The Aesteria Codex //024: Is It Ethical to Use AI for Your Content? Where to Draw the Line

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• “AI is theft.”

• “Why should I bother to read something you couldn’t be bothered to write?”

You’ve seen posts like these all over your feed and it's making you wonder if you should really be using AI or not. When we get to the heart of the question, it really boils down to: is it actually ethical to use AI as a creator?

What Does “Ethical” Even Mean When You Use AI?

Before we can answer whether using AI is ethical, we have to get clear on what ethical even is. What is ethical? What isn’t? And how do you determine that for your own brand?

Ethical comes down to integrity. And integrity means being true to both your personal values and what your brand represents. This is a conversation I go deeper into in What “Authenticity” Really Means in Modern Marketing.

When it comes down to AI content specifically, the question to ask is this:

Is your original genius still showing through your work?

Is it still you and your brand? Or is it now a digital asset that’s a pot of everyone else’s ideas mixed together?

Why Using AI Feels Like Cheating: The Belief That Success Has to Be Hard

Entrepreneurs, creators, coaches and thought leaders have a lot of resistance to AI because they feel it’s unethical. But why? Why do you feel it’s unethical to use AI?

Let’s go through the objections I hear the most.

1. “It feels like cheating. If AI helped me, it’s not really my work.”

Go back to the question: is your original genius still showing through your work?

If the ideas, the perspective and the expertise are yours, and AI helped you get them onto the page faster, it’s still your work. A tool that helps you get what’s in your head out faster doesn’t change the fact that you did the work.

2. “Success is supposed to be hard. I should be doing this myself.”

I get it. But here’s the thing: a lot of people who resist using AI don’t resist it because they’re actually against using it as a tool. They’re avoidant of technology, and they’re clinging to the belief that success needs to be hard and that they have to do it all themselves. So they don’t even allow themselves to learn where their business can be improved by using a tool.

It’s like believing dinner only counts if you made every part of it from scratch. So you won’t buy pre-chopped vegetables or a rotisserie chicken, you run out of time and energy by Wednesday, and you order takeout for the rest of the week. Even if pre-prepared food is a "shortcut" it doesn't mean you didn’t make dinner. You’re allowed to make things easy for yourself, and the same goes for your business.

3. “I tried it, and what came out was bad.”

Well, of course it wasn’t up to standard. When there is a part of you doubting using a tool, you’ll never use that tool as efficiently as if you decided to master it. So as long as you’re still doubting if AI is really ethical, you won’t take the time to learn it properly, and your content will keep coming out poorly.

Your AI is only ever able to write as well as you give it direction, which is what I cover in [how to make your AI sound like you]

When Using AI Does Become Unethical: Your Own Expertise Stops Showing

Using AI becomes unethical when your own expertise is no longer showing, and instead you’re defaulting to AI to do your decision making and creativity for you.

And at that point, it’s not just “weaker work.” You’re now doing work that’s technically a ripoff of what someone else has created, because AI is just regurgitating something else that already exists.

Where that line sits depends on what you sell, which is a conversation I started in [AI Slop Is Everywhere: How to Navigate Content Creation as a Personal Brand].

This is why I don’t let my AI come up with my ideas for me. Before my trained AI model writes anything, I answer a worksheet of questions to collect my own thought leadership on the topic. My AI suggests an outline, I change that outline to cover what I want to talk about, and then my AI plugs my answers into it, following my brand voice guidelines. Then I edit. I built my process this way so my ideas and my voice are embedded in anything my AI helps me create.

Because here’s the thing: AI is the king of using a lot of words, but saying very little. And it’s not necessarily AI’s fault. It’s because AI is just reflecting how well you know your own message, and how clearly you can communicate what you really want to say.

If you want to check your own content for that, I show you how to spot it in Content Fluff. Should You Tell Your Audience You Use AI? Start With What You’re Hiding

How open you need to be about using AI starts with your own insecurity around it.

What do you feel insecure about? Why do you feel it’s “wrong,” or that it shouldn’t be used? Where do you use AI, but feel like you need to hide it from the world, your clients, your audience?

Once you find that spot, you have to determine what it’s telling you. Either this is something that shouldn’t be using AI in your business, or it’s where you need to refine your own process more, so that your process embeds your own expertise and isn’t defaulting to AI knowledge.

From there, how actively you talk about it depends on your brand positioning. If you’re positioning yourself as an expert of AI, then of course, talk about it. If your positioning is pro creator, and actively against AI, then you should create all your own work and say it’s original, without shaming those who do use AI.

Decide Where You Stand With AI, Then Go Master the Tool

So, is it actually ethical to use AI as a creator? If your original genius is still showing through your work, yes.

Just like how you can use an electric mixer in the kitchen to mix your baked ingredients, rather than attempting to mix them by hand and spending 45 minutes mixing lumpy dough, a tool is a tool, and it should be used to help you. Humans are constantly evolving, and we use tools to help us create the results we want, decrease our load, and improve our efficiency.

Your next steps are determining how AI plays a role in your own brand positioning, and then integrating it into your business masterfully.

If you don’t know where to start, start with what to train your AI on first.

Next week, I’m sharing the AI writing mistakes I tell my AI never to make. If you’re not on my list yet, subscribe here so it lands in your inbox.

Here’s to your genius showing in everything you create,

Irisel xx.

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