Avoiding AI Slop: Best Practices from the Human Framework

AI is transforming how we create content, but there’s also a growing problem: AI slop. It’s the flood of auto-generated videos, images, and text that takes up space without adding value; and we’re seeing it everywhere. So how do you use AI to enhance your work without the noise?  

Host Matt Pierce introduces TechSmith’s HUMAN Framework, a practical approach to keeping the human element at the center of AI-assisted content creation.  

We hear why your expertise and lived experience gives you access to nuance that AI can’t replicate, how authenticity has become currency in content creation, and why treating AI as a thought partner rather than a replacement leads to better outcomes.  

Matt also shares TechSmith’s philosophy on AI integration, including their approach to control and customization in tools like Camtasia AI. While AI is the worst it's ever going to be (meaning it will only get better), the choices we make now about how we use it will determine whether we're creating valuable content or just more noise. 

Learning points from the episode include: 

• 00:00 - 02:01 What AI slop is and why being able to identify it is crucial 
• 02:01 - 02:28 TechSmith Unlocked event announcement  
• 02:28 - 03:23 Introducing the HUMAN Framework acronym  
• 03:23 - 04:40 H - Harness your expertise 
• 04:40 - 05:38 How humans have access to nuance through lived experiences 
• 05:38 - 07:47 U - Understand your audience.  
• 07:47 - 09:00 M - Make it authentic, not artificial  
• 09:00 - 10:31 A - Aim for better, not just faster  
• 10:31 - 11:52 N - Never skip reviews  
• 11:52 - 12:30 How to use the framework as your guide 
• 12:30 - 13:00 Why you need to choose tools that keep you in control of the output 
• 13:00 - 13:28 The importance of ethical AI partnerships  
• 13:28 - 15:40 Control and customization in Camtasia AI  
• 15:40 - 16:30 AI as an augmentation tool 
• 16:30 - 17:17 Outro  

 Important links and mentions: 

• TechSmith Unlocked: https://discover.techsmith.com/techsmith-unlocked-2025/   
• Camtasia: https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/  

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are, and wherever you're watching from. My name is Matt Pierce, host of Visual Lounge, and today I'm gonna be talking about something we like to call AI Slop. That's right, it's a phrase that's getting thrown around a lot and it's got some meaning. And I want to start off with a little bit of a story here. It's just gonna be me today, but so we'll have some more great guests coming soon. So here's the story I want to tell. So I've been working with a variety of different groups, including our PR group, and we wrote an article together about AI Slop and some things that are happening on channels like YouTube and other places that are kind of trying to combat AI slot because there's a lot of stuff going out, videos and music and just audio that's you know it's just auto-generated and it has really not as much meaning or purpose, or it's really not doing much, just taking up space and not adding value to their systems. Obviously concern. So we wrote this article talking about kind of the changes, the impact, things like that. And it was funny, within one hour of that article getting published on a reputable site, someone had duplicated it using AI, making changes, and it wasn't nearly as good. Now, crazy, right? Like the things that AI is enabling people to do to move quickly, uh obviously it can be a generator, something that can speed you up. It can be something that can add value to do things that maybe you couldn't do otherwise. I think about like vibe coding. But if you're in the world of marketing, learning design, training, uh, you're maybe even in product management or whatever it might be, there's a lot of things getting thrown at us right now about AI. And it can often be challenging to know is this a good use, is this a bad use? Is it, you know, is this really good content? Is it bad content? And so today, if you're listening to this on the day the podcast, October 1st is being released, we are hosting an event, the TechSmith Unlocked, where we're gonna be talking about our vision for AI. And part of that event, one of the things we were going to do is roll out a framework. Now, time constraints, got a lot to show you, a lot of cool features, not all of them, all AI things, but a lot of cool things coming down the pipe that you can go uh sign up for Unlocked if you haven't, or you can always listen, get the replay. We'll be sharing out bits and pieces, as well as the full two and a half hour webinar. Let me share this about what we were gonna share. We're gonna share what we're calling the human framework. And the human framework is an attempt to start to look at how you apply AI, whether you're making video, recording audio, you're doing images, whatever it is, you could apply this to that and it to give you some guidance and direction in the time of kind of this AI wild, wild west. And now I want to be clear, I realize fully that AI is, as they say, the worst it's ever going to be. Its usefulness now may be limited compared to that which it may become. AI may not have yet realized its full potential, right? It has not become actualized as far as I know. But the thing that I think is important is that as creators, as people who are creating content, we're thinking through what that might mean. Now, I want to go through what human stands for, because it's an acronym, right? H-U-M-A-N. Uh, and then we'll talk about each of these really briefly. So, first is you need to H harness your experience, then you understand your audience, because that's something you can do. M, make it authentic, not artificial. A, aim for better, not just faster. And N, never skip reviews. Now we're gonna go through each of those, but I think it's important to think through like, you know, these pieces, and we picked them for a reason. There's probably other advice, but hopefully this becomes something that you can turn to, say, like, yeah, hey, I'm using AI. Am I keeping it human? Have I harnessed my expertise, understand the audience? Am I making it authentic? Am I aiming for better, not just faster? And am I keeping, you know, not skipping my reviews? So, first with harness your expertise. AI is meant to be general. In a past podcast with Andy Kashadina, we talked very specifically about AI is going to aim for the common denominator, right? The kind of the middle ground in everything. And that can be really good, especially if you're like, I don't know much about that. Or I'm not really an artist, I don't know how to draw an icon. Maybe it can make an icon for me. So it's aiming for the middle, but you have expertise as a human, you have experience, you have access to nuance. Nuance that is capable because you have lived through experiences that you might not be able to read. I won't go deep into this, but there's a lot of pieces about various things that are happening with AI because people are turning kind of it over AI over to be their therapist or to give them advice and they're they're choosing to make decisions. And uh one great report I read talked about that nuance is really, really hard, even for humans sometimes. And AI just at this point does not get it. So it doesn't understand that you're hinting at something or thinking about something, or or there's gray areas. It's like this is the answer, and that's it. And that can be problematic. And when it comes to like learning and development, it comes to these other opportunities. We want to make sure that your judgment, your expertise, your understanding is getting applied. Next is understand your audience. Now, AI, also referring back to the episode with Andy Crustadina, AI is really great at helping you to maybe think about your audience in a different way or to start provide you information about your audience. But only you can choose the audience, and only you can make sure that the audience actually matches up with what your intention. So you might ask AI, for instance, to look at your website, give you a kind of a portfolio view of who it thinks your core audience is. Great. But is that actually who you're talking to? Is that who you're making your training for? Is it really their lived experiences? So you need to pull those in. And again, AI can augment here, it can enhance, it can help, can you can use it as a thought partner to ask it questions and have it challenge you. But at the end of the day, you have to make a decision about your audience, what they need, who they are, and how you can help them in the best possible ways or better to connect with them. So, you know, asking yourself, who's this really for? What do they need to know? Am I really giving that to them? And then really digging in a little bit deeper than what, again, nuance that the AI isn't going to be able to get you to. And again, it can help cycle up that a little bit faster, a little bit more, maybe think more deeply. Um, but you've got to make some judgments there. The next and M, make it authentic, not artificial. Uh authenticity cannot be faked. AI can't do it. It's getting there, it's gonna be harder and harder as we go. But I think being authentic, speaking from the heart, is something that it's gonna have a hard time doing for a long time. Now it can start to replicate ums and ahs, pauses, mistakes, even maybe. Um, but is it gonna be able to modulate its voice appropriately? Is it gonna be able to do things that a human can do? And in in our imperfectness, right? In our frailty, in our ways that we are sometimes terrible or bad or not good, that becomes a calling card. Not to say we should make bad stuff, but just the reality that like I lean in or I back away or I do things that maybe aren't the way perfectly done, but that has value in your content. Now, I'm not saying going out and make mistakes or you know, do that just on purpose, but be real that authenticity, it's it's a real currency. We can trade that in for the content, you know, help the people that are we're trying to connect with, right? So that comes down to the choices that we're making, you know, and sometimes it's gonna make sense to go with an AI avatar or an AI voice or a stock visual or something, right? But like let's make sure we're making those decisions with purpose, right? So that we're not just letting it be like everything. Because some things really matter. Like, think about the experiences that you want to have and where it makes sense, right? You know, if an AI avatar was the one to explain that your benefits are getting cut or you're getting fired, or maybe it's uh explaining the value of something else that you're like, I that that's meant to be personal. It's meant to be human to human. And those are because those are hard things and emotional. And the AI does not care. It will say whatever you ask it to say, essentially. Now, within limits, of course. Next, aim for better, not just faster. Of course, AI can speed up a lot of the process, but this is where, again, you come in as a human. When we think about video, uh, I've been playing with VO3. We talked to Ellis Pratt recently about VO3. It can make a lot of cool stuff. You can do a lot of things with it. But is it better? It could be faster, but is it better? And, you know, right, what I find right now is I'm dealing with a lot of like the quirkiness that it outputs. And it's gonna get better, it's gonna get better and it's gonna get easier to understand. And I could get better at writing my prompts and doing the things that I knew need to do, providing context. But like what we're really trying to do is enhance the things that we're doing. Now, even though I said, hey, earlier, AI aims for the middle, which it does, it might be able to help uh elevate you because I find often, again, I like the again, this example I've shared, but like I use it as a thought partner. I'm saying, like, hey, I'm thinking about these things, you know, one by one, like one at a time. Ask me that a follow-up question, help me to get to, you know, to whatever. And that clarity is like having a conversation with someone, really, AI maybe writes better stuff, but I write better stuff because of it. And I'm more thoughtful about the things that I'm putting down on paper or the video that I'm creating or or whatever it is that I'm doing because it's helping me to get to a better conclusion. And that's not always faster. It could write something one take. It could absolutely write something one take and be done, and it would be done, but it wouldn't be better. Okay, the last thing is the N never skip reviews. We know AI makes stuff up, uh, it hallucinates as if it's a term, it's gonna do it. So it's a critical that we're reviewing whatever it's putting out. There is a temptation because it did something, we just gotta get it done. Maybe it's not that important that we don't review it. You've got to review it. We've got to save yourself some embarrassment, save yourself and your learners or your audience confusion. The worst case is that you're doing it for something that's really critical and it makes a mistake and someone gets hurt. That's not good. The best case is that, like, oh gosh, that's dumb that it said that. Ugh, let's just, you know, whatever. But even in that case, we what what's the trust that's happening, right? When are you willing to erode that trust? And so we just need to be thoughtful. Look, I get it. Sometimes it's just fast. Let's see what it cranks out's gonna help you move along. But take the time, right? Like, take the time to just go through it, especially if you're going to share it with other people. You know, even with a like, say there's different AI tools out there, if it's a caption that maybe is a little bit wrong. I'm sure maybe even on this podcast, just being thoughtful about the impact that has on someone who might need that content, who might be really relying on it, and you might be thinking, oh, it's just I'm I'm glad I'm doing it as a bonus, but we want to just be really careful about that, right? So all in all, with the human framework, it's a chance to stop and reflect about the things that you're doing, the ways that you're using AI. I there's AI is out of the Pandora's box, it's open. It's not going away. Tools are we're gonna see a continued rapid rise of tools, I believe. That we're gonna see more and more tool sets, more and more options of things that can do stuff, and that they're gonna get increasingly more comp complex, increasingly more sophisticated. And so we have a right to, you know, we need to do some due diligence. So, you know, as you're going out seeking tools that can do AI things, make sure you're choosing the things that are going to allow you to remain and keep the human in it, both kind of from this framework, but also just kind of naturally as well, right? Like be in the driver's seat still. Uh, maybe there's a day that AI is so good that we don't have to worry about that, and we're all living in a shingle law where we don't have to work so hard. But until that day, it's critical that you are part of the work that is going forward. You're and using AI. And that that's not saying don't use AI. I I I I think you gotta embrace it. But make sure you're choosing tools that are ethically sourcing their materials, that are partnering and keeping you secure and and thinking about that long-term future. Of course, we want them to make better models and train things, and we want them to create things that make our lives easier. Who doesn't want that? But make sure you're you're thinking about that, right? Uh we believe at TechSmith that there is uh a level of control and customization that should be yours. So, for instance, if you haven't heard Camtasia.ai, uh it's a labs project for us. It we've taught basically an AI to create screencasts from images. Uh so it's pretty darn cool. But one of the things that our designers have built into it is a lot of control. So even before even if you don't go into Camtasia to change everything, you can change the focus, you can change the script, you can do lots of adjustments before you ever produce this a video, an MP4. You could produce just an MP4, but you still have a lot of control, or you could take it into Camtasia and you can control all of it. It's all built into a Camtasia project, and that kind of control puts you in the driver's seat. Now there might be videos you're like, I don't want to change anything. It's fine, it's good. It's good enough. The context are right, maybe I gotta change a word or two, whatever, but it's good. And there's mighty times you're like, this got me a first good start, but I'm gonna go change the heck out of it because it's not where we want it to be. And we think that there's a lot of power in control and being able to adjust, right? Like when you put in what you put in a prompt, if you just get back the final solution answer, it's like, uh, you know, now I've got to, you know, I I've had very few videos come back from other tools that have allowed me to just use it without then having to take it and edit it or change it or find some other pieces to put together over it. So uh ultimately at the end of the day, you've got to find a balance. There, there's not a one solution here. There's not one AI. You know, we believe that partnering with some of the best in class, best of breed, however you want to phrase it, is going to be really powerful. Uh, we have announced in other places that some of our tools we're integrating with 11 labs. We've got other tools that we're using and pulling in that we feel are some of the best that are going to power some of that AI technology behind what our tools do, and then yet allowing you still to have control. So we feel very strongly that you need to be in the driver's seat. You are the human, you are in control. And this framework hopefully will help you wrap your mind around some best practices, things to help you look. We're not telling you how to prompt things. There's lots of people out there telling you how to prompt things. Not telling you how all the details. Well, we have other stuff that we have, other conversations we had about building things. But this is about centering yourself as a creator around how are you going to interact and use AI as an augmentation, as a, as a building block to do the things that you need to do. Uh, and you know, maybe this is a hopes this is an okay metaphor, but like think about when you augment your you put on glasses, you see a little bit clearer. Or if you needed a prosthetic for something that helps you and enables you, or if you use things in your shoes, any kind of augmentation, right? It enables you to do more, maybe better, faster, more capably. And that's what AI is doing right now. And we can use it well, but also it can hinder you. So just be mindful about that process. But again, let's wrap up with human. Harness your expertise, understand your audience, make it authentic, not artificial, aim for better, not just faster, and never skip reviews. With that said, I hope you found this unaugmented version of the Visual Lounge helpful. And that I hope that the human framework is something that you can apply, you can watch for coming soon from us. There'll be a PDF with an article, uh blog post, we've got some other things that we'll put together to help emphasize these ideas. But I wanted to share it here first in light of our Tech Smith Unlock event. And if you haven't, again, Tex Smith Unlocked, you can go search for that. Uh, we'll have stuff all other places you can find if you're missing it. I apologize about that. We'd love to have you join us. And if you can't again can't watch it, don't worry. We will be sharing out that content. We got a lot of cool things coming, some fun announcements, some other things that are changing that. Watch out. Uh, moving things forward in a good, good way. So, with that said, we love our audience at the Visual Lounge. So grateful for each and every one of you taking time to listen, give us a little bit of your attention, and what we hope is that you learn and grow and continue to be better by spending just a little bit of time leveling up every single day. Thanks everybody.