Artificially Human

When AI Just Mirrors the Performance We’ve Perfected


By Jerry Grundman

Scroll through any social feed and you’ll see it:

The highlight reels. The polished captions.

The humblebrags dressed as vulnerability.

Everything looks real but can feel a little off.

Like we’re watching versions of people, not people themselves.

Then comes the AI-generated stuff, and it barely stands out.

Because, let’s be honest.

Even before AI showed up we were already faking it.

We curated our lives. Filtered our words. Trimmed the mess.

We turned “sharing” into “showing,” and somewhere along the way, we lost track of the difference.

AI didn’t break that.

It just got really good at copying it.

The Social Media Stage

It didn’t start with bad intentions.

Social platforms invited us to share. But over time, sharing became showcasing.

Then showcasing became branding.

Somewhere in between, we started calling ourselves “content.”

We didn’t just tell stories. We optimized them.

We didn’t just express ourselves. We packaged the version we thought people would like.

And what got rewarded?

The polished looks. The clever punchlines. The illusion of effortlessness.

Not the realness. Not the messiness. Certainly not the in-between.

So we kept posting. And polishing. And performing.

Then comes AI. And it was good at the game.

It studied our tone. It learned our hashtags.

It mimicked our style, our strategies, our voices. Even the voices we were faking.

We fed it our collective internet history and told it, “Dance monkey!”

And it did.

Suddenly, the thing writing LinkedIn posts and Instagram captions wasn’t a person.

It was a mirror.

And we didn’t always like what we saw.

Not because it was inhuman. But because it was too familiar.

AI writes like us because it learned from us.

The smooth talk, the persuasive storytelling, the branded authenticity.

That’s our legacy.

We’re not upset that AI is artificial.

We’re unsettled that we are too.

So where does that leave us?

Not in a battle for who can write better.

But in a moment that asks us to be braver.

To be a little less polished.

A little less optimized.

A little more human.

You don’t need to prove your worth with perfect phrasing.

You don’t need to compete with content engines.

You just need to show up and say something useful.

Something that really sounds like you.

Because at the end of the day, AI will always be better at performing.

But it can’t be real.

It can’t be moved.

It can’t care.

Only we can do that.