Why does AI often give generic, useless answers instead of helpful ones?

AI isn’t dumb—it’s blind. It doesn’t know you, your business, your customers, your prices, or your voice. When you ask something like ‘help me write an email to my collectors’ without context, you get generic marketing fluff that sounds robotic. But if you’ve given the AI context—about your specific work, your collectors, your voice—that same question produces a specific, personalized email that references your unique situation. It’s the same AI and the same question, but the results are night and day different based on whether you provided context.

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Asked by an artist frustrated with AI results · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2026-01-27