I want to tell you where I stand on something.
Next week I’m going to share a new tool I’ve built, and you deserve to know how I think about it first.
Let’s talk about AI.
As an actor, it scares me. 😔
Studios are quietly (and some not so quietly) building AI divisions. There will be film festivals full of AI films. Filmmakers are making content without hiring humans, which means less work for all of us. Vertical content has been one of the few places work was actually growing, and now that’s being taken over by AI-generated versions of the same thing.
You decide to be an actor and spend your life perfecting your craft, auditioning, and being on set, and now technology is coming for it. That’s not paranoia. That’s just true, and it’s awful. It’s definitely not what I signed up for.
Here’s what I believe.
AI can’t recreate humanity. People want real stories told by real people. They want to see themselves on screen, not a computer-generated version of it. They want to feel seen and connected.
I believe there’s still a place for actors. I believe great content is still being written, looking for great actors to share that story with the world. I believe that is not going away.
Here’s where I draw a line in the sand. I don’t want it near my craft or artistry.
Acting is vulnerable and personal and human, and putting a machine inside that process strips out the only thing that makes it unique. That makes it YOU!
That line for me is not moving.
But I do use AI in my business every single day.
To stay organized. To research. To think out loud. To test ideas. To get through the mundane parts faster so I can spend my hours on the work that actually matters.
Do I take what it gives me at face value? Never. I question it. I push back. I check information. Nothing it writes goes out in my name without my hands all over it first.
That’s the difference between using a tool and outsourcing your judgment.
I’ve sat across from hundreds of actors these past couple of years, and I know a lot of you are using ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini to figure out your career. I get it. There’s a free version, and it’s awake at 3 am.
But I can’t tell you how many times this has happened now.
An actor tells me ChatGPT said to wear a certain color for one of their headshot looks. And I have to tell them: that color doesn’t support your branding. It doesn’t make your eyes pop. This look is supposed to read warm and accessible, and that shade is fighting it.
The advice wasn’t crazy. It just wasn’t about them.
And I know what you’re thinking: but I told it my type. I told it what I’m selling. I uploaded my headshots.
You did. And it took every word of that at face value, including the parts you may have wrong about yourself.
That’s the thing. It can’t see you. It can’t tell you that the type you think you are isn’t the type the industry is buying you as. It can’t tell you your “warm and approachable” read is actually landing as guarded, because it’s never watched you in a room. It only knows what you told it, and half of what most actors tell me about themselves is the story they’ve been carrying since drama school.
And don’t get me started on the pitch emails.
I’ve read so many pitch emails written by AI, and I can spot them in a sentence, and so can casting directors and agents. They’re polished. They’re professional. They sound like every other email in that inbox, and not one of them sounds like the actor sitting across from me.
There’s no point of view in them. Nothing that makes a rep lean in. No authenticity.
You get one shot at that inbox, and it went out sounding like nobody.
Here’s the deal – all these AI models have learned from the entire internet.
Every blog post by someone who’s never auditioned. Every piece of advice that was true five or ten years ago and will get you passed over today. Every opinion from a person who has never once sat across from a producer or talked to a casting director.
It’s not lying to you. It just can’t tell the difference between what works and what’s simply written down.
So you act on mediocre advice, wonder why nothing’s moving, and assume the problem is you.
It isn’t you. It’s the source.
So here’s what I did about it.
I spent this year building the first-ever coaching app for the business of acting. Trained on my systems, my frameworks, and eighteen years of what I’ve watched work and fail for real actors.
It doesn’t touch your craft. It doesn’t audition for you. It doesn’t want your face.
It’s not replacing actors. It’s replacing me. 😊
An hour coaching session with me is $299, and between my own acting, producing, and my other coaching programs, I have about six one-on-one slots a month. That’s been the ceiling for years.
Most actors who need this work can’t afford that. And the ones who can are competing for those six spots.
I’ve never been able to solve that – until now.
That’s the whole reason this app exists. Not to take anything from you. To make what I know available to actors who could never get it before.
I’ll tell you more about it next week.
But I wanted you to know where I stand on AI, how I’m using it in my own acting business, and that I’ve built something to help you do the same. ❤️
More to come…
Jodie
