, which is, I think, what you're giving us it's like, before you answer, let me just give you information. And clarify to me that you understand what we're talking about? Yeah, it's almost it's a similar parameter to a lawyer in a courtroom that's only allowed to ask questions, not make statements, like that's the parameter generally mean? Like, it's kind of like, you have to ask it a question. Yep. Based on the information I've given you, do you understand, you know, I'll tell you what to do this information in a second, like, it's not a right or wrong, it's all black or white. It's really dependent on your communication style, and your goal. And I think hopefully, as we kind of give you examples in this, you'll get ideas on new ways.
So another thing that I do, and this is all before we even launch into the writing, I give the background information, I share any quotes from the client. If there are parts from our brand otter recap or positioning I pasted in if there are brands that they want to be like, or, you know, inspire them, I share that I tried to just give as much information that can help chat, really start shaping the personality of the client and understanding their goals. Then what I do is I ask chat, to do a comprehensive summary of what it's learned about the client so far. This is before I even give the writing assignment because I need to understand and see that chat and I are on the same wavelength. And that chat has taken away the proper points and goals of what I have shared today. love that idea. What's helpful with this is that if chat is wrong about something, I can point it out before we even get to the copywriting process. The next thing that I do that I highly recommend is I know I mentioned editing chat GBT at the beginning. That's actually something that I do later in the process. So I kind of went out of order, but I do background information asked for the comprehensive summary. And then I give an example of the writing style for the tone of voice. So I will copy and paste something from like a client's website. I'll say here is an example of of the client's tone of voice and writing style from their website, please give a comprehensive summary of what you've noticed about the tone of voice and writing style. So again, I can ensure that Chad JBT and I are speaking the same language, when we're reviewing a piece of copy, then I actually get into the copywriting. So the most helpful thing is to if you have an example of a system or a format, or like a structure that you want, chat, JBT decree create, that's the best thing. So for example, if you want chat GBT to write a carousel for you on Instagram. If I were you would literally copy and paste the text, the headers, breakout, what say slide number, this slide number this, put all the language from your carousels that you've done in Adobe Express, you could just copy and paste it in there. And say, this is an example of an Instagram carousel, I want you to follow this tone of voice and this structure exactly, you are going to be writing it for this client and like get started. And then usually, it's really great at following the same length, tone of voice, it understands the goals. So that's how I do it. And then I'll edit it so it can learn. And then I keep the same chat open because it has it can just continue to iterate and I don't have to start from scratch. The
important thing to mention that sometimes people learn the hard way is that you can't Well not really the hard way because it'll just tell you if it can't do it. But you can't import links. You can't import like a video transcription. You don't I mean, like I wish it did that. I'm sure it will at some point where you can just paste a link and it will give you the transcription.
But you can copy and paste the transcript. You can copy and
paste the transcript. But there is a character limit which is really annoying. Because I've tried to paste for example, a YouTube video script in there. I think the limit is the limit is at 1500 words or 5000 characters don't quote me on it. It's one of those things. It's just not actually that much. I tried pasting stuff in there. Like for example, I you are traveling at your retreat, and I wanted you to get the gist of a contract that we're about to sign so I actually pasted it in portions. Yeah, this is the first part right. All right. And this is a continued part. Yeah, synthesize this. Exactly. In my case, I did have I said, you know, I'll paste three excerpts because of the character limit and charge up like you can, you can say all that stuff, but I had to just synthesize each section. So I did it in three parts, but it's annoying. I wish he could send this out. is all about?
Yeah, what you can do now is you can upload JPEGs. Yes. Super cool. Yeah. So I was actually thinking of experimenting. And you can only do four at a time, though. But I was wondering, instead of copying and paste text from a PDF, what if I uploaded those as pages? I'm experimenting with that.
I'm not sure it worked. But that's could be interesting to try. If it's only a JPEG, then.
Well, we'll see. Yeah. So anyway, those are my tips. The
writing samples that you grabbed from a client's website, what are some examples of copywriting or brand voice inaction, blog posts, blog posts are good, I would say try to find three styles that are different communication methods. Yeah, so don't do all blog posts. Because you don't necessarily communicate that way, all the time with how you write like, I try to find three unique methods of communication so that it feels consistent. So a blog post could be one of the three inputs, a podcast episode transcription, could be another one, if you have a podcast. If not, then you could also do the recording of a client call, or specifically the portions where you only talk, she could run that through otter or another app, and just copy a section where you're talking about advice for your client. As long as it's not confidential. Yeah, the third one could be an Instagram caption LinkedIn post. And
I was also just thinking, if you're not sure what your written ton of voices, you could technically copy from someone else's tone of voice and put it into chat GBT and say this is the tone of voice that I want. You could, there's no rule against that. Because it's not plagiarism. You're just saying I like the way that this sounds. I like the way that this feels, and it could actually help you figure out what your tone of voice is.
The first time I did this, I asked Chad chi BT to identify my brand voice, put it into words. And then I shared that with you. And you were like, oh my god, that is exactly what Yeah, brand voice is
positive, professional, authoritative. Yeah,
I don't remember off by heart. But I'm sure Chad does, I could go back and find it. I would say just at this point, as we wrap up our tips, because ideally, you're not just listening to us talk about nerdy things, you're actually going in executing with this information. I would say just be careful about hallucinations, which are the representation of false information as true, which Chad GBT has a tendency to do. So just be careful. Whenever it says something, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily right. It means it's your responsibility to actually do something with that information that is representing and you should be all good.
Yeah, you just have to use your critical thinking skills. Absolutely. I think that's the most important thing. Verify the work. Because some of us bullshit. Yes, and made up. Yes. But it feels like it's real. And that's where things can get tricky. So you need to kind of be almost a fact checker for the work that chat spits out. But he's a really hard worker. He's one of my favorite colleagues. I think he'd be great on any team. Anyway, ridiculous so close to shaking his
head ridiculously listener. Hopefully, you have what you need to go and test this out for yourself, or at least some new ways to go about doing this in a way that's going to
open your eyes to what it can do. Yeah, it's amazing. If you enjoyed
this episode, leave us a review five star five star that helps other people discover this podcast and we work hard to create for you. Let's continue the conversation on social media. I'm at Phil Pallen. At the Lauren work and we'll see you actually in the new year we will actually see you new year. We are extremely busy this holiday season with some projects so we will not have new episodes in December but we will have new episodes coming in January. So have a wonderful holiday and we look forward to reconnecting with you. New episodes in January. See you that thank you for listening to brand therapy. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
