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Who am I in the age of AI? Who is my company? What do we stand for? These are the questions that start everything. And it's exactly the questions that most companies can't answer.
I'm scrolling through my LinkedIn feed and I see it right away: the titles with a Capital Letter for Every Word. The long line in the middle of a sentence where one point would have sufficed. The sentences that begin with “In a world that changes rapidly.” The rhythm that is always the same: build three sentences, one sentence to top it off, then a call to action. And the story itself: about agentic commerce, about sustainability, about the future of HR. Always well worded and nicely written. Just exactly the same as what the person wrote before. And the person before that. “Written” by people using the same language model, typing in the same prompt, and clicking publish. A new topic every day. Same format every day.
LinkedIn mainly makes it visible, but the problem does not take place on a platform. It takes place in the market. In how companies communicate with customers, with partners, with the world around them. In how they present themselves on their website, in their campaigns, in their proposals, etc. What happens on LinkedIn is now happening everywhere. It is a type of epidemic.
The market sounds like one voice
Open the website of any digital agency or tech company. Chances are, you'll be welcomed by a company that promises to “accelerate, grow or transform”, works “AI-first” and is ready for “the next level.” AI is a revolution and everything is fundamental right now. Everything is AI-driven. Everything is human-centric, even for companies that have never seriously thought about who their customer really is. They are words that make no sense, because they mean everything.
Two-thirds of all marketing and communication professionals use AI to create content every day, and ninety percent plan to triple or more their output in the near future (StackAdapt/Ascend2, 2025). But more output solves nothing if the content is empty. On the other hand, the figures prove that: 65 percent of all marketing content is never read, never shared and has no measurable effect. Nielsen found that only 37 percent of people still find branded content credible, down from 14 percent in four years. The market is producing more than ever and is at the same time less believed than ever.
Companies are investing massively in AI to become distinctive and are therefore becoming generic.
Companies lose their voice, their identity and ultimately the trust of their customers. The AI evangelists and AI-first agencies that should solve this are actually making it worse. Quacks in a new suit, with a larger marketing budget. They scale up the output, not the distinction. And this isn't a recent problem that AI has caused. AI has just made it very visible. Even before ChatGPT, most companies couldn't give a clear answer to the question who they are and what they stand for. They copied competitors, followed trends, wrote in generic sector language. AI didn't invent that pattern, it scaled it up, enlarged it, and uncovered it. At least if you want to see it.
Two problems, one cause
What goes wrong goes wrong on two levels that reinforce each other.
The first: companies are using AI to tell their story instead of supporting it. They type a prompt — “what is our vision for sustainability”, “how do we position ourselves in the market” — and take the answer as their own point of view. That is the problem. Not that they're using AI, but that they're asking AI for an opinion that they don't have themselves. AI always answers. It just has nothing to say. It has no point of view, no experience, no reason to say anything. It recombines what is already there. And what's already there is exactly the problem: a sea of generic language that everyone has already generated.
Research by the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions shows that consumers rate content that is recognized as AI-generated as less natural, less credible and less relevant. Even if the content is literally identical to human-made text. Trust in AI companies stands at 21 percent. Confidence in AI itself is around 20 percent (NIM, 2025). The market has a nose for what's real, even if they can't name it.
The second problem is more subtle but equally harmful: companies are using AI to generate instead of automating. They use AI for the work that is visible, the content that goes out, while the processes in the background remain untouched. They could have used the time that is freed up to think about what they actually want to say. Instead, that time is filled with more of the same. More posts about agentic commerce. More articles about sustainability. More white papers about topics they have nothing to say about. They produce more. They say less.
The market is shifting, but not where everyone is watching
Sequoia Capital recently described the shift sharply: the cloud transition was software-as-a-service, the AI transition is service-as-a-software. For every dollar that companies spend on software, they spend six dollars on services. That is the market that is now opening. But what I see is that most companies are making exactly the wrong choice. They use AI for their voice and leave their processes alone. While it has to be done the other way around. Provide AI with order processing, inventory management, data analysis, customer service. That's where speed and precision determine quality, not originality. And keep your voice to yourself. Because that's the only thing that can't be automated. At least for now.
What AI can do
I am not against AI. I have to say that clearly, because it's easy to read this as a plea against AI. But it isn't.
AI is exceptionally good at the scalable, the measurable, and the repeatable. In commerce, the applications are concrete and valuable: personalized product recommendations at scale, dynamic pricing strategies, automated order processing, predictive inventory management. Analyze customer behavior and respond to it immediately, without the need for a team of analysts. These are tasks where speed and precision determine quality, not voice or conviction. Let AI do that. Give AI workflows, data, and repetitive work.
But the content of your website, the story behind your brand, the opinion you have in the market, the conviction with which you approach a customer or partner: AI can't do that for you. Not because the technology isn't capable of it, but because it doesn't come from anywhere if you don't support it. A customer isn't just buying a product or service. He buys trust. And trust starts with a company that knows who it is. Accenture found that 76 percent of consumers have trouble distinguishing between authentic and AI-generated content. At the same time, trust in digital communication is structurally declining: no sector exceeds 50 percent when consumers are asked who they trust (Thales Digital Trust Index, 2025). The market feels it, even when they can't explain it.
If everyone says the same thing, no one really says anything anymore.
The companies that will be successful in the coming years are not the companies that produce the most content. It's the companies that create the most meaning. That stand for something. Who tell a story that comes from somewhere and that doesn't start with a prompt, but with a question. Who are you in the age of AI? Who is my company? What do I stand and go for?
Sit down. Think. Write it yourself. Then use AI to distribute, scale, and automate it. But first, make sure you know what you want to say. Because if you don't know that, the language model doesn't know either.
