AI & My Commitment To Transparency
I live in Los Angeles, where the pollution is visible.
But we live with it.
Why?
Honestly, I don't always know.
Probably because it's a beautiful place with a lot to offer — and most of what matters here is worth the trade-off.
Same with the internet right now.
There's a lot of junk polluting our online world.
AI-generated garbage dressed up as content: hundreds of pages of hollow text that technically answers a search query and says nothing to an actual human being.
You've read it.
It has that specific texture of words arranged rather than written; sentences that are technically correct and somehow completely empty.
I'm not interested in producing that.
I'd rather publish nothing.
Here's Where I Actually Stand
I was a professional copywriter for over a decade. Much of my work is tied under NDA.
I left that career to pursue art and poetry because I genuinely love writing. The process. The search for the right word in the right place. The moment a line clicks.
I'm not handing that over to a machine.
But I'm also not pretending AI doesn't exist or that I don't use it.
That would be dishonest.
And your trust means more to me than anything else I could get from this site.
So here's the truth about my process:
A human being — me — will always write the content featured on this website.
AI does not write my essays, my poems, my stories, or my guides. What it does — sometimes — is help me research, outline, brainstorm, and proofread. The thinking, the voice, the specific personal stories, the frameworks, the perspective: those are mine. They have to be. That's the entire point of this work.
What The Labels Mean
Any content published here is marked with one of three designations so you know exactly where AI touched the process:
Not Created With The Assistance Of Generative AI Generative AI did not assist in any part of the creation of this text.
Created With Minimal Assistance Of Generative AI AI helped with outlining, research, and ideation for brainstorming documents or rough draft reference material. The draft I actually wrote came after and was written by me from scratch.
Created With Standard Assistance Of Generative AI AI assisted with some combination of the following — all as reference material, none as published text: outlining, research, rough draft sections, style and format suggestions, SEO keyword guidance, proofreading and copy editing. The note that matters most: everything AI generated was used as reference. I wrote the content.
Why I'm Telling You This
Because I spent a decade writing copy that was designed to persuade people. I know every manipulation tactic in the book. And I made a decision — when I walked away from that career to make art and poetry — that I would not use those tactics on the people who read my work.
Transparency is part of that commitment.
You deserve to know what you're reading and how it was made. Especially here, where the whole point is honesty about darkness, craft, and the specific texture of lived experience.
AI can help me build the structure. It cannot live my life for me.
The writing is mine. It always will be.
— Michael
