I Don’t Love AI. I Still Use It: My Holistic-ish Approach

AI Makes Me Uncomfortable for a Reason

I think some of the discomfort around AI is justified.

We’re watching technology get really good, really fast, at creating things that look real.

Photos.

Videos.

Voices.

Stories.

People who don’t exist.

Places someone never visited.

Products photographed in rooms they were never actually in.

And sometimes you have to stare at something for a minute before realizing none of it happened.

That bothers me.

Especially because so much of Suds & Buds is built around the exact opposite.

Real products.

Real ingredients.

Real people.

Real trips.

Real family stories.

Real mess.

Real life.

I don’t want to build a business around authenticity and then quietly manufacture an entirely fake version of our life because it photographs better.

There’s already enough perfectly staged bullshit on the internet.

I don’t need to add more.

But I Also Don’t Think the Answer Is Pretending AI Doesn’t Exist

Here’s the other side of it.

AI is a tool.

And tools aren’t automatically good or bad.

What matters is what we allow them to do for us.

I can spend an hour staring at a blank computer screen trying to organize everything running through my brain.

Or I can dump all 47 thoughts somewhere, use AI to help me sort them into something resembling an outline, and then get back to actually doing the work.

That is useful.

Very useful.

Especially when you’re running a business, homeschooling, taking care of animals, trying to remember what needs shipped, figuring out dinner, planning the next trip and wondering why somebody left an empty box in the pantry.

Again.

AI can help me organize.

It can help me brainstorm.

It can help me take a giant pile of scattered thoughts and figure out which ones actually belong together.

It can help with repetitive business tasks that don’t require my soul.

And I’m completely okay with that.

What I don’t want is for it to start replacing my voice, my experiences or the real people behind this business.

The Difference Between Helping Me Write and Writing for Me

This distinction matters to me.

The ideas here are mine.

The experiences are mine.

The opinions are mine.

The stories are mine.

AI can help me organize them.

It can point out that I have somehow explained the same thing four different ways.

It can help turn a rambling collection of notes into sections.

It can help with grammar, structure or figuring out whether something makes sense outside my own head.

That’s very different from asking a machine:

No.

If I don’t have anything worth saying, I probably don’t need to publish something just because the content calendar says Tuesday.

I would rather write less and have it actually mean something.

Where I Draw the Line With Images

This is probably where I’m most stubborn.

AI images can be amazing.

They can also create some deeply weird shit.

Six fingers.

Labels with mysterious new alphabets.

Soap floating in impossible bathrooms.

People smiling with approximately 73 teeth.

And increasingly, AI images can look almost completely real.

That’s exactly why I think there needs to be a line.

If I’m showing you one of my products, I want you to see the actual product.

Not an AI interpretation of it.

If you order Glow Recovery Whipped Tallow Balm, the jar you saw online should look like the jar that shows up at your house.

If I show our soap, I don’t want AI quietly changing the label, the color, the shape or the packaging because it thinks it can improve things.

If I show my family hiking beside a waterfall, I want us to have actually stood beside that waterfall.

I don’t want to generate a prettier waterfall, insert ourselves into it and write a story about our wonderful family adventure.

Because then it isn’t our story.

What I Will Use AI Images For

There are situations where I’m perfectly comfortable using generated visuals.

An abstract background.

A conceptual image.

A graphic that is obviously illustrative.

An idea that doesn’t pretend to document a real event.

Something decorative where nobody is being asked to believe:

That distinction matters to me.

If it looks documentary, personal or product-specific, I want it to be real.

Because Product Photos Actually Matter

This isn’t only some philosophical stand about technology.

It matters from a customer perspective.

Imagine ordering something because you loved the packaging in the photo.

Then it arrives and the label is different.

The container is different.

The color is different.

Maybe AI added flowers that were never there or made the product twice as large.

That would irritate me.

So I’m not doing that to somebody else.

My photography does not have to look like it belongs in Vogue.

Sometimes the lighting will be imperfect.

Sometimes something will be crooked.

Sometimes I’ll realize after taking 40 pictures that there was a dog hair somewhere it absolutely should not have been.

That’s life.

I can improve a real photograph without turning it into a fake product.

Crop it.

Adjust brightness.

Clean up the background.

Fix exposure.

That still feels honest to me.

Changing what the product actually is does not.

I Feel the Same Way About Family Photos

If you’ve spent any time around Suds & Buds, you know this business has slowly become about more than soap.

There’s homeschool.

Camping.

Road trips.

Waterfalls.

Animals.

People we love.

Food.

Projects.

Travel.

A lot of chaos.

And I want to share those things because they are part of why this business exists in the first place.

But the whole point is that they happened.

When I share a picture of our family somewhere, I want us to have actually been there.

When I tell you about a disaster, I want it to have been our disaster.

When I write about somebody I love, I don’t need AI inventing some more emotional version of our relationship.

Real life is already interesting enough.

Usually more interesting than whatever perfectly composed version a computer would create anyway.

I’m Not Against Technology

I’m against using technology without thinking.

That’s different.

There are things AI can probably do faster than I ever will.

Wonderful.

Please take some of them.

I have no emotional attachment whatsoever to manually reorganizing spreadsheets or spending 45 minutes trying to come up with ten versions of an email subject line.

If a tool can give me some of that time back, I’m interested.

Because ideally, the point of technology should be to leave us with more time for being human.

More time making things.

More time learning.

More time going places.

More time talking to people.

More time sitting outside.

More time actually living the story instead of endlessly producing content about the story.

That’s where technology feels useful to me.

It’s Kind of Like Everything Else We Do Around Here

We make some things ourselves.

We buy other things.

We cook at home.

We also occasionally eat food handed to us through a drive-through window.

We use natural products.

We also live in 2026 and occasionally need things created in a laboratory.

We homeschool.

We use technology.

We care about reducing unnecessary chemicals without panicking every time somebody says a word with more than three syllables.

We try to make good choices.

We also occasionally completely screw it up.

That’s why holistic-ish fits us better than any promise of perfection ever could.

That same philosophy shows up in the products I make.

I’m not interested in making everyday routines more complicated just so they look impressive online.

Sometimes you need something simple that works within real life.

Maybe that’s throwing on Glow Recovery Whipped Tallow Balm when your skin feels dry.

Maybe it’s spraying Porch Line Laundry Room Spray because the house could use a reset before somebody comes over.

Maybe it’s using Lavender Dreams Soap at the end of one of those days when everybody has needed something from you since approximately 6:07 a.m.

Nothing revolutionary.

Just small things that make ordinary life feel a little better.

Where AI Actually Fits Into Suds & Buds

So yes.

I use AI.

Not to invent Suds & Buds.

Not to replace the people behind it.

Not to fake product photographs.

Not to manufacture family memories.

Not to decide what I think.

But sometimes?

I absolutely use it to organize the 47 thoughts currently fighting for space in my head.

To help with repetitive work.

To brainstorm.

To catch something I missed.

To take some of the boring administrative crap off my plate so I can spend more time doing the parts that actually require me.

I think that’s the balance I’m comfortable with.

At least right now.

Technology changes.

My opinion may evolve with it.

That’s another thing I’m okay admitting.

Maybe Intentional Living Has Never Meant Rejecting Modern Life

Maybe it means participating in modern life without automatically handing every part of ourselves over to it.

Using the tool.

Keeping the judgment.

Keeping the creativity.

Keeping the relationships.

Keeping enough skepticism to occasionally ask:

And maybe the answer won’t always be yes.

That’s okay too.

We don’t need to use every tool just because it exists.

And we don’t have to reject every tool because we’re uncomfortable with where technology might eventually go.

We can decide.

That’s kind of the point.

Holistic-ish Applies to AI Too

I don’t have a perfectly packaged answer for what role AI should play in our lives.

Anyone claiming they completely understand where this is all going is probably more confident than I am.

What I do know is what feels right for me right now.

Use it where it helps.

Question it when it starts replacing things that matter.

Don’t pretend fake things are real.

Don’t outsource your entire brain.

And maybe occasionally close the laptop and go stand somewhere that actually exists.

Preferably near a waterfall.

That seems like a pretty reasonable AI policy to me.