I use various AI tools in my work, and I want to tell you exactly how instead of just letting you wonder.

This is important to a lot of people, in both directions. Some people want nothing to do with anything AI has touched. Others use it every day. It’s hard to know what’s what these days. So I’m just going to tell you now, so you won’t feel misled later.

My photos and videos are real

Every photo and video, whether it’s food, canning jars, my garden, my processes, or me, is real and taken by me or my husband.

If I use stock photos, I will acknowledge where those are.

I previously used AI generated illustrations and cartoons, but I’ve taken those down because I don’t think they add any value.

Where I use AI

Running the site and the channel. Organizing content and ideas, optimizing for search and reach, checking links, scheduling. All of the unglamorous maintenance that would take one person a ridiculous amount of time. That’s time I’d rather spend gardening, canning and writing.

Drafting. I draft with AI assistants, and I’m not ashamed to acknowledge it. I have a head full of ideas and things I want to explain, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I often struggle to get them out clearly in a reasonable amount of time. AI helps me organize my ideas into distinct posts, videos and emails, and turn them into something faster than I could alone.

Everything I draft with AI has been extensively reviewed by me, reworded by me, poked holes in by me, broken down, torn apart and rewritten by me. The knowledge is mine, the expertise and the experience are mine. The perspectives and judgments are mine. And I stand behind every word on this site and in every video you see of me.

Research support. I use AI to locate, work through and organize research. It doesn’t do the research for me. It gets me to the point where I can review the primary literature and other sources and keep track of which sources back up which claims. It doesn’t replace my research. It supplements it and speeds it up to something manageable.

Translation support. I speak and read German, but I also use AI tools to make sure I’m understanding German language materials correctly. I also use AI to translate my video subtitles and transcripts into German.

Video scripting and editing. I use AI to draft scripts, but like any other drafted content, I review it, poke holes in it, tear it apart and make it my own before it finds its way into an actual video. I also use AI to help me come up with on-screen text, video descriptions and titles, and to speed up the actual video editing process itself.

Your comments and messages. I use AI here too, to help draft replies and to answer snarky commenters politely instead of the way I’d answer on first instinct. I also use it to look across what people are saying, to spot patterns and to keep track of the times I’ve promised to make a post about something. It does not automatically answer for me. Every reply you get is one I’ve read and sent myself.

Where I don’t use AI

I do not publish anything I haven’t worked through myself and made my own.

I do not automate video production. Nothing I publish is simply generated and posted.

I do not use any AI generated media that is intended to look realistic, and I do not alter anything to make a result look better than it was.

I do not use AI to clone my voice. If you hear me speaking, it is my voice, possibly sped up or slowed down, but it is not a clone. If a video ever carries an automatically translated audio track, I will say so in that video’s description.

I do not use AI to decide anything about food safety. I’ve written a separate post about why AI can’t be trusted with canning safety. Large language models are word predictors. They can do a kind of reasoning, but they cannot do this kind of reasoning.

What I think about AI

I’m a freelance science writer by profession. When large language models first became available, I thought this technology was going to put me out of business. Then I decided that if AI was going to take my job away from me, I was going to be the one operating it.

As a result, I have developed extensive experience working with these tools, and I understand both their strengths and limitations. This isn’t a side interest. I teach people how to work with these tools professionally, under my own name, at thejuliekaiser.com.

They can help a lot of people do more work, better, in less time. They can help someone like me get organized thoughts out of my head and into a form other people can use.

They can also be used to produce enormous amounts of garbage in a very short time. That is something else entirely. And on a subject where being wrong can make somebody ill, it’s indefensible.

So my bottom line is this. When I use these tools, the expertise, the reasoning and the responsibility are all mine. The tool helps me get my knowledge onto a page or into a video. But everything I publish is something I can defend.

Last updated: 13 August 2026