News

Notes from the studio

Practical writing on AI-assisted social — each piece answers a conversation actually happening in the industry right now, with the source linked.

AI & craft

Quality, brand voice and the slop debate.

The slop backlash is an opportunity for anyone who still reviews their work

Platforms are purging AI slop and audiences are fleeing it. That raises, not lowers, the value of content a human has briefed, edited and approved.

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Everyone can smell it now: brand voice when audiences are AI-fatigued

A 17,000-upvote thread about a college post with 'an AI quality about it' says the quiet part: audiences discount machine-flavoured content even when they can't articulate why.

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The fact-checking tax: why AI drafts still need an editor

Agencies report fact-checking AI content now takes longer than writing from scratch. The fix isn't abandoning AI — it's grounding generation and making review a structured gate.

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Agency playbook

Workflows, pricing and client relationships.

Pricing AI-assisted social work: value, not hours

AI collapsed per-post economics. Agencies that keep selling volume will race to the bottom; the durable retainer prices the judgement layer.

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Should an agency tell clients it uses AI?

Yes. Clients don't fire agencies for using AI; they fire them for shipping unreviewed AI and for the feeling of having been deceived.

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Six months of AI inside an agency: what the honest retrospectives agree on

Across agency retros the same pattern emerges: AI wins on production speed and loses wherever there is no human gate — voice, facts, client-facing work.

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Approval & trust

Human-in-the-loop, disclosure and compliance.

Nothing should auto-publish: the case for approval-first social

People are duct-taping approval gates onto automation stacks because they instinctively know unreviewed AI content shouldn't ship. Approval is a feature, not friction.

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What the EU AI Act's Article 50 actually requires of agency social content

From August 2026, AI-generated media needs machine-readable disclosure. The agencies that will cope are the ones whose approval workflow already records what was AI-made.

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Reach & results

Algorithms, engagement and benchmarks.

Does AI content get penalised? What the platforms actually punish

Practitioners assert 'Instagram suppresses AI posts' as fact. The documented reality: platforms downrank low-effort, generic content — the tool isn't the trigger, the quality is.

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The profession

Where the social media manager role is going.

Will AI replace social media managers? A calmer answer

The role is shifting from producing every post to directing systems and exercising judgement. The parts that don't automate are precisely the parts that matter.

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