Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin. Storytelling is a very human activity. We tell the stories to help us learn, understand and find meaning. But as stories are automated, as we slip and slide in AI slop, we have to wonder how we can coexist with AI when it comes to telling stories. How we can coexist while keeping the stories human.
In the last few years, we have moved rapidly from static truths to dynamic adaptations. Old stories were static artefacts. They rarely changed. Oral storytelling, written text, recorded media — they provided fixed lessons for those around us. New storytelling with AI is a dynamic system. Stories adapt in real time and they adapt to the responses of those who are hearing them.
For humans, stories have always been laced with lessons of survival. For AI, increasingly and unfortunately, they are about marketing — marketing to sell to us, to push agendas, to manipulate realities, all of which feeds directly into mis-, dis- and malinformation.
The mark of truth in a story used to be its consistency. Think of the stories told and retold across generations. Think of the old school detective dramas, where the suspect under pressure would not crack and change their story - their consistency was a strong signal of truth. Then consider today's environment where stories change by the hour and constantly adapting the story may mean sacrificing that mark or truth. It may also mean your story gets hijacked by others or hijacked by AI itself - the twist in the tale that undermines trust and relationships you hold dear.
We had the AI honeymoon in 2023. The growing pains in 2024. Last year, storytellers divided, some all-in on AI content generation, others pulling back to purely human creation. This year it's all about the slop. We are drowning in AI generated content, much of it automated, much of it distributed by agents, most of it just nonsense. Noise to fill a hole.
Content is not a story. It is churn. Organisations increasingly confuse volume with value, becoming stuck in a pressured loop that they ‘have to be doing this and doing it now’. Infinite generation does not equal connection. It does not improve relationships, strengthen trust or shift behaviours. It just sends stuff out. And we end up drowning in a sea of sameness.
Last year, marketers rushed to generative engine optimisation a bit like lemmings to a cliff. A great deal of energy and money has gone into pumping material into the web on the basis it can be surfaced by AI overviews. This may seem like a logical step but AI is fallible and hallucinates all the time. Asking an AI overview what's going on is like asking a five-year-old what they did at school today. They'll be able to access some of what actually happened. They might have done some drawing. They might have done some reading. But you are just as likely to have a tall tale about fairies under the lockers and a dragon who came for morning tea. AI adds and embellishes results and overviews in exactly the same way.
But because we are lazy, because we scroll, because the links are not as visible as they were in the old SEO environment, people take the story presented to them by AI as truth, as accurate, as a reflection of the story they were trying to discover. So be careful what you wish for because the overview is just as likely to make up a story about you being a rubbish organisation as it is to reflect with any accuracy who you are.
And there is a pipeline problem. An AI writes an article. It is optimised for the crawlers. An AI overview synthesises it. The original insight — even if it was generated by AI or originated in a hallucination — becomes a fact through repetition, not because it is a fact. Digital share of voice is won by those who can flood the zone with any old nonsense. AI prioritises amplified conversations over empirical truth so we end up with synthesised chatter driving the discourse. The narrative turns muddy grey and everybody sounds the same. Beware those selling GEO to clients at vast sums of money as most are presenting you with snake oil to slip on.
Zero-click has created a narrative crisis. The sequence is simple. ‘I’m lazy. I can't be bothered scrolling anymore. I'll read what's there, I'll believe it, I'll move on. I may never come to your site again’. Your storytelling has to be on point to be given any visibility at all and the authenticity premium sits squarely in human-led storytelling.
The hippocampus is the brain's storyteller. Research from the University of California shows the hippocampus connects separate, distant events into a single narrative. We remember the details of each event better if they form a coherent narrative. AI disrupts that process. We have real-time updates and non-linear storytelling but we also have disruption to memory so our recall may not be as accurate as it was.
Stories help us manage uncertainty, transmit survival information, collaborate, preserve memory and build social cohesion. In a divided and polarised world, social cohesion is in short supply. Good storytelling can help rebuild it. Bad storytelling, or the absence of storytelling replaced by information churn, can destroy it.
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it's taken place - so runs one of my favourite quotes. AI can deliver stuff, but it cannot ask "how can we help?" and produce an answer that can be acted upon. That is a human question, and it requires a human answer. Open the door to AI-enhanced storytelling if it serves you. But hold tight to the keys. When the Prince went looking for Cinderella, he found the right foot that had the right fit. AI squeezes us into ‘one size fits all’ stories, even if that causes discomfort or blistered anxiety. AI will happily chop and change the story to suit the algorithm - it’s not looking to find a princess. So when you tell your stories, look to develop understanding. Create a story that resonates with people, not machines.
Put simply, never chop the foot to fit the shoe.
