Animalz’s 3 AI content rules

How to turn AI from a crutch to a craft

Author

David Broderick
June 12, 2025

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AI can help you create better content, faster…

Or it can lure you into half-arsing the parts of the job that will always need both cheeks 🍑

It all depends on how – and how much – you use it.

Just ask Tim Metz, Director of Marketing and Innovation at Animalz.

He got lowkey addicted to using AI to write… until he realised just how much of his thinking he'd outsourced to it.

Now he follows three rules to make sure AI is improving his work, not seducing him into serving up AI slop.

Let’s dive right in!

1️⃣ Always Start With Your Input

Nasty looking blank page you got there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it just… went away?

That’s where your fave LLM comes in. It can get a shitty first draft on the page in seconds!

A draft that’s jam-packed with:

  • “In today's fast-paced world”

  • Metaphors about chefs and gardeners (for some reason?)

  • “In conclusion”

Editing all that out would take about as long as writing the draft in the first place. 

So – let’s be honest – you don’t. The slop seeps through to the final draft.

And even if you take the time to gussy things up, you’ve still got an article built on rotten foundations. Because it’s still basically the same article as everyone else who’s used an LLM to write their first draft on the same topic.

So, even if you win that particular sprint to the top of the SERPs… it’s still ultimately a race to the bottom 🤷

The solution, says Tim is to “get something on the page before pressing The [AI] Button instead of pressing The [AI] Button to get something on the page.”

“Good input is better than bad, and bad input is better than nothing,” he says. “Even a hint of an original idea takes the AI away from digital landscapes in today's world featuring chefs in kitchens stirring up mediocre metaphors.”

2️⃣ Let AI Get You Unstuck

AI’s superpower is getting you unstuck.

“It can connect the dots between disjointed sections in a story or give you twenty variations of a sentence that doesn't feel right,” says Tim.

Hand it a half-baked idea and it can save you hours of fumbling around trying to make it work.

Tim has used it to turn a hunch he had that a concept from Buddhism could make a good hook for an article on pre-mortem meetings.

And in the last week alone, I’ve used it to:

  • Workshop ideas for a transition sentence an editor requested

  • Shorten the TOFU CTA in my LinkedIn bio to hit the teeny tiny character limit

  • Come up with subject line ideas for this week’s TOFU newsletter

This is the AI sweet spot, for sure.

3️⃣ Ban AI at beginnings

The worst place to add AI into the mix is the beginning, says Tim.

And he doesn’t just mean the first draft. He also means when you’re starting your research, or structuring a new section, or coming up with a title for an article.

“At each stage of your work, give yourself time to think deeply and struggle with the problem — it’s where original ideas are born. Only after you've wrestled with your thoughts and written them down, call in AI assistance.”

Start with your trusty ol’ noggin before you turn to the LLMs. Because the earlier you add AI to the mix during any part of the writing process, the more likely you are to serve up generic slop.

Animalz’s do’s and don’ts of AI content

So, there ya have it folks – the three AI rules driving Animalz’s content engine:

❌ Don’t get AI to write your first draft

✅ Do write your own shitty first draft, then use AI to finetune it

❌ Don’t get AI to do your research for you

✅ Do use AI to connect the dots or workshop ideas

❌ Don’t begin anything with AI – from your research to a new section

✅ Do wrestle with your thoughts, then bring AI in to help where (and if!) it’s needed

Check out Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page (and its companion piece: Confessions of an AI Addict) to learn more about how Tim and the Animalz team are using AI in their work.

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