How should a small business use AI without losing the human touch?
Short answer
Split by surface, not ratio. Anything a customer, reader or advertiser touches stays human. Back-office grunt work goes to AI, and people underrate how much it can now absorb. A business that's 100% human falls behind one getting 100x the output, and one that's 100% AI produces so much sameness that nobody cares.
My rule: use AI where it makes sense, and stay completely human on the front end. I call the model an AI-assisted creator brand.
"the businesses that are just trying to be a hundred percent human for everything, you're just never going to get the leverage that somebody who's doing a hundred X more than you or a thousand X more than you... But then there's the alternative, which is AI. Everything is going to just, nobody's going to give a crap."
The gold is in the middle: the back end uses AI where it doesn't matter, and the front end is human where it does.
What should stay human?
- The voice readers hear in the newsletter
- Relationships with advertisers
- The podcast and anything with a face on it
- Judgment, taste, prioritization and the final call
AI-drafted copy still goes through a named human editor before readers see it. On my own brands, I'm the face. I write and rewrite the stories, put my voice on the newsletters, and run the social media. It's a human brand.
Michelle Rueda told me on my podcast she still writes her Reddit replies herself for authenticity, and thinks even sponsor follow-up should come from someone who knows the brand voice.
What should AI do?
The grunt work. It's not even necessarily writing newsletters, although AI helps there too. It's all the really annoying stuff you have to do, and people underrate how much of it AI can absorb now.
In my operating model, AI owns routine execution, research, repetitive production, monitoring, quality checks and follow-through. Humans set direction. The goal is not "never hire humans." It's making human headcount optional wherever capable AI can do the work reliably.
Does AI help or hurt local media?
Done right, it helps. Local media is one of the few industries AI pushes in our favor, because people are going to want to follow real people. Traditional local media struggled for 10 to 20 years because of high costs, and AI can finally lower costs without cutting output.
That means being a real brand, not a local newsletter and maybe a half-built website. Put your personal voice into it. Do Instagram. Do a podcast. Be more of a creator.
Why does a real person win?
When you can't trust anything online except video and people, a creator readers can meet at an event wins, because they know you're not an AI. I see a big opportunity in helping all kinds of businesses understand this and package their message through branding, newsletters and technology.
Everyone is talking about in-person, human connection, being real, anti-AI. It's not that you can't use AI at all. You use it on the back end and you're human on the front end. That's exactly what we've been building: a newsletter, Meta ads to the newsletter, Facebook groups, Instagram reels about events.
How do I stay ahead when others copy the model?
Every week I see more people trying this. In real estate the message is getting around: stop talking about homes and interest rates, start talking about the community. My answer is to get big enough now, so you're established when the wave of startups shows up.
Own your assets too. Travis from What's On Goldie told me on my podcast that a brand-new account can post one engaging reel and out-engage him, so he focuses on what he owns: the newsletter, the website, the event calendar.
More in why AI makes trust more valuable and whether AI agents can run a business yet.
Answered by TJ Larkin. From Local Media HQ podcast conversations in February, March, May and July 2026 and TJ's written operating principles. Last updated .