The DRVN Social Podcast · Episode 5 · · 28 min
How we actuallyuse AI (andwhere we don't)
I had AI edit an entire video for me. Did it save time? Yes. Would I let it do the whole job? Absolutely not. Episode 5 is about where AI fits inside an agency, and the one thing it can't replicate.
Co-founders, DRVN Social
AI is a hot topic. Most people either love it or hate it, and almost everyone's using it to some degree. In episode 5, Alex and Aron get into where it fits inside DRVN, and where it doesn't.
Assist, don't replace
Alex has spent months testing where AI belongs in the workflow. He had it edit an entire video. Did it save time? Yes. Would he rely on it to do the job completely? Absolutely not. Storytelling, finding relatable topics and the way something is cut still need a human. Where it does help is research, a first pass at ideas taken with a pinch of salt, and design variations that used to take hours and now take twenty minutes.
Aron's worry is bigger. People are getting so reliant on it that there's no real input from their own minds any more, and it takes away the skill.
Same prompt, same answer
Ask ChatGPT the same question as everyone else, with no context, and you'll get the same answer as everyone else. Alex spent a couple of hours giving Claude six documents of context about himself, his ambitions and how he works. Since then the answers have been far more relevant. The more context you give it, the more it can help.
The sea of sameness
Aron sees it in posters and flyers from small businesses: they all look identical, and the trust goes straight away. Captions all read the same, full of emojis and em dashes. Even YouTube thumbnails have converged: big yellow text, an arrow, a shocked face. Everything is "good enough", and it all feels hollow. Something is better than nothing for a small business, but the human element is what's getting lost, and it's where brands will stand out.
The platforms are responding
For the last couple of years it was all about grabbing attention. Now platforms are prioritising satisfaction. Likes and views are vanity metrics. What counts now are the deeper signals, like comments and shares in DMs. That levels the playing field. A small channel with genuinely valuable content can now outperform a much bigger one, while big accounts that got complacent are seeing their reach drop.
"Taste is something AI can't replicate. Always put your stamp on things."
The biggest threat
Total reliance. People are starting whole businesses, including agencies, by asking AI to build the website and make the videos. If that access were ever limited, they'd have no skills to fall back on.
What business owners can do today
- Get familiar with ChatGPT or Claude, even if it gives you a bit of an existential crisis at first
- Give it context. The more it knows about you and your business, the better it gets
- Set up an agent for each client or project, with that context preloaded
- Teach it your processes as skills, so it follows your way of doing things rather than the generic one
- Use it to take the admin off your plate, so you have more time to grow the business
Alex compares it to the tractor: it changed farming overnight, and it freed people up to focus on other things. The advice is to work with it and stay adaptable, but don't lose your secret sauce.