Your AI is Showing

Balancing the machine and the mind.

I typically ground my business decisions in solid data with a hint of intuition. But today, I'm going pure instinct to call out what's becoming painfully obvious: slapping AI onto your customer experience is the equivalent of a restaurant that replaced waiters with QR codes—efficient for you, but annoying and impersonal for everyone else.

As a CX/research enthusiast, I'm an AI power user. It's woven into my daily life, both personally and professionally, and if forced to choose just one subscription in my life, Anthropic would win every time. Yet as a consumer, I cringe when brands deploy AI. If I can tell a brand uses AI, it typically feels like corner-cutting and cost-saving at the expense of genuine connection.

In 2025, consumers have become remarkably adept at spotting AI interactions; they know when they're being handled versus helped. And this technology revolution is rapidly sorting brands into these two camps: those who genuinely understand their customers' needs, and those frantically throwing shiny tech at problems hoping something magical happens. Be honest with yourself—which camp are you in?

Today we’re digging into how to identify when AI is hurting rather than helping your customer experience, where it should remain completely invisible, and how to strike that elusive balance between automation and authentic human connection that today's consumers crave. The future belongs to brands that use AI as a secret weapon, not those that slap the letters across all of their marketing materials.

The Tipping Point is Near

Consumers are teetering on the edge of AI fatigue, and one bad chatbot interaction might be all it takes to push them over. It’s not just the tech itself they’re frustrated with, it’s the brands behind it, using AI as a shortcut instead of a tool for better experiences.

When ChatGPT first came on the scene in November 2022, people and brands were intimidated, eager, and mildly terrified. Less than three years later, AI is seemingly everywhere. Left and right, brands are flexing how they’re integrating AI—whether they’re providing a genuinely useful enhancement to the customer experience or cutting corners to save costs.

I felt the impact of “cutting corners” last month when my mortgage was transferred to another lender. Determined to stay on top of things (I’m still getting the hang of this homeownership thing!), I called to set up autopay and avoid late fees. Instead of speaking to a human about my biggest monthly expense, I found myself battling a bouncer-like bot, blocking my access to real human support. It couldn’t understand my simple ask, so I finally hung up in frustration, hoping I wouldn’t be penalized for the lender switch.

AI is supposed to make things easier, not make me stress about foreclosure before heading into the office. And it’s not just phone calls; people deal with this every day through auto-generated emails that miss the mark or LinkedIn posts that read like an AI-generated fever dream.

Make Your AI Hot & Mysterious

AI itself isn't the problem though. When used effectively, it can transform your brand's customer experience. The issue emerges when AI becomes obvious—because the moment customers detect it, the illusion of authenticity and connection shatters. Your AI should follow those trendy Substack articles that keep coming across my homepage feed, telling me to get off Instagram and cultivate mystery. Not sure if I'll be following that advice for my social media, but when it comes to implementing AI, your brand absolutely should. Your AI should channel Rihanna before she drops a new album—present but tantalizingly out of sight.

The most effective brands render AI invisible yet undeniable. You don't notice it, you simply experience everything becoming smoother, faster, and somehow... better. AI should function as your secret sauce, not the name plastered across your restaurant. Think Apple's autocorrect (when it actually works). The technology operates silently and seamlessly in the background, making interactions effortless, probably to the point that you forgot you already used it 17 times today. You don’t catch yourself thinking about a truly powerful AI experience because it happens so naturally that you don't notice anything at all.

I get the corporate logic… if you’re a big brand, it makes sense to inject automation into the interaction at this stage. It’s cheaper, it filters requests, and worst case, a human eventually steps in. The problem is that most people who are contacting customer service are not having the best time. If they were having the best time with your product, service, or experience, they wouldn’t be contacting you. They’re contacting you because they need help and in this time of need, AI should enhance human input, not replace human judgment.

Your AI should be like the Dursleys hiding Harry Potter under the stairs; out of sight and out of mind. Or better yet, like an A-lister's team orchestrating flawless hair, makeup, and logistics before the Oscars. I’m blissfully unaware of the behind-the-scenes chaos—perhaps a dress zipper broke, or the driver got lost—but all I witness is perfection. That's what your AI implementation should embody: undetectable excellence.

Don’t be DJ X (sorry to my friend at Spotify), who narrates its decision-making process between songs. Just play the music already! If you've invested in training an AI model to perform something valuable for you, let it execute the function and move along.

AI’s No-Fly Zone

Speaking of executing, here are the three sandboxes where AI should not be playing (or if it is, I better have zero clue):

1. Luxury/Expensive Services. If your customers are spending a good chunk of change, there better be a human touch. Mortgage lenders, high-end hotels, personal finance companies—if your customers are paying a premium, AI should never be their first (or only) interaction. I hope you’re reading this, Rocket Mortgage.

2. Customer Complaints. CX service centers are gonna hate this one. But once again, there’s a good chance anyone who is contacting your customer service department is not calling to tell you how much they love you. They have a problem. Do NOT hand them a robotic algorithm to work through their problem unless you’re looking for internet hate and people walking around telling their friends how terrible of an experience they had with you. If you want to inject AI here, it needs to be mutually beneficial for both parties and how a lot of you are doing it right now is most definitely not.

3. Brand Personality. I don’t think LLMs are capable of thoroughly reflecting and articulating content in brands’ voices and style guides quite yet (if you have a platform that does this well, slide in my DMs). I 1000% encourage you to use AI for brainstorming, but do not let it make a final call without a human filtering through the copy and styling first.

Balancing The Mind and The Machine

To guarantee you won't alienate customers with cold automation, ensure your AI is: 1) empowering humans to make smarter, faster decisions; 2) offered as an option, never forced; and 3) wearing that invisibility cloak like you’re sneaking around Hogwarts.

Sorry not sorry for the Harry Potter references, but I think they fit well here. The magic happens when your customers can't distinguish where technology ends and human ingenuity begins. That sweet spot of seamless integration is the sorcerer’s stone of digital support in 2025.

In this algorithm-obsessed world, the brands that will win aren't the ones with the flashy new technology, but the ones who prioritize the delicate balance of the machine and the mind, knowing exactly when to let AI work it’s BTS magic and when to bring the human center stage.

The most powerful technology isn't the one that dazzles with its capabilities, but the one that enhances humanity so naturally that we forget it's even there. AI reaches its pinnacle when it elevates the experience without becoming the experience.

So before deploying your next AI solution or slapping it across your offering, ask yourself one critical question: Is this technology strengthening the human connection or subtly eroding it? Your answer will determine whether you're truly innovating or just showing off that your AI is showing.