Most marketers still think of AI as a tool that generates content from scratch. That’s the root of the problem.

Generative AI pulls from large data sets made up of other people’s content. It’s like crowdsourcing from the internet. The result might sound polished, but it often lacks originality and it certainly doesn’t carry your voice or your experience.

That’s why I introduced the concept of Transmutative AI.

The thought came to me in the middle of a presentation on the topic of Content, AI, and Automation, as I stood on stage in front of over 100 people at Content Marketing World. It struck me that someone in the audience may be thinking, “This is just repurposing.”

At that moment, I was moved to emphasize that this content started with a human. It was a human conversation, marked by new ideas and human expertise. We are not using AI to “Generate,” we are using it to “Transmute”.

What is Transmutative AI?

Transmutative AI is the process of starting with original human-created content, then using AI processes to transmute the ideas, thoughts, and concepts of that content into new forms of content without losing the human input element or allowing the influence of generally available or crowd-sourced information.

Differing from general Generative AI, Transmutative AI doesn’t create content from thin air. It creates from something real – your substance, your thoughts, your experiences, your expertise.

It works from content you’ve already created. Then it evolves that content into new formats. It might turn a podcast into a LinkedIn post or a conversation into a full article. But it never loses the human context that made the original valuable.

That’s what separates it from generative AI.

Generative AI builds from scratch. Transmutative AI builds from your substance.

Generative AI borrows from others. Transmutative AI works with what you already know and have already said. It keeps your voice and your insight front and center.

Why Content Repurposing Isn’t Enough

Repurposing is a manual process. It’s often about editing, clipping, or reformatting content to fit a new channel. What it doesn’t do is understand the meaning behind your message or adapt that message for a new audience.

Transmutative AI goes further. It uses AI to understand both the original content and the context where that content is going next. It doesn’t just copy. It reframes with intent. It aligns the tone, the message, and the delivery with the target platform and audience.

That’s why it’s not just smarter content reuse. It’s a smarter process altogether.

Transmutative AI moves beyond the surface. It creates content that ingests and reflects the original human voice and delivers it in the form your audience needs.

Transmutative AI Examples, Real Results

Here’s what it looks like in action.

We took a transcript from a customer conversation and evolved it into a newsletter. Starting with a real human conversation did several things. One, it allowed us to hear real customer pains, in their own words. Not assumptions or generalized research, these were words directly from a customer’s mouth.

In that conversation, we presented our solutions and were able to get customer reactions and additional insights into their world. The context of that conversation included the personality and needs of our Ideal Customer Persona – because they were right there with us on the call.

Then we took that transcript (anonymized it) and asked ChatGPT to take a neutral view of the transcript and then write a newsletter as if you were writing it to that one individual customer. The goal was to transmute the full effect of the call resolution into a proactive article for any other prospective customer to read.

The prospective customer should see themselves in the article because it was transmuted from a customer perspective which was the same as theirs.

The result: We sent out that newsletter to a cold list and received immediate response and booked meetings from our ideal customer profile. Transmutative AI moved the thoughts from one real customer to another.

Generative AI alone would have been too general – Transmutative AI hit differently and more effectively.

In another case, we used clips from a podcast to generate LinkedIn posts. But we didn’t just trim the video and add captions. We used a process of Transmutative AI to understand the content and reframed it for a specific platform. In our prompts we included the formatting style and target platform best practices, but we did NOT allow Generative AI to create post text alone.

We incorporated Transmutative AI to put up guardrails and only transmute the thoughts of what we actually said in the video clip. The result? Social posts that kept the speaker’s intent and delivered clear value, plus less need to review the clips for words or ideas that were not the original speaker’s.

This moves us closer to auto-publishing because scheduled drafts are rarely changed when reviewed by a human for publishing.

The Benefits of Transmutative AI

Transmutative AI gives you control. It gives you consistency. And it keeps your content human.

Transmutative AI is a strategic shift in your creation process that helps you scale your message while keeping it rooted in your authentic voice. It gives you the ability to reach more people without losing the value that only comes from real human insight. The brands that succeed will be the ones that stay human and use AI to increase efficiency.

When AI is applied to evolve your original thoughts, not replace them, your content becomes more relevant, more consistent, and more effective. That’s the value of Transmutative AI.

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If you've read this far, I wonder what you think about long emails like this? Would you rather have a summary and a link, or receive the full value right here in the email? Reply and let's talk about it.

Yours in Revenue,
​A. Lee Judge

ALeeJudge.com | ContentMonsta.com

Author of CASH: The 4 Keys to Better Sales, Smarter Marketing, and a Supercharged Revenue Machine

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