Heard of AI?
Hard to find anyone who hasn’t.
A study from 2025 found that 88% of marketers now use AI in their day-to-day tasks, while 50% of them use it to create content*.
So why not just ask ChatGPT for some funny content?
I’m not against AI, but there are three things you really need to know.
First: even though you know what is and isn’t funny, an LLM doesn’t.
This matters because humour is a remarkably variable phenomenon.
To show this, let’s try a little experiment. Take this ad:
And take this ad:
Both funny, right? But funny in very different ways.
An LLM will provide you with ideas, but won’t tell you why they’re different and, critically, right for your brand, proposition, audience and product.
I can do this.
So when a cheery LLM who has no skin in the game (no skin at all, actually) tells you what’s funny, just remember you’re talking to a machine that doesn’t understand humour.
Your brand is unique. The snag is that LLMs deal in generalities.
Second: how distinctive are your prompts?
If you’re using similar prompts to 100 other businesses in your category, then you’ll get similar results to those 100 businesses.
And what’ll happen?
You can say goodbye to any hope of cutting through.
Instead, you’ll do a wonderful job of blending in with your rivals.
Do you really want to be forgettable?
Nah, I didn’t think so.
Third: if you’ve heard of AI, you’ll know about AI Slop.
Which is?
Worthless crap that’s churned out night and day.
This matters to your audiences — and they increasingly loathe it.
‘In 2025, mentions of “AI slop” across the Internet increased ninefold from 2024.’ Check out this graph.*
These figures look set to grow in 2026.
So ask yourself: what would you prefer to be served? This meal?
…Or this?
I can’t read people’s minds, but I think it’s fair to say that no-one ever thought, “I was served a bit of AI slop, which a robot thought was funny, and that made me super-keen to buy the product.”
* Sources
Survey Monkey: AI in Marketing, 2025.
Eisend, Martin: ‘A Meta-Analysis of Humor in Advertising’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, June 2009.
Gaillot, Ann-Derrick and Amarotti, Anna: ‘What the Rise of AI Slop means for Marketers,’ Meltwater, 27th November 2025.