I was recently invited to join a debate about whether AI is eroding human resonance. I couldn’t make the event, but the question has been sitting with me. It’s easy to see the benefits of AI: speed, scale, efficiency, access to knowledge. But when we talk about resonance, about what really connects us as humans, AI has limits we shouldn’t ignore.
Because while AI can hear what people say, it cannot hear how they feel.
Beyond the transcript
Upload a transcript into ChatGPT and you’ll get back a neat summary or a tidy set of bullet points. What you won’t get are the pauses – those long silences loaded with meaning. You won’t see the quaver in someone’s voice when a memory catches them off guard. You won’t feel the crack when a story touches a place too tender to hold steady. The moment when their eyes shift to the distance and a pause hangs. And you let it. Because you know the words that follow will come with just the right amount of gravity to be the moment of resonance you need.
Those subtleties – the pauses, the breath, the shift in tone, the space between beats – carry just as much meaning as the words themselves. They tell us when someone is masking, when they’re proud, when they’re grieving. They tell us when a moment deserves space. A transcript on its own flattens all of that into ink on a page.
Why resonance matters
As writers, communicators, or business owners creating content, our craft isn’t just arranging words. It’s listening for what sits behind the words. It’s noticing when someone speeds up because they’re excited, or slows down because they’re searching for courage. It’s recognising when a story isn’t polished, but it’s powerful because it’s real.
That’s where resonance comes from. Not from the information itself, but from the emotion woven through it.
And brands, more than ever, need resonance. In a world flooded with content, information is easy to find and easier still to generate. But connection, that’s rare. People don’t just want to read your words; they want to feel something because of them. They want to be moved, seen, remembered.
The risk of efficiency
In the rush for efficiency, we risk losing our ability to listen. We risk shaping our questions around what makes for a good AI prompt instead of what sparks genuine human curiosity. We risk moving so fast that we no longer notice the quiet details – the slight catch in someone’s voice, the long pause that deserves honouring.
But good writing doesn’t come from good prompts. It comes from good listening. From holding space instead of filling it. From asking questions not just to extract an answer, but to understand, to connect, to be changed by what you hear.
The writer's edge
This is where we, as humans, hold the advantage. AI can generate content. But we can create connection.
Our job is to notice the hidden signals that don’t show up in the transcript. To translate not only what was said, but how it was said, and why it matters. To bring forward the emotion behind the words so others can feel it too.
That skill – to listen deeply, to attune to what isn’t obvious, to transform emotion into story – will be one of the sharpest points of difference for writers and brands in the years ahead.
Because content is abundant. Resonance is scarce.
The question isn’t are you creating content? The question is: are you creating connection?
If you want to uncover not just what your customers say, but how they feel – that’s exactly what my Voice of Customer research is designed to do. I go beyond transcripts and surveys to capture the nuance, emotion, and unspoken drivers behind customer decisions, so your brand messaging resonates on a deeper, more human level.
