Human relationships, based on emotions, are the key to the conversations you have with potential clients. They can be the reason that you either win or lose a new client. So what happens when AI gets involved? Is AI listening to what your prospects are saying? Are you about to be replaced? Let’s have a look.

In April 2023, when I gave a short talk at a big event full of professional speakers, I asked how AI might be used in marketing. Back then, I was new to AI – I’d dabbled a bit with ChatGPT, who didn’t even know who I was at the time! I’d done what everyone else had done – I’d asked it to give me a list of topics to write about in my blogs. I was pretty convinced, at the time, that AI was not a safe bet when it came to promoting a service business or writing a speech. No, I did not use it to write that particular talk!

I shared three points with the audience, about why AI was not the answer to all their problems:

1. Data doesn’t feel. You could ask an AI to write a speech for you, or an article, or copy for your website. But because data doesn’t feel, there’ll be no emotional connection between what you write and your audience.
2. Computers can’t taste food. They can’t say how they felt after the service they received in a restaurant. As recently ago as April 2023, AI could only take the information it had been fed and imitate it. Nothing unique available – nothing to help you StandOut!
3. AI is taking us into the future by looking at the past. If you want to take your clients forwards, you can’t use a system that only knows about history.

You can watch that talk here, if you want the full story.

Fast forward to February 2025 – nearly two years after I wrote and gave that speech. What has changed? Back then, AI only knew what had happened up to a certain point in time. It had no sense of what was coming – probably not even in the world of AI! I don’t know how it has happened, but now, when I ask ChatGPT to ‘roast’ me, it does a stunning job. I have no idea how it knows that I end up with blue, ink-stained fingers every time I use my fountain pen – but it knows!

However, there is something that hasn’t changed. Data still doesn’t feel. Computers still can’t taste food, or tell the difference between good and bad service. They have no emotional connection – with anything. I’ve fed a list of emotions into ChatGPT (other AI tools are available) and it struggles to use them, or sound anything close to human.

AI Can’t Talk

When you’re selling a service, such as speaking, coaching or consulting, your clients are buying you. Your time, your experience, your expertise. Before they will spend any money with you, they have to trust you. To build up trust with another human being, you need to establish an emotional connection with them – a relationship. While AI is getting cleverer, I still don’t think that it will ever be able to replace humans on an emotional level. I don’t believe that AI will ever be able to build an emotional relationship with a real person, or even tell you how to make a proper connection with a prospect or a client.

To do that, you must talk to the other person. Face to face. Or screen to screen. Or on the phone. Not by text, WhatsApp, or Messenger. However you really talk to your prospects and your clients, for now, as long as you keep talking to them, you’re not going to be replaced by AI. All you have to do is keep talking.

And listen to what they say!