As Wordsmithie kicks off our new AI newsletter, The Big A.I.dea, I wanted to share our agency’s AI origin story.

Although we’d been toying with AI for several years (including building our own walled garden with GPT-3), the “big bang” for generative AI came on the last day of November 2022, with OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT. At Wordsmithie, we were a bit stunned at the magnitude of what it could do from day one.

As writers, editors, and designers, we despaired at reports that our roles would soon be extinct. In those early days (before AI pratfalls slowed early adoption), companies began leveraging generative AI for the kinds of work we’ve built our careers on: creating the connective tissue of narrative and design that bond companies and their customers.

AI was suddenly the stuff of nightmares. As the founder of a 12-year-old content marketing agency, I began having them.

One night, I dreamt I was in New York City as a giant Godzilla-like monster rampaged through the metropolis. It threw skyscrapers like javelins, tossing parked cars aside to reach the cowering citizenry.

Like everyone else, I was running for my life, but then I noticed that the beast was pointing and shouting, “I’m coming for you next,” and “You can’t escape me!”

I stopped, realizing that the monster spoke English. That meant I could communicate with it. So, I turned and ran toward the huge lizard. Once in front of it, I climbed on top of its feet. Craning my neck up to meet its gaze, I asked, “Would you like to dance?” and I held my arms up to illustrate the offer.

“WHAAAAT?” the creature asked, glaring down at me, confused yet bemused. It thought for a moment, shrugged, and softly growled, “Well, OK,” before reaching its scaly front paws down to take my hands. We began to sway back and forth slowly.

And then (because nightmares often end as weirdly and abruptly as some SNL sketches), Mothra appeared out of nowhere to attack my new dance partner.

That’s when I woke up.

At first, I was lying in bed saying, whhaaaaat? But then it struck me: The monster was AI, and if you ask it to dance, you may just survive it. In fact, you might pick up a few moves, and maybe even teach it some new steps.

The next day, at our leadership meeting, I acted out my nightmare for the team. After they stopped laughing, we had a serious discussion about how we could invite the AI monster to dance.

Ever since, we’ve been learning about generative AI, writing about clients’ AI research and advances, editing AI courses, and performing “grounding” training reviews for our clients’ gen AI outputs. We’re also working on new AI offerings.

We find AI is great for helping with basic tasks like speeding up research collection and synthesis. As for original writing and design, we still do that the old-fashioned way—leveraging the multi-talented humans on our team.

Generative AI is a fast-evolving technology, but with every leap forward, it stumbles. That’s why the need for a “human in the loop” has become increasingly clear (and that requirement is now being baked into regulations and security policies). That loop is our sweet spot.

So, that’s our AI origin story, and it’s also the purpose of our new newsletter, The Big A.I.dea.: To share tips and insights, showcase how innovative brands are using AI, and more. We’re all now humans in this loop, and we hope you’ll join us in this dance.