When the Internet holds up a mirror

What AI taught me about self-concept

I asked AI to create a poster based on everything it could find about me on the internet, and this is what it came up with.

I started my career as an online journalist for News Corp 2009, almost everything I have ever written can be found via a search engine.

My boys get front row seats. So does the podcast microphone.
Take away the cookie-cutter blonde in a blazer—it’s the words I like best.

Intentional, purposeful, connected.

Depth doesn’t come naturally to AI, and nuance is non-existent but there is undeniably something absolutely satisfying in seeing myself reflected this way. It sparked some shallow self-reflection:

So, that’s who I am to the outside world?
Should I grow my hair that long?
I hate blazers…

And then came the deeper questions:

• How true does this feel to me?

• What would I change?

• What’s missing?

• Is this really the energy I want to be bringing to the world?

(And yes, even a renewed curiosity about the place of AI.)

As I shared in a recent Mumbition podcast episode, I’ve been a slow adopter when it comes to AI. I didn’t think I wanted to go there. But now I see, like absolutely everything else in life, it’s all about the intention you bring to it.

Sasha Wilde and I recently had a long conversation about the importance of self-concept, especially when you’re feeling a lag between the life you want to live and the one you’re currently in. This poster concept? It’s an unexpectedly fun mirror, of sorts. Strangely revealing.

Emily Mann, founder of Mann Power, shared this idea for creating the poster at The Huddle in Orange, regional NSW last weekend—the final hurrah for this phenomenal women-led event designed to give working women a space to stop, dream and share. She encouraged everyone to step into their “main character energy” and offered some seriously effective, straightforward tips for how to do it—including this poster idea. Check her out here: [@mannpower ].

And try it yourself.

Ask AI: Who am I to the world, according to the internet?
Then ask yourself: Is that who I want to be?

I’d love to know how it makes you feel.