Why AI Can’t Mimic a Human Soul
Last week, I shared my main takeaways from my interview with Lori Kirkland, the co-founder of DeepHumanX, about how artificial intelligence will affect humans working in the creative space. But it was a moment toward the very end of our interview that stayed with me—a specific point where Lori mapped out the collaborative future of AI and humans, explaining precisely why machines will never replace the human spirit.
Her perspective brought me right back to the emotional core of my brand strategy work: the distinction between a brand that simply performs its values and a brand that actually lives them.
Listen to the Episode Here
Values come up constantly when I’m working with brands. It’s incredibly easy for a company—or an individual—to put nice words like “sustainability” or “authenticity” or “craftsmanship” on a website. But what do those words actually look like in real life? How are you actually making an impact? How do you show up for your community?
Look at the recent news surrounding Everlane’s sale to Shein—a massive industry wake-up call. In a brilliant essay for Heated titled “Everlane was Never Eco-Friendly,” journalist Emily Atkin points out that while millions of consumers bought into the brand’s image of “radical transparency” and sustainability, what the company really excelled at was selling the image of virtue.
Sure, Everlane made real efforts to reduce harm, such as measuring emissions, improving materials, and starting crucial conversations about fashion’s environmental footprint. But as Atkin rightly argues, apparel brands inherently consume immense resources, putting pressure on everything from supply chains to the climate. While Everlane made some positive choices, a true commitment to the planet is inherently at odds with the hyper-growth model of venture-backed fashion. Yet, that hasn’t stopped the brand’s founder from already touting a “new” venture that feels like Everlane 2.0.
This is the exact trap of performative branding. Answering the hard questions about values takes real work. If your brand is going to truly connect with people, your values have to be built into your operational DNA, not just used as a marketing slogan. Today’s consumers are highly discerning; they can spot a shallow marketing play from a mile away. When a brand gets caught just “performing” its beliefs, the loss of trust results in an incredibly costly misstep that is nearly impossible to recover from.
And that ties directly into the second thing on my mind: emotional intelligence.
At the end of the day, an algorithm or a prompt cannot replicate a genuine, human-to-human connection. That’s exactly where storytelling and true empathy come in. When a brand consistently and coherently shares the real stories of both its small daily moments and its big milestones, it invites the audience deeper into a curated brand world. It transforms a standard commercial transaction into an intimate form of sharing.
We’ve known this truth in business for a long time, but technology is forcing us to remember it. Years ago on a Harvard Business Review podcast, Horst Schulze, the legendary co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton, noted that genuine hospitality—that raw human connection—is a brand’s only permanent competitive advantage. He noted that companies often fail to train their people in empathy, or worse, allow staff to judge a customer based on looks alone. Those brands frequently have no idea how many millions in lost sales that lack of emotional intelligence costs them.
Human nature and the penalties for faking connection have always been the same—AI is just the new tool making those mistakes easier to automate. An algorithm can write a caption, and a tech tool can optimize a supply chain. But AI cannot build a relationship, and it doesn’t have a soul. Only we can bring that to the table.
