The Human Voice Matters - Even With Copilot

As Microsoft Copilot becomes deeply embedded in every part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem—Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint—we're entering an era of accelerated content creation. Presentations, summaries, documents, and even entire training modules can now be generated at the click of a button.

But where do we draw the line?

In this episode, I reflect on what’s gained—and what’s potentially lost—when we lean too heavily on automation. This isn’t a debate about whether Copilot is good or bad (spoiler: I use it every day). It’s about what happens to trust, authenticity, and human connection when AI becomes the default delivery method for knowledge and communication.

It is a personal take on the increasing pressure to produce content that looks polished but lacks personality. From the rise of synthetic experts to the creeping influence of Instagram-style perfectionism in corporate communication, I explore why the human voice still matters—especially in training, support, and knowledge sharing.

Whether you're rolling out Copilot in your organisation, building digital content, or just feeling the shift in your day-to-day Microsoft 365 tools—this episode is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hi there, and welcome back to the Simply SharePoint podcast. I'm Liza, and today I want to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot lately. Something that sits right at the intersection of technology, content creation, and trust. We're all seeing the same thing. Microsoft Copilot is everywhere. It's in Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, offering prompts, writing summaries, generating slides, drafting emails. And don't get me wrong, it's powerful. It's useful. It saves time. And it's here to stay. But with Copilot now embedded in every Microsoft 365 app, I've found myself asking, where's the line? Where do we let AI assist and where do we need to keep it human? Because the more we automate, the more we risk losing the one thing that still matters most in learning, communication, and connection. And that's our voice. Today's episode is part personal reflection, part quiet rebellion against the rise of perfection in the corporate world, and part reality check. Brought to life by a story from my sister and a very telling reaction from my mum. So let's talk about what we're gaining with Copilot and what we might be giving up if we're not careful. Firstly, the pressure to be perfect. When I first started creating training content for Simply SharePoint, I was surrounded by content that looked flawless, perfect audio, perfect slide decks, perfectly written copy, delivered by perfectly calm voices, often not human ones. It was slick, it was shiny, and it made me pause because it looked like that was the standard. I felt like I had to keep up. So I started experimenting with AI tools, voiceover generators, video narration, even creating a synthetic version of me. I uploaded my scripts, used an AI version of my own voice, and tested what it would sound like to have a digital avatar deliver my training videos. And technically, it worked. But when I watched it back, I felt something sink. It didn't feel like me. It looked good. It sounded clean. But it was empty. It had no life, no personality, and no rhythm. Just a faceless voice reciting lines. And here's the thing. We've seen this pressure before on Instagram with perfect lives, in magazines with perfect bodies. Now we're seeing it creep into the corporate world. Perfect presentations, perfect scripts, AI-generated voices and avatars pretending to be us. And it's dangerous because it creates this illusion that if you don't sound like a robot or look like a broadcast presenter, you're not professional. And that's just not true. And it made me realize we've allowed this Instagram-style perfectionism to quietly seep into professional spaces. Everything's starting to look too perfect, too scripted, too polished. And that might seem harmless, but it's not. Because in trying to make things look and sound professional, we're creating content that doesn't feel real anymore. And when content loses that human touch, people stop trusting it. Now, the feedback that changed everything. When I shared my AI-generated content with a few people I trusted, the reaction was instant. It sounds robotic. This doesn't look or feel like you. I don't trust it. I want to hear a real voice. And I agreed because what I do, what we all do when we teach, explain and share knowledge is about more than words on a screen. It's about trust and trust doesn't come from a perfect voiceover. It comes from presence. So around that time, I was chatting with my mum, Judy. Now, my mum's not your average end user. She's a retired scientist, an academic, and one of the smartest people I know. She's a power user who's been writing, researching, and thinking deeply her whole life. She opened Word one day, sat down to write something, and I popped Copilot. And her reaction? It's just sitting there, watching me. I don't want help. I just want to write. She didn't want assistance. She didn't want prompts. She wanted to think. to get into flow, to work on something important without being interrupted by a tool that assumed it knew what she needed. And I thought, wow, that's the quiet tension a lot of people are feeling right now. We've gone from tools being invisible helpers to being very visible presences, suggesting, pushing, even demanding input before we've had time to process our own ideas. And it's not fear of technology. its resistance to being over-automated. She's also not anti-AI. I recall a conversation we had months ago when she had finally listened to me and tried out ChatGPT. She was on the phone to me for about an hour going on and on about how wonderful it was and how it has changed her life. She was using it as a coach to help her research and among other things. Then came a conversation with my sister. She's a flight attendant. She travels constantly. She sees a lot. And she's also very sharp. She noticed patterns and inconsistencies in a way most people overlook. She came across something online that honestly shocked her. She found two completely different courses, one teaching Spanish for beginners and another offering financial investment advice. Different topics, different audiences, but both courses were presented by the exact same AI-generated avatar and voice. Same tone, same gestures, same facial movements. One day, she was teaching verbs in Spanish. The next, she was explaining portfolio diversification and compound interest. And that's when my sister said, this is not okay. You can tell it's not real. It's been thrown together. There's no credibility. Anyone can fake anything now. And that's scary. And she's right. Because if we're flooding the internet and the workplace with synthetic experts, we're not just lowering the bar, we're erasing the value of real experience. And this isn't just a boomers versus AI thing either. I've seen it in my daughter's generation too. She walked in the other day and asked suspiciously, did you do that with AI? There's this real caution now, a pushback. People want to know there's a human behind the content that they're consuming, and I'm here for it. So why does this matter in Microsoft 365? Well, let's bring this back to Copilot. We've now reached a point where anyone can generate a presentation, a summary, a document, a course, an onboarding guide, a newsletter, all without contributing any insights. That's great for productivity, but terrible for trust, especially when the person consuming that content is expecting real grounded help. If you're using Copilot to speed up formatting or summarizing long notes, that's great. That's amazing. If it helps you unblock a task, save time, or reduce admin, awesome. Same thing. That's great. But if you're training others, teaching complex tools like SharePoint, or trying to communicate something that involves empathy, strategy or nuance, that needs you. AI can help, but it can't replace your judgment or your voice or your experience. So how do I use AI? So here's my disclaimer. I use AI. I use it every single day. I use ChatGPT when I get stuck on a sentence. I brainstorm ideas with it. I even use it to help create visuals, but they're always based on my ideas. Every piece of content I produce comes from me. AI is a tool I use to speed things up, not a replacement for my voice or experience. So I use ChatGPT to help rephrase things or structure rough outlines. I use Canva for visuals, sometimes using AI prompts as a start. I use Adobe Enhance to clean up this podcast audio. and ClipChamp to record my real voice quickly. But I don't use AI-generated voiceovers, AI presenters, and scripted bots delivering content in place of me. Because if you're learning from me, you're trusting that I know this stuff because I've lived it. I've done the migrations. I've restructured the document libraries. I've worked with stakeholders, and I've cleaned up SharePoint mess. That's what I bring. And that's what AI can't replicate. So here's where I'll leave you, or rather where I'll slow down, pause and ask you to think with me. Because while this episode started with Copilot and the wave of AI running through Microsoft 365, it's really about something deeper. What kind of workplaces are we building? What kind of content are we putting into the world? And what kind of professionals do we want to be? We're living through what I think will be one of the most transformational periods in digital work history. Microsoft isn't just suggesting Copilot, it's baking it into everything. Open word Copilot's there. Start a meeting in Teams, Copilot's ready. Navigate SharePoint, Copilot is watching, suggesting, summarizing. Even PowerPoint, offering to build your slides before you've had a chance to think. And sure, it's exciting, it's efficient, it's revolutionary. but is also a little unsettling because what happens when every meeting summary, every project report, every client proposal sounds the same? What happens when nuance, tone, personality, things that used to help us stand out get flattened by templated AI suggestions? I've already seen it happening in client sites. You know the kind of content I'm talking about, the co-pilot generated email with just enough polish but none of the grit. The SharePoint page that looks clean but lacks real insight. The training material that hits the mark technically but feels like it could have come from anyone. It's all fine, but it's not memorable. It's not sticky. And that's the risk we run. AI-generated content that feels like a checkbox, not a connection. So AI is smart, but you're wiser. AI has access to everything you've ever typed, every policy document, every template and training manual in your tenant. But it doesn't know what really happens in your organization. It doesn't know the personalities on your team. It doesn't know how that one manager likes to frame things or how your executive prefers bullet points to paragraphs. It doesn't know what went wrong last quarter and how you finally fixed it. That's what you bring to the table, your lived experience, your insight, your voice. And that's what makes SharePoint training, Microsoft 365 governance and workplace change management successful. It's never just about showing someone how to click a button. It's about guiding them through how that button fits into a real process with real people and real challenges. So don't get me wrong, though. This isn't a call to abandon co-pilots. I use it daily. Like I said, summarizing meetings, rewriting dry documentation into something snappier, drafting repetitive process guides so I can tweak the tone later. But I don't let it lead. And I don't hand over anything with my name on it until I've had my say. In fact, this whole episode was inspired by AI, but shaped by real stories, real moments, and real people. That's what gives it weight. So here's a few questions I keep in my back pocket before I use AI to publish or share something. One, am I trying to speed something up or avoid doing the thinking? There is a difference between efficiency and avoidance. Two, will this content be trusted more because it's faster or because it's real? If it's a sensitive topic or strategy, people want clarity and authenticity. And three, would I feel comfortable presenting this face to face? If not, it probably needs more of me in it. These questions have saved me from publishing some very slick but very soulless work. So let's zoom in on SharePoint now. Let me give you a SharePoint specific example because, well, that's what I live and breathe every day. I recently worked with a client who had used Copilot to draft an internal governance page. It was neat. It's tidy. It had sections. It referenced policies and procedures. Technically, everything, it was there. It was right. But no one read it. Why? Because it had no context. It didn't say why the governance existed, how it affected teens, or what decisions were made and by whom. It lacked the subtle things I call permission to care. So we rewrote it. We added real-world examples, which are really important. We added a short video of the team explaining the purpose behind it. We used metadata to show how it linked to actual tasks and documents. We humanized it. And then people started using it. The AI draft was a starting point, but the final piece was something only humans could have built. So now back to the bigger picture. Yes, Copilot is here. It's powerful, it's helpful, and it's the direction that Microsoft is going. But I believe the future of work, especially in Microsoft 365, belongs not to those who adopt AI blindly, but to those who use it intentionally. Those who know when to automate and when to speak, when to summarize and when to explain, when to publish and when to pause and rewrite. We need both automation and authenticity. We need both speed and storytelling. We need both AI and your voice. So want to draw the line for yourself? Well, I've put together a simple quick decision matrix to help you figure this out. It's just a one pager that outlines the most common Microsoft 365 tasks. Everything from creating meeting notes to training materials, And it categorizes them by, you know, green, great for AI, yellow, use AI with human input, and red, keep it human. It's not a perfect science, but it's a start. And more importantly, it's a conversation tool. You may not agree with some of the things that I put there, but share it with your team. Ask them where they draw the line. Use it to spark better decisions, not just faster ones. And you'll find the download link to this on my blog post. So until next time, thanks for spending this time with me. If you took one thing away from this episode, I hope it's this, that your voice matters, even in an age of automation, especially in an age of automation, because the tools may be smart, but you're still the expert. I'll catch you in the next episode of the Simply SharePoint podcast. Bye for now.