I’m currently taking an advanced artificial intelligence in college right now, where I’m building my own AI agent, learning model, generative AI, and natural language processing. One of the things that has come to light is that AI writing can be very bland, so I understand where the authenticity issue arises. However, I do use AI to help polish up my writing. Some of the things that I do are that I’ll just word vomit (and I mean word vomit) about why I want to do the listing and how I’ll be a great sitter, and really throw in my personality. I am a horrible editor, so I’ll shove it into AI and have it polish up what I mean to say when I’m just rambling.
There’s a give-and-take to AI-written applications. If you were to put in a prompt that says, “Apply to a sit in La Paz, Mexico,” versus “Here are all the reasons that I want to apply,” now put it into a neat format.
One of the best things ever, is a transcriber, I looked at wisperflow, but then thought to myself, why can’t I build my own, I don’t want to spend $10 a month.
so I did, it costs me $0, I connect it to my deepseek harness with additional claude API to clean up everything and now I am 1 gazillion times more productive
I have had a few applications that obviously used AI. In one case, I asked the applicant for some more details, and specifically asked her to not use AI this time.
I don’t care how badly a person writes. I want to hear their voice, not Claude’s, or another AI tool.
I’ve had some really bad examples of AI applications, which were very unnatural and clearly parroted my listing, e.g. “I would love to feed Fluffy at 8 am in his bowl by the garage door and put the trash out on Tuesdays”
Pretty soon people will combine AI narrative with a deepfake, so even the video chat will be all computer generated. Would make it easier for people who don’t like video calls.
My opinion, AI would be fine for polishing up an application, but not for writing it.
While not a HO, I agree with you 100% about the use of ai. It is contributing to so many ills not the least of which is the dwindling of peoples’ abilities to think for themselves and write even the simplest of things.
A thought for you : It may be time consuming and, thus, not up your alley, but I’d suggest you write back to applicants who tweak your interest and ask the to actually re-send their applications in their own words.
If they don’t , there’s your answer.
If they do, you may get a bit more of a true sense of who they are and this can be broadened with a video call.
Yes, I love using AI, especially when applying for sits and getting no response. That has happened often enough that it’s no longer an isolated experience. English is my third language, so I use AI as a grammar checker. Unfortunately, some people seem to confuse spelling mistakes with being a bad pet sitter.
We always ask for a video call. In our applications, I usually warn hosts that we tend to “overshare” photos of their pets. We don’t expect a reply to every photo; we just enjoy sending them.
I also used AI to polish this post, partly because TH doesn’t have autocorrect. Though I regularly scold AI for making me sound too smooth and sweet. I’m Dutch: I want to be direct, with a bit of humour! It takes some firm instructions to get my voice back.
And the video call gives everyone a chance to meet the actual humans behind the application.
From what we understand in current job market then applicants use AI to write their resumes, and employers use AI to assess those resumes. Hopefully that situation does not migrate to housesitting.
You can have your voice back by instructing AI to write in your style. You just create a template that can be reused each time you need it.
Claude (and other AI tools) will do exactly what you tell them to do. If you want Claude to mimic your own writing, you need to provide detailed instructions alongside a few samples of your own work.
This is how to do it:
You do not need to retype these instructions every time you write . Instead, you can create a reusable template using Claude’s native “Styles” feature
To set this up, start a chat, click the plus (+) icon next to the prompt box, and select “Use Style” followed by “Create custom style”. Name your template something like “Edit” or “Casual Write,” paste your rules and writing samples into the box, and save it. Next time you want Claude to polish your text, simply select that specific style before you start typing.
Here is a template you can use:
Act as a proofreader and copyeditor.
Your goal is to correct any spelling and grammar mistakes in my text while strictly following these rules:
Maintain my personal style of writing. I have provided writing samples below so you can match my voice.
Keep the overall tone and style casual (or whatever), direct and with a bit of humor
CRITICAL: Do not insert or use dashes (— or -) in the text. Use commas, periods, or standard sentence structures instead.
Whatever else you want
Here are my writing samples for style reference:
[PASTE 2-3 SAMPLES OF YOUR WRITING HERE]
Eventually provide a link to your published, public (iow not behind a wall) writings
That´s it. You can keep your voice and style and have Claude do the heavy lifting
Good luck
Hi, thanks for reminding. I have several AI projects on the go, TH included, and AI simply remembers things once I lose the general instruction in the spaghetti of AI. It might be good to set up a more general instruction for general use. Keeping a proper library of instructions is next level, and yes, AI can do that too
This goes along the line of something similar I’ve seen here a week or something ago, with regard to sitters plaigarising other sitters’ reviews and profile bio information. I wouldn’t dream of using AI for anything, least of all for contacting a homeowner about caring for their pets; sincerity is everything!
Using AI to make a message “friendlier and warmer” is still not using one’s own words when contacting a homeowner, it’s like having someone else write your term paper for you because “you’re not good with words”. Know that you can always use a thesaurus if you’re struggling, in addition to the grey matter you’ve been gifted!
The “secret sauce” is using your own words! We’ve all been exposed to formal educations, we all have access to an online thesaurus and dictionary, resorting to AI because you think you’re going to stand out more in the applicant lineup is pretty lame, to be honest. What happens when you have a video meeting and you sound like a doorknob? You’ve now wasted the time of the homeowner as well as having thieved the opportunity from other sitters.
History keeps teaching the same lesson. When tractors first appeared, farmers resisted them, and today no working farm runs without one. The same was true of cars, of the internet, of almost every technology that once looked like a threat and is now just part of ordinary life.
What’s genuinely lame is the people who can’t adapt, or who lack the imagination to try something new, and who try to drag everyone else down just so they can feel better about standing still.
No one wants data centres anywhere near where they live but everyone is so quick and excited to use AI, I’m not sure enough of us are appreciating the gravity of AI usage, those data centres are going somewhere, kids, just because they’re not near your house doesn’t mean they’re not near anyone’s house. They are always near residential areas, and are always polluting, as well as being incredibly noisy!
What do you mean by “mainly local”? I personally think the internet is an amazing advantage that we have now, but am very concerned about ai and it’s energy and water uses, especially when it’s used for what I see as frivolous usage. Truly interested to know if there is a way to use with lesser impact. I don’t want to end up in a mad max future
You need a lot of ram and a good GPU to run AI on your local computer.
There is more and more open source AI’s that are not as good as the top models, but for everyday tasks they can run on computers etc.
They can even write your applications for THS house sits haha
