Turning AI Into A Creative Career Booster
I spend a lot of time thinking about AI and where it fits in radio. Honestly? Sometimes I worry. Not because I think humans are done for, but because this stuff is moving fast. I bounce between “AI will never replace a great radio mind who knows how to use it” and “What if it does?”
But then I zoom out. This isn’t our first tech curveball. If you’ve been in radio for a minute, you’ve already lived through the end of the world several times. We’ve weathered automation, voice tracking, streaming, social media, podcasting and more, not because we resisted change, but because we adapted. That’s our superpower.
Every time radio jobs changed or disappeared, new ones popped up: digital content managers, podcast producers, audience engagement leads (whatever that means). Roles that would've sounded like sci-fi to us back in the day.
I was popped out of my AI bubble the other day when I heard, second-hand, about a talented, major-market DJ asking how to use AI to help write a killer script for an endorsement. It surprised me. I’m so deep in the weeds I forget that for most of the world, using AI is new, untried and unproven territory. So let’s get down to brass tacks and replace the feel-good “AI isn’t here to replace your job, it’s here to upgrade it” counseling with action that proves it to be true.
Using AI to amplify your creative instinct, timing and emotional read of a moment starts with understanding how it works so you’re better equipped to put it to work.
LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT, Claude, and others work like this: Imagine you have a super-smart robot friend who has read almost everything ever written: books, websites, stories, even jokes. Now, when you ask it a question or start a sentence, it doesn't just blurt out random stuff. It’s not a search engine.
Instead, an LLM guesses what words should come next based on all the things it’s read, kind of like finishing your sentence by thinking, “Hmm, what usually comes after this?” It’s not magic or mind-reading. It’s super-speedy pattern spotting. Like a super librarian that doesn’t just find the book, but writes a new one just for you, the way you want, right when you need it.
Prompting ChatGPT, the fancy AI term for asking a question or requesting information from an LLM, is where most of us start. Evolving from a single prompt and response to having an actual conversation with ChatGPT is where your creative lightbulb should explode. Do not stop there. Go further, there’s more.
Start creating your own custom GPTs and Artifacts to boost your creativity and productivity. To make custom GPTs, you’ll need a ChatGPT Pro account (which might be the best $20/month you ever invest in your career). Artifacts, on the other hand, are created in Claude and don’t cost a thing; you can start using them with a free Claude account.
A customized GPT in ChatGPT is like giving your robot friend a special job and personality. You can teach it how to talk, what it should care about, and even give it rules to follow. It remembers that setup every time you chat.
In Claude, an artifact is more like a smart workspace where Claude helps you build something, like an app, tool, draft, plan or creative project, and keeps it right there on the screen so you can tweak it together as you go.
The big difference? A custom GPT is like training a helpful assistant to always think a certain way, while an artifact is a living document you’re both working on in real time. One is about how the AI behaves; the other is about what you’re building with it.
Log in and get started. Now. Try the preset examples to get the vibe of what’s possible and what you can create. GPTs and Artifacts make AI upskilling easier than you may have imagined. Who knows where they could lead you.
I’ve posted deeper explanations of custom GPTs and Artifacts here, including instructions, examples, pro tips, and creative radio examples you can steal and start using today.
This is the next chapter in our radio book. Grab a copy and start reading so AI takes your job and hands you back a better one. If history’s any guide, the ones who roll with the changes are usually the ones still standing, mic in hand, cracking wise. — Scott Lindy
