We're all worried about "AI Slop" – a catchphrase that describes how AI is vomiting useless content into all of our feeds. I'm worried about that, too. But something else is also happening: When used correctly, AI is enabling stories to be told that would otherwise never have seen the light of day. That just happened here at Storytell, and I want to share how, because humans partnering with AI to tell real, authentic, data-driven stories that help the humans gain superpowers and achieve new outcomes is what really motivates me to build Storytell.

The Marketing department: Created to produce a poor facsimile of what's actually being built inside companies

Marketing departments exist inside companies to take the actual work being done by the builders in those companies – the engineers, the product managers, etc – and re-package that work in a way that's considered safe to share outside the company.

The problem is the marketing department usually has no fucking idea what's actually going on in builder land. This makes it really hard for marketers to tell authentic stories to the target personas the sales team is trying to sell to.

What if these marketers could use AI to actually understand and re-package the work the builders are doing in a way that was efficient, effective and authentic?

Even better, what if it were possible for the actual builders themselves to be the ones writing this content just by doing the real work they're already doing every day?

This is now possible. Here's an example of how it works:

One of our lead engineers, Shelby, was working on Linear ticket ENG-3872. (Linear is like Jira – a ticketing system for product and engineering teams.) The ticket looks like this:

Shelby documented his work as he did it by adding comments in the ticket (he's one of the best I've seen at actually documenting his work as he goes):

We see this all the time in engineering and product teams (aka builder land) – teams getting their day to day work done. This work is usually kept in the dark and never sees the light of day. But there are incredible authentic stories buried in this actual work that's getting done. Stories that users and buyers would love to hear, because they aren't manufactured marketing fluff. They are authentic examples of what the company is actually building for them.

AI Alchemy: Telling authentic stories, with data

One of our writers, Sharmaine, who is not technical, was able to create this public post for a Data Analyst audience from that Linear ticket.

Stop Wrestling with Your Data: How Natural Language Querying Can Give You Your Life Back | Storytell.ai

storytell.ai platformByShelby Ramsey

Here's how she did it:

First, she had Storytell create a fictional data analyst persona so she could define the audience she wanted to write for:

Storytell created a persona for her:

She then copied that output from Storytell, and pasted it into her knowledge so she could use it for the next step:

And she also copied the entire Linear ticket – with all of Shelby's comments – and pasted that into Storytell. Then she wrote this prompt:

Storytell created a fantastic first draft based on Shelby's work, tailored to the defined persona:

Sharmaine shared the draft with Shelby. He made a few comments, and that was it – the post was ready to publish:

Liberating the authentic stories stuck inside the enterprise:

This engineering work that Shelby did – that so many engineers do every day – would have never seen the light of day at most companies. But thanks to Storytell, Sharmaine was able to take his work and re-package it in an authentic way that helps data analysts understand how they can use Storytell to become superheroes at their jobs.

We love creating superhero users at Storytell.

That's what I call AI Alchemy.