LinkedIn’s AI: Because Who Needs Real Friends Anyway?

I saw it again this morning on my LinkedIn feed. A sharp, insightful post from a colleague, followed by a predictable stream of digital tumbleweeds: “Thanks for sharing.” “Good point.” “Insightful.” This isn’t a professional network anymore; it’s a graveyard of soulless, AI-generated platitudes. And LinkedIn is gleefully handing out the shovels.

The platform’s push for one-click, AI-generated replies is a masterclass in how to torch authenticity. It’s a tool that helps you look active while ensuring you have zero impact.

This isn’t just a tech rant; it’s a wake-up call. Your brand, whether it’s personal or corporate, is the sum of its interactions. In a digital world drowning in noise, authentic connection is the only currency that matters. Lazy automation is not just a missed opportunity; it’s brand sabotage.
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The Authenticity Crisis: Why Lazy AI Is a Conversion Killer

We are psychologically wired to detect insincerity. A generic, robotic comment feels the same as a limp, disinterested handshake—it’s a signal of disrespect. When a brand uses this kind of low-effort automation, it communicates that it doesn’t value the conversation enough to show up with a real human.

This isn’t a fluffy, feel-good issue; it’s a commercial one. As my mentor Mark Ritson puts it, “Faking it doesn’t make it—it breaks it.” Trust, once lost, is brutal to regain. In our own double-blind split tests for a B2B client, we found that personalised, human-written outreach messages outperformed generic, AI-assisted messages by over 30% in securing qualified meetings. The data is clear: authenticity isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a direct driver of ROI. LinkedIn’s AI fiasco is a global-scale lesson in how to get this catastrophically wrong.
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The Authenticity Blueprint: A Human-First Guide to AI-Powered Communication

AI is a phenomenally powerful tool when used correctly. The mistake is using it to fake the one thing it can’t replicate: genuine human connection. Our framework isn’t about rejecting AI; it’s about using it intelligently to amplify, not replace, the human touch.
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Pillar 1: Define Your Human Voice

The Principle: Before you can use AI to scale your communications, you must have a clear, distinctive, and human brand voice to scale in the first place. AI without a strong brand voice is just a machine for producing generic corporate-speak.The Pitfall: Letting the AI’s default, sterile tone become your brand’s de facto voice.The Ethical Application: For our client Paperform, a powerful SaaS tool, we worked with them to define a brand voice that is helpful, clever, and refreshingly human. This detailed voice guide now acts as a “constitution” for all their communications. Whether a support email is written by a human or a draft is started with an AI assistant, it is always checked against this constitution to ensure it sounds like Paperform. They are scaling their voice, not just their volume.
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Pillar 2: Use AI for Insight, Not Interaction

The Principle: AI’s greatest strength is not in faking a conversation, but in analysing millions of them to find the most important ones to join.The Pitfall: Using AI to auto-reply to social media comments, which makes your brand look like it’s running on autopilot.The Ethical Application: For Talent Recap, a global media brand with a massive online community, it’s impossible for their team to read every single comment. Instead of using AI to generate replies, we use social listening AI to analyse the sentiment and topics of conversation. The AI acts as a radar, identifying the most passionate fans, the most debated topics, and the most urgent questions. This allows their human community managers to strategically enter conversations where a genuine, insightful human touch will have the most impact. AI finds the fire; humans bring the warmth.
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Pillar 3: Personalise with Precision, Not Platitudes

The Principle: True personalisation goes beyond mail-merging a [First Name] field. It’s about demonstrating that you’ve done your homework and respect the other person’s time.The Pitfall: Using AI to generate hundreds of generic outreach messages that start with a creepy, “I saw your profile and was so impressed…”The Ethical Application: In our tech branding work for B2B clients like Paperform, we use AI as a research assistant. The AI can instantly analyse a prospect’s company website, recent press releases, and LinkedIn activity. But the actual outreach message is then handcrafted by a human who uses that research to make a specific, relevant, and genuinely helpful point. The result is an outreach that feels bespoke and respectful, not like a templated piece of spam.
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Pillar 4: Scale the System, Not the Soulless Message

The Principle: The goal of AI should be to make your human team more efficient and effective, not to replace them in conversations where empathy is required.The Pitfall: Replacing your entire customer support front line with a chatbot that is incapable of understanding nuance or showing empathy, leading to intense customer frustration.The Ethical Application: For a brand like Blossom, a fintech app where customer trust is paramount, we would advise using AI to scale their support system. The AI can handle the simple, repetitive queries (“Where can I find my statement?”), instantly providing answers and freeing up the human support team to dedicate their time to high-quality, empathetic conversations with users who have more complex or emotional issues. It’s a human-machine partnership that improves both efficiency and the customer experience.
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Implementation Guide: An Authenticity Audit for the AI Age

1. Codify Your Brand Voice: Before you touch any AI tool, create a detailed brand voice guide. What do you sound like? What words do you use? What’s your sense of humour? This is your most important defence against generic AI-speak.
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2. Re-evaluate Your AI Tools: Audit your marketing stack. Are you using AI to generate insights or to fake interactions? Re-task the tools that are making you sound like a robot.
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3. Run a “Human vs. Machine” Split Test: Test your current AI-assisted outreach against a 100% human-crafted, personalised message. The results will likely shock you and provide a powerful business case for a more human-centred approach.
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4. Invest in Your Human Team: Use the efficiency gains from AI to reinvest in training your team to have more valuable, empathetic, and brand-building conversations.
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5. Seek an Expert Opinion: Navigating the line between smart automation and brand-damaging robotics is a major strategic challenge. An audit from the best branding agency in Sydney can provide a clear framework for using AI to enhance, not erase, your brand’s authenticity.
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Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Over-Automation: Using AI to respond to every comment, post every update, and send every email is a fast track to being tuned out.
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• Tone-Deaf Messaging: An AI doesn’t understand context or nuance. Letting it run unchecked will inevitably lead to an embarrassing, brand-damaging mistake.
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• Ignoring the Data: If your engagement is dropping after implementing a new AI tool, don’t assume it needs “more time to learn.” Trust the data that’s telling you your brand is becoming less human.
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• Inconsistency: If your social media sounds like a robot but your website sounds human, you have a fractured brand personality. Consistency is key.
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The Future of Authenticity

The future of AI in branding is a paradox. As AI gets better and better at faking humanity, the market premium on verifiably human interaction will skyrocket. The brands that win won’t be the ones who can fool a Turing test; they will be the ones who use AI behind the scenes to empower their human teams to build more genuine, valuable, and trustworthy relationships. The robots can handle the spreadsheets; the humans must own the conversation.

Is your brand at risk of becoming a robot? Partner with CUT THRU, the leading branding agency in Sydney and New York, to build a strategy that leverages technology without sacrificing your soul.
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About The Author

Jonathan Sankey is founder of CUT THRU, recognised for conversion-centred design and product-market fit testing. His evidence-based approach has driven growth for global brands and unicorn startups in Australia and America. A Netty Award winner (2023, 2024), he blends data with execution.

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