When building buyer personas, all that glitters is not AI gold. At least not yet.

"A buyer persona is a composite sketch of a target market segment based on validated commonalities," explained B2B marketing strategist Ardath Albee in her recent presentation, Using AI + B2B Personas to Engage Buyers, Drive Growth, and Do More With Less.

"Personas should actually inform how you help pull people through their buying process and help them move toward making a purchase. That's the whole reason for building them in the first place."

To do so, you need to know your buyers. It's a qualitative exercise requiring empathy, not just data. And that's where the problem with using AI shortcuts to build personas comes in.

"We need to get more of that human experience into the content and experiences we deliver to our buyers. And I don't want us to lose sight of that."

"I love AI. I use it all the time. I just want you to be skeptical and not take it at face value to your own detriment," insists Ardath.

Check out this clip from her presentation where she discusses the reality of AI in today's personas process:

After testing several dedicated AI persona generators, she's found that the details they provide are often either too high-level or too in the weeds to be meaningful as real, workable personas.

"It's not giving you anything that is differentiated or out of the ordinary," she says. "It's a great overview education," but they're just not serving up the necessary customer insights you can uncover in personal interviews.

What does work?