The Great ChatGPT Backfire of 2022

It’s 2022. I’m managing Social and Digital Care – Support Website, Content Strategy, Social Media Posts, Forum engagement – reaching millions of users.

Then I learned about ChatGPT v3.5 and thought to myself: “This is fun!”

I shared it with the team immediately.

I should not have shared it immediately.

Week 1: The Honeymoon

The team was thrilled! They had fun generating titles, introduction, changing tones…

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Week 2: The Mushed Title Incident

Then I started seeing… weird titles.

“10 Essential Best Practices for Maximizing Customer Experience Solutions“

(not the actual title to protect the guilty, but the essence is like that, buzz words mushed together, that meant absolutely nothing)

I pulled the writer aside. “What does this even mean?”

“It came from AI.”

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The Realization

It hit me. I’d fucked up.

I gave them a powerful tool without:

• guidelines on when to use it
• quality control
• any discussion about thinking before accepting AI output

They weren’t using ChatGPT as a writing assistant. They used it as a replacement and trusted it blindly.

The tool I thought would boost productivity was making them less thoughtful.

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The Aftermath

I panicked and told everyone to stop using it.

Then I hated myself for months.

I’d introduced a tool that made my team’s work worse. I became so skeptical of ChatGPT that I avoided it entirely, or wasting hours trying to force it to work when Google Search would’ve been faster.

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What I Know Now

ChatGPT wasn’t the problem. My implementation was. No training. No guardrails. No quality gates.

But what did this disaster teach me? AI exposes every gap in our processes and critical thinking.

• Weak quality standards? AI produces mediocrity faster
• Team doesn’t think critically? “It came from AI” becomes an excuse
• A Manager or a Leader doesn’t understand the problem? ChatGPT won’t solve it

The Lesson

In 2022, I thought I was bringing my team a productivity tool.

What I actually brought: a test of critical thinking they weren’t ready for.

Everyone farks up their first AI rollout. The question is: do we learn from it?

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Next in series: 2024. I’m transitioning to PM, still avoiding ChatGPT like the plague, but I made Julius.ai my companion to learn Product metrics.

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About the Author

Former Customer Service Manager turned Product Manager, stumbling through the AI revolution with 12+ years of customer obsession and a Computer Engineering degree gathering dust. Currently figuring out this PM thing while everyone keeps asking about my “AI strategy.”