Teak Media + Communication recently welcomed Jordan Harrod, an MIT-Harvard PhD, to lead an artificial intelligence (AI) workshop for our team. While we expected to learn about prompt engineering and data security, and we did, the most valuable insight wasn’t technical at all.
During the workshop, we put AI through its paces, testing prompts for press releases, media pitches, and social media content. The results were impressive: AI could generate clean copy quickly, maintain consistent tone, and even adapt messaging for different audiences. We developed quality control measures to ensure the output met our standards, identifying ways AI could handle routine tasks while maintaining the accuracy and professionalism our clients expect.
But as we refined these processes, a fundamental limitation became clear: AI doesn’t understand what makes a story truly compelling to humans.
The Problem: AI Can Write, But Can It Tell Stories That Move People?
Consider this powerful opening from an op-ed we helped place: “Growing up, my family periodically experienced food insecurity. The most affordable foods my older brother and I gravitated to were penny candies, chips and other junk food from the local corner stores.”
This piece, published in the Bay State Banner for Project Bread, advocated for universal school meals in Massachusetts. But what made it effective wasn’t policy arguments or statistics, it was Musu-kulla Massaquoi’s personal story. She described walking with her kindergartner to pick up free school meals, watching other families who “knew to bring bags to take more food home,” and her realization that “there was no need to feel embarrassed about receiving a free meal. We weren’t alone.”
AI could have generated a perfectly adequate op-ed about school meal policy. It could have cited research or stats. But it could never have captured the moment when Musu-kulla noticed the impact the meals had on her son: “He started to build positive eating habits, eating more foods than just the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he used to crave and branded snacks he saw on TV. When he was fed, he was ready to learn.”
Our Approach: Returning to Our Journalistic Roots
Our team is full of former journalists, editors, and producers. This realization brought us back to our heritage: we are storytellers. As AI handles routine content generation, we can focus our expertise where it matters most, such as the fundamental questions every powerful story must answer: What happened? How is the problem being solved? Why does this matter? And most critically: So, what? Why should the reader care?
The “so, what?” in Musu-kulla’s story wasn’t just policy change, it was the peace of mind for parents and the dignity for children who no longer have to worry about their next meal. As she wrote in the op-ed: “This is the time for our children to enjoy being kids, not worrying about if their families can afford food or if they will be singled out for needing a free school lunch.”
AI cannot sit across from someone like Musu-kulla and notice the moment their voice changes when discussing their child’s future. It cannot recognize the pause before someone describes a life-changing moment, or capture the authenticity of lived experience that transforms policy debates into human stories.
The Result: More Time for What We Do Best
This realization doesn’t change our fundamental approach. Teak Media has always been human-centered, always focused on finding the real voices behind every mission. But working with AI has underscored the unique value of our work and given us more time to do what we do best.
As AI handles routine content generation, we can spend more time on the essential questions that drive powerful storytelling: Who can tell your story? We’re asking clients to identify the people whose experiences illuminate their mission’s impact. We’re digging deeper into those relationships, asking: What has their experience been like? How has your organization changed their life, their community, their future? We’re getting more human.
We’ve always known that sometimes the most powerful spokesperson isn’t the executive director. It’s the program participant, the community member, the volunteer who sees the work from a different angle. Now we have more capacity to find those voices, make those connections, and help them tell their stories in ways that generate empathy and inspire action. AI has freed us to focus on what it cannot do: the human work of understanding what moves people and why.
Looking Ahead: The Human Advantage
The organizations we serve are addressing society’s most pressing challenges, from food insecurity to climate change to educational equity. Their stories deserve to be told with the nuance, authenticity, and emotional resonance that only human storytellers can provide.
As we integrate AI tools into our work, we’re doubling down on what makes us uniquely valuable: the ability to understand what moves people and why. We can recognize the details that matter, ask follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and craft narratives that connect individual experiences to broader social impact.
The technology may be “artificial,” but the intelligence that matters most—understanding the human experience and knowing how to share it—remains profoundly, irreplaceably human.
