How We Use AI — The Scrolling Dead

We get asked sometimes if we use AI to write our content. The short answer is no. The longer, slightly messier truth is that we use AI the way most people do — quietly, reluctantly, and only when it helps us do our jobs better without making the work soulless. Every article on The Scrolling Dead starts with a human — one of us sitting in front of a laptop, probably procrastinating by checking emails or Slack messages, and trying to make sense of the digital chaos around us. That’s not something a language model can fake, at least not yet.

We write about technology because we live in it. Keith’s a software developer who spends all day writing code, so when he jokes about automation anxiety, it’s coming from experience. Julie’s a social media manager who knows exactly how engagement algorithms work, because she helps feed them. Brenda teaches high schoolers who use ChatGPT to write essays she then has to grade. Paul spends his workdays cursing new cloud software that’s supposed to make his job “easier.” And Rachel freelances in design, surrounded by AI image generators that could technically replace her if they ever learned how to have taste. None of that’s theoretical — it’s real life.

So yeah, we use AI — sometimes. Usually for proofreading, cleaning up formatting, or helping structure long pieces that go off on tangents (we’re human, it happens). We’ll use grammar tools or summarizers to double-check clarity. Sometimes an AI helps brainstorm article titles when we’ve been staring at the same screen for too long. But it doesn’t write for us. It can’t capture the frustration of sitting in another pointless Zoom meeting, or the weird mix of dread and fascination you feel when your phone suggests the exact product you were just thinking about. That’s lived experience, not predictive text.

We treat AI the same way we treat any other technology: useful, but never trustworthy. Helpful in small doses, dangerous when you start to depend on it. It’s like caffeine for your workflow — a little makes things better, too much makes everything weird. What we won’t ever do is outsource our voices. Every piece you read on The Scrolling Dead has fingerprints all over it — messy, contradictory, human fingerprints.

We also use AI-generated images occasionally, but only when it makes sense. Stock photo sites are expensive, and we’d rather create something original than recycle another picture of a person looking confused at a laptop. When we use an AI image, it’s labeled clearly and used to illustrate a point, not to deceive. You’ll never see fake news images, AI-generated people pretending to be real, or any of that uncanny nonsense here. We prefer authenticity, even when it’s flawed. Especially when it’s flawed.

The irony of running a tech site that sometimes uses AI to write about how AI is taking over isn’t lost on us. Keith jokes that it’s like letting the zombie write its own obituary. But the difference is we still control the story. We’re not here to glorify automation or pretend it’s neutral. We understand how these systems work, who builds them, and what trade-offs come with them. When we talk about AI, it’s from the perspective of people inside the digital machine — skeptical, informed, and occasionally amused by how quickly it’s all spinning.

AI tools can catch a typo, but they can’t capture why tech exhaustion feels like trying to sprint through molasses. They don’t know what it’s like to hit your sixth “update now” popup of the day, or to accidentally open a work app on a Saturday. They don’t have kids asking for more screen time, or a boss who thinks emojis make feedback more human. That’s why our writing still matters — it comes from the people living the things we’re talking about, not just analyzing them.

We also take privacy seriously when using AI tools. Anything that processes text or data is anonymized — no personal details, no user info, no email addresses. We don’t feed your messages or comments into any system, and we don’t train AI on our readers’ content. If we use it, it’s on our side of the screen, and only to make the final product smoother.

Our philosophy is pretty simple: technology should help, not replace. That applies to everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence. The internet’s already full of soulless AI-generated junk — listicles that read like they were written by a bot that’s never had a real thought. That’s not what we’re doing here. The Scrolling Dead exists to cut through that noise, not add to it.

If we ever change how we use AI, we’ll tell you. Transparency isn’t optional for us. You deserve to know what’s written by humans and what’s touched by machines. Right now, what you’re reading — this page, our articles, our rants, our confessions — is all us. Maybe slightly edited by an algorithm that suggested a semicolon instead of a dash, but otherwise 100% organic human frustration.

If you’ve got questions about how we use AI or want to yell at us for using it at all, email [email protected]. We’ll reply ourselves — no bots, no canned messages. Just one of us typing too fast on a glowing rectangle, probably while pretending to take a break from another screen.