I thought AI would flatten my creative instincts. But no, it gave them room to breathe.

The assumption I couldn't let go of

I have to admit, I have been reluctant, and a bit stubborn, about using AI in my day to day life. Apparently, I am not alone in that. While Gen Z is often called digitally native and quick to adapt (I mean, my whole life is documented through Facebook):

Gallup found that 38% of Gen Z'ers feel that AI would "be harmful rather than helpful to their abilities to come up with new ideas on their own."

Like many others, I have the same question: Why do I need a robot to help me write content when I went to college to learn how to be a better writer?

Graduating from college in a pandemic gives me a particular perspective on the AI boom — we had Quizlet and Chegg instead of ChatGPT and Claude.

I take pride in coming up with my own ideas. Whether that means being able to write a 30-page research paper on my own (not to brag, but I do have a master's degree) or helping my best friend come up with an Instagram caption for her vacation photo dump — I like ideas that feel like mine. Add in the fact that I'm an eldest child, predisposed to stubbornness and wanting to do things my own way, and you have what I'd call a perfect storm of AI resistance.

But despite my best efforts, I quickly learned: if you don't adapt, you will fall behind.

What happens when you're thrown to the wolves

After three years of working in sales, I stepped into a new role on the Content Marketing team at Optimizely, and feeling a bit thrown to the wolves, it was either adapt or get left behind.

My job? To create any and all content for our Sales Development organization. That means:

• Being a product expert across Optimizely's full suite of solutions
• Understanding every persona we sell to
• Knowing the ins and outs of every vertical we operate in
• Oh, and the content should be timely, targeted, and personalized.

Sounds impossible, right?

Before I fully leaned into Optimizely Opal, here's what a typical day would look like. I'd receive content requests, then spend hours hunting down information across Teams messages, Word docs, and half-updated Excel sheets. By the time I had the information I needed, I was behind before I'd written a single word. The SDR team was waiting. The window to reach prospects was closing.

I knew this type of work wasn't sustainable long-term, and I needed to find a way to fix it.

The moment the old way stopped working

I eventually hit a wall. No one's fault, just the reality of how information moves across teams. That's when I stopped thinking of Opal as a shortcut and started seeing it as an operational tool. The question changed from "Can AI write for me?" to "What work can I stop doing manually so I can focus on what actually requires a human?"

That shift changed a lot for me. Once I reframed it that way, Opal stopped feeling like a threat to my creativity and started feeling like the thing that protected it.

Think of AI as your personal assistant, and actually use it that way

We've all wanted to feel a little like Miranda Priestly, right? Look at your to-do list and ask: what on here doesn't require me specifically? Now give that to AI (in my case, Opal).

Here's what that can look like in practice:

Launching a new competitive play, but don't have time for the research? The Competitive Webpage Analysis Agent does that work in seconds — not hours.

Have a webinar coming up with no follow-up messaging ready? The Webinar Follow-Up Creation Agent generates personalized emails instantly.

Or, in my case, spending too much time on manual event follow-up coordination? I noticed this gap early in my role and used Opal to build an Event Follow-Up Kit — a detailed guide for the field marketing team on how to prompt Opal for a complete brief, fill it into our content workflow, and loop me in when needed. What used to take me hours now takes minutes, and I'm generating follow-up content without jumping between tools.

Want to see what other marketing agents that Optimizely have cooked up? Check out the agent directory. 

AI doesn't kill creativity, it gives it room to breathe

Remember that Gallup stat? I was one of those 38%. I came into marketing because I love writing, and because I wanted to create things that actually reach people. The last thing I wanted was a tool that flattened that instinct into templated output.

What I found was the opposite. When Opal handles the research, coordination, and first pass, what's left for me is the part I came here to do: the creative instinct and decision around what story is worth telling and why the audience needs to hear it now.

Adapting doesn't mean surrendering. It means growth. And for the stubborn, eldest child, Gen Z marketer who swore she didn't need a robot's help — it means getting to do the work I came here to do.

(And yes, I used Opal to help write this — but probably not the way you're thinking. It didn't write my story. It gave me the space to tell it.)