Unpopular opinion: AI is actually good.

Luddites, haters, and chronic complainers may sound smart, but they’re missing a golden opportunity to harness artificial intelligence and level up their income.

Yes, a lot of AI-generated content is slop. Nobody likes low-effort AI videos clogging up YouTube. Likewise, terrible copy-paste ChatGPT content has essentially destroyed sites like Medium. However, comparing yourself to the bottom quartile in any endeavor is a terrible benchmark.

To give an investing example, there are thousands of stories about people who lose their live savings speculating on penny stocks or pre-trial pharmaceutical companies. You could spend your time and energy pointing and laughing, which offers little benefit beside entertainment value, or you could study great investors like Warren Buffet and develop a comprehensive strategy for selecting winning stocks.

Without getting too self-indulgent, one of my 2026 goals is to spend one hour per day leveraging AI in a way that will increase my daily income by at least $0.25.

At the end of the year, those 365 actions should raise my earnings by $91.25 per day, or $33,300 per year.

If you’re looking for new strategies to increase your income, here are a few ways AI can help. And don’t worry, nothing generic like “vibe coding” or “trading bots” is on this list.

Did you know the Jason Statham film A Working Man is based on a Chuck Dixon novel titled Levon's Trade?

Men’s adventure fiction is having something of a resurgence, with many self-published books doing big numbers on Amazon. I asked Grok to analyze the most popular back-end keywords customers search when looking for these titles. The results might surprise you.

Terms like “Conspiracy thriller hero” and “Military veteran revenge story” are popular, but not keywords an author would intuitively use.

Likewise, many AI platforms are good at suggesting long-tail keywords or analyzing search trends to help you achieve maximum exposure when you list a product.

If I were going to make a “how to” blog or social media account, I would use AI to create a highly detailed fictional character and then rewrite all of my content through the perspective of that character.

Here’s an example using the dice game craps…

Original version:

“The Iron Cross is a popular craps betting strategy designed to create frequent small wins by covering most possible dice outcomes. While it doesn’t eliminate the house edge, it appeals to players who enjoy steady action and reduced volatility at the table.”

Character version:

“This Iron Cross thing at the craps table… it’s a solid move. You put your money on the field, then you place the 5, the 6, and the 8. That’s it. Now you’re covered on almost every number that can come out. The only thing that hurts you is the 7—if that shows up, you lose everything on the layout. Everything else? You win somethin’, even if it’s small.

You’re collectin’ little hits all night long, keeps the action goin’, keeps the table warm. It’s not gonna beat the house in the long run—nobody beats the house in the long run—but it makes the session feel good. Less up-and-down, more steady grind. Like eatin’ a nice plate of spaghetti with marinara: nothin’ flashy, but it satisfies.

So if you wanna stay at the table a long time and not get your heart broken every five minutes, give the Iron Cross a try. Just don’t go crazy with the bets, alright? Pace yourself.

We’re here to have a good time, not to cry in the parking lot.”

AI can, ironically, add a level of personality that most expository content lacks.

“The ceramic is thick, built to hold heat the way old café mugs did before everything became disposable.”

That’s a line ChatGPT generated when I asked it to emulate several successful mail-order catalog ads. It also produced a wide variety of creative and sophisticated color descriptions when prompted to mimic the artisanal tone used by Hermès.

Unguided, AI can produce some extremely generic content.

Grok once wrote a sales letter that went “We stan this coffee cup’s vibes.” Horrible.

Luckily, you can prompt these platforms to help you emulate a specific and distinct style. And AI can even teach you how to reproduce that style naturally over time.

My ChatGPT account is setup to argue and be professionally critical of anything I write or do. While it’s not always pleasant to read the feedback, it is legitimately helpful.

You can’t fix what you’re not conscious of.

AI is surprisingly good at identifying blind spots and helping you actively correct them.

This isn’t a magic cure-all, but it is an easy and inexpensive way to get honest, constructive criticism in areas you’d otherwise overlook.

There’s an old business saying, “You are not your customer.”

Jimmy Buffett was a hardworking, extremely disciplined businessman who became a billionaire by selling the fantasy of living a lazy beach-bum lifestyle.

What you find personally interesting may have no appeal to your customers.

AI can help you A/B test ideas, brainstorm demand, or role-play ideal buyers. If you’re selling something, it’s worth using ChatGPT, Grok, or Claude to generate objections and rebuttals.

This may sound obvious, but it’s something many entrepreneurs and established businesses fail to do.

Jaguar’s “Copy Nothing” campaign, anyone?

Used intelligently, AI allows you to take on a more directorial role.

You generate the ideas, the software handles the grunt work.

Everyone loves to hate AI. And as a quick aside, this newsletter is bespoke and 100% written by me. But much of the visible “AI slop” comes from the bottom quartile of users applying the tools in a lazy or incompetent manner.

If you’re smart, and you are, you can leverage the technology reach new creative heights and produce things people actually enjoy.

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Disclaimer: This article is for entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice, always do your own research.