This interview is with Devan Leos, co-founder & CCO at Undetectable AI.

Devan Leos, Co-founder & CCO, Undetectable AI

Devan, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to becoming the Chief Communications Officer at Undetectable AI?

In 2020, I started working as a PR and marketing freelancer. In 2021, I launched my own digital PR agency and then got a job as the Vice President of Sales at another PR agency. After I resigned from the Vice President of Sales position to focus on my own agency, I started acquiring clients in various sectors such as tech, health, entertainment, and real estate.

Then I came across two individuals online one day, and we decided to start talking about the future of AI. They shared with me that they were planning to launch an AI company. I gave them tips and feedback on how they should communicate what their product is about, and they invited me to join the company as a co-founder and director of communications. We started rapidly growing, and after we hit about 4 million users, they assigned me the Chief Communications Officer role. Ever since then, it's been history.

Your career path is quite impressive, moving from traditional media into the world of AI. Can you share a pivotal moment that solidified your interest in the intersection of technology and communication?

I've always been a big believer in technology in the sense that I believe, throughout history, advancements in technology have always been defined by their ability to augment the humans that use it.

Many publishers are hesitant to embrace AI due to concerns about losing the human touch. How can publishers leverage AI while maintaining authenticity and a distinct voice?

AI can be great at providing insights, conducting research sometimes, or even providing first drafts of articles. Although, I should be very clear, copy-and-pasting AI isn't helpful, nor is it ethical. Having a human in the loop is critical to using AI properly. When you think about what the right way to use AI is, you should be considering whether or not the way you're using it completely replaces any human thought process or creativity.

If it does, you're using it wrong. Interestingly, the Associated Press (AP) has been using AI for nearly a decade, and when it comes to journalism, while AI might be able to write an article or a blog post or transcribe an interview, it can't perform a final fact-check the way that a journalist can. After all, providing reliable information is the main job of journalists, and that's something that AI can't consistently or reliably do.

You've spoken before about the importance of using data to inform content strategy. Can you share an example of how Undetectable AI utilizes data to create more engaging and impactful content for its target audience?

We use Google Analytics and SEO tools to analyze the traffic coming to and from our blog, as well as the traffic going to other blogs and articles, which indicates interest. If more people are reading it, it's because they're curious about that topic and want to learn more about it. Traffic is a great indicator of what people are currently interested in.

Another great tool that's completely free is Google Trends, which gives you real-time insights into what people are searching for and what searches are currently trending. When you base your content strategy around data and what people are curious about and interested in, you can provide them the type of content they want, need, and that is actually helpful to them.

Ethical considerations are paramount when implementing AI. What advice would you give to publishers navigating the potential ethical pitfalls of AI-generated content, such as plagiarism or bias?

When it comes to bias, it's something that most people carry. If you're the type of person who is completely unbiased, then you have a unique advantage in being able to take something that AI or anybody else wrote and remove the biases from it. If, for some reason, you're not able to determine whether or not the content that AI helped produce is, in fact, biased, you can ironically ask different AI models whether or not the content has any biases in it and use a federated approach to investigate further.

For example, you take an article that was edited by AI, and then you ask ChatGPT if it has any biases in it. Then you ask Google Gemini if it has any biases. Then you ask Claude by Anthropic if it has any biases. If they all tell you that it does and they list the same things, that might be a good indicator that it does have some obvious bias.

When it comes to plagiarism, using a plagiarism detector that has a large database of texts from books and text available on the web is always necessary. Plagiarism checkers will scan the text and determine whether or not any of the text has been published word-for-word anywhere else, and then cite the source from where the original text appeared. Again, one of the best safeguards when it comes to AI is having a human in the loop and not blindly trusting whatever AI puts out without due diligence.

Looking ahead, what role do you envision AI playing in the future of publishing, particularly in editorial decision-making and content distribution?

I think AI will impact content distribution much more than it will affect editorial decision-making. I think that when it comes to editorial decision-making, AI could probably do a decent job, but a learned editor or editorial team will always have the superior know-how and creative flourishes to make the best decisions.

Why? Because editors are human. They have human experiences to draw on. They have emotions and feelings, and while editorial decisions and planning can sometimes be based solely on data, when it comes to angles and story pegs, having the essence and soul of a living being will always be superior to something without that.

For publishers just beginning to explore AI, what initial steps would you recommend they take to integrate this technology effectively into their workflow?

Proceed cautiously and wisely. Resist the temptation to be lazy and let AI do all the work for you. Really think about how integrating AI is going to be helpful for you and the people consuming your content. Where can efficiency and productivity be improved without sacrificing or damaging the creative process?

Ask yourself why it makes sense or what you're trying to achieve by integrating AI into your content workflow. Make sure you understand the strengths and weaknesses of various AI systems, especially the one that you decide to use. And again, don't ever think that it can fully replace a human for human-centric tasks or assignments.

What advice would you give to aspiring communication professionals who are eager to enter the rapidly evolving world of AI and tech? What skills should they focus on developing?

Focus on refining your own writing and communication process first. Learn how to communicate well, how to write well, how to speak well. Learn how to write an essay well, how to write an article well, and just learn what good writing is and what it looks like. Read magazines, books, and articles from skilled writers and understand what makes their writing good.

After you've developed your own craft, start learning how to use AI intelligently and learning how to edit AI and prompt AI so that it gives good responses. If you don't know how to write well, or you don't have a solid foundation in good writing and communication, anything that ChatGPT puts out is gonna look like it's good to you. But a lot of times, it's not. It's either too wordy, verbose, or rigid. But you'll only be able to tell if your foundation in writing and communication is very well-established.