Andrey Slobodyan: “Artificial Intelligence Must Make Room for Humans”

An Ahrefs survey of 879 content marketing professionals found that 87% of respondents already use AI to create content. Yet online promotion faces a paradox: content has become much easier to produce, but much harder to stand out with. Technology has made it possible to fill platforms with content faster, but it has not solved the central challenge of promotion: how to make it truly personal.

Andrey Slobodyan, an expert and developer of innovative online promotion solutions and winner of the 2024 XM Leader Awards in the “Digital Transformation Leader” category, believes it is time to fundamentally rethink the role of artificial intelligence. The goal is no longer to generate another piece of text or an image in seconds, but to scale human capabilities. He is convinced that AI should not become a monopoly in the online world.

Andrey, you have successfully used AI for years to promote online platforms with audiences in the millions. You have developed numerous programs to optimize workflows in marketing and advertising. Have those algorithms now become obsolete?

The greatest impact of algorithms comes not when a platform simply “adds AI,” but when it redesigns its workflow around collaboration between people and AI. The point is not to produce even more AI-generated content, but to choose the right set of tools. The internet is flooded with synthetic images, avatars, and texts that all sound alike. Audiences quickly recognize this artificial quality. As a result, we are seeing a shift in the opposite direction: the value of a real person is growing. What matters is individuality, a distinct voice, and a recognizable face.

This challenge is especially relevant to smaller bloggers with only a few thousand followers. They cannot afford teams to handle scripts, advertising, and everything else. What is a major source of income for microbloggers? Advertising. In one of my projects, I work with vitamin manufacturers. Our analytics show that bloggers who manage their own pages and appear authentically on camera generate higher sales.

But simply getting rid of an avatar and showing your face is not enough to sell successfully.

Exactly. Many bloggers who create authentic, personal content still make no sales. Why? This is a major pain point for any affiliate program. Bloggers do not know what to film, what to say, or how to make a video stand out from thousands of similar ones. They lack experience, knowledge, and tools. So they put off posting and, a week later, simply forget about it.

I developed an application that creates a product promotion strategy tailored to each individual blogger. Here is how it works. The system asks questions and gathers information about the person: what they do, how they speak, whether they are comfortable showing their face, and whether they have used the product before. It then selects a format—a short video, a post, or a Story. For videos, the system builds a script that takes into account the blogger’s profession, speaking style, age, and other characteristics. If someone does not want to appear on camera, the script changes accordingly, focusing on the product and close-up shots instead. AI suggests the topic, facts, sequence of shots, and final presentation.

The blogger is left with the most important part: filming the content in their own voice and style.

So you created a system for personalizing advertising?

Yes, and that is only part of the solution. Sometimes bloggers do not even know how to publish an advertisement from a technical standpoint. That is why the system includes step-by-step guidance: users see on their phone screens where to tap, what to select, where to add a caption, and how to publish the material. Each prompt appears precisely when that step is needed. The system also automatically inserts a personalized link directly to the relevant product page. In other words, we cover the entire journey, from the initial video idea to the point at which a sale is attributed to a specific blogger.

There is an important distinction here. My objective was never to “automate even more so we can eliminate inefficient bloggers.” It was to understand why a person was not taking the necessary action and use technology to remove that obstacle. Bloggers gain an effective online promotion tool without having to maintain an entire marketing operation. To me, the value of this technology is not simply that it replaces employees. It makes it possible to scale personalized work.

But AI tools quickly become outdated.

We need to distinguish between two things that are often confused. One is a particular AI model that, for example, writes text. The other is the system built around it: what questions to ask a person, what rules to apply, what counts as a high-quality result, and how to review it before publication. The first part really does change very quickly. But if an application is designed properly, it does not depend on any one AI model.

The system built around the model, on the other hand, becomes more valuable over time. It accumulates rules, scripts, and decisions drawn from practical experience. The application itself can adapt to any niche. In my view, that is the most important skill in working with AI: not tying yourself to one tool, but building your own system on top of it.

There is another challenge in online promotion: information becomes outdated almost instantly. The first to report an event wins. How do you keep up?

Any community benefits from being able to quickly connect its subject matter to what is happening in the world. It is impossible to monitor everything manually and produce content quickly, especially if you manage more than one platform. That is why I have created several programs for specific tasks.

One of them, for example, monitors X (formerly Twitter), where major news often breaks first. Previously, I had to visit each expert’s account and check for updates. Now, all those accounts are connected to a bot. As soon as a new post appears, it is delivered to me with a translation.

Another program writes in the style of a particular channel. I uploaded posts from the channel, analyzed its vocabulary, structure, tone, and characteristic phrasing, and configured the model to reproduce that style. This is useful when a major event happens and a large volume of material needs to be published almost simultaneously. An editor gives the system a bare fact and receives a draft post with an opening line, structure, humor, and language tailored to that channel.

A third program creates images. Each channel has its own visual identity, including fonts, composition, and imagery. All you have to do is send the bot a photo and some text to get a finished graphic. If anything needs to be changed, a simple editor is also available within Telegram.

As I understand it, you also use AI to create entertainment content. Does that still work for promotion?

It does, provided you understand your audience and tap into the right context at the right time. For example, in early September, scientists released a complete map of a fly’s brain to the public. The news attracted considerable attention, so we decided to build on that moment.

In one evening, I put together a bot: you send it a meme, and it analyzes the image from the hypothetical perspective of a fly and delivers a verdict on whether it is funny. The key is to become part of a trend before it ends. Every technology should solve a specific business problem, even a playful one.

Andrey, you have mastered AI tools. What does AI mean to you above all?

Above all, it means limitless possibilities: opportunities for real people to grow, develop, and improve. I have described several promotion tools that may seem unrelated. But together, they address one challenge: creating an AI system that brings together analytics, content creation, personalization, and the automated management of marketing processes.

None of my programs is designed to replace humans with artificial intelligence. AI equips people with the tools they need so they can focus on what matters most: being themselves, building trust, understanding their audiences, and developing their own voices. It is quite possible that the more advanced AI becomes, the more valuable those human voices will be.

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