AI isn’t the threat to your course business. Sameness is. The experts who lose ground to AI won’t be the ones who used it, they’ll be the ones whose courses sound exactly like what anyone could get from a chatbot in thirty seconds.

I’ll be honest about how I got here. When ChatGPT came out, I asked myself the same thing a lot of course creators did: am I out of a job? My answer was no… (Ok maybe for like a sec.) Then I looked at what it was producing, and I realized the scary part was how easily AI could make the same course, over and over, for everyone who asked.

Will AI replace online courses?

No. AI makes generic courses easy to replace, though. If your course is a collection of information someone could find by asking a good question, that’s the kind of course AI makes easy to skip.

But people have never bought courses just for information. Information has been free for a long time. They buy courses because they want someone they trust to tell them what matters, in what order, and what to do next. They want a method. That part is yours, and a chatbot can’t invent it for you. I went further into this in are online courses dead? (short answer: no).

What does “sameness” look like in a course?

Sameness is when a course could have been written by anyone in your industry. Same module names, same advice, same tone, same five steps everyone else teaches. Nothing in it is wrong. It’s just interchangeable.

Here’s what I notice when a course has the sameness problem:

• The module titles are generic labels like “Mindset,” “Strategy,” and “Next Steps,” with nothing that sounds like the person teaching
• The lessons explain concepts but never show how this particular expert does it
• The examples are hypothetical instead of drawn from real clients or real experience
• The language is polished in a way that sounds like nobody in particular
• If you swapped the creator’s name for a competitor’s, nothing would feel off

AI makes all of this faster to produce, which is why it’s showing up everywhere. When everyone can generate a decent course outline in a minute, decent stops being worth paying for.

So should course creators use AI or avoid it?

Use it. Just use it on your method, not instead of it. Your method, refined by AI, not defined by it.

I use AI in my own business, and we build AI tools into courses where they help students do the work faster. Drafting, brainstorming, planning, turning a messy idea into a first pass. That’s a great use of it. The difference is what goes in first. If you start with your own framework, your own stories, and your own opinions, AI helps you shape them. If you start with a blank prompt, AI hands you the average of everything it’s ever read.

Here’s how I’d split the work:

Let AI help with	Keep this human
Turning your voice memo into a rough lesson outline	Deciding what your method is and what order it goes in
Drafting worksheet prompts from a lesson you’ve already taught	The stories, client examples, and lessons you learned the hard way
Brainstorming names for a framework you’ve already built	The opinions you’d defend on a sales call
Tightening a script so it’s shorter and clearer	How you actually talk, including the jokes
Giving students a tool to apply your steps to their own situation	The judgment about what your students need next

What makes a course impossible to copy?

A course is hard to copy when it’s built on a framework that came from your experience. Anyone can list topics. Not everyone can say “here are the five stages I’ve watched clients go through, here’s where they get stuck, and here’s what I do at each one.”

That’s why I start every course with the framework before anyone writes a lesson. A signature course framework is your way of doing the thing, laid out so a student can follow it. It has your name on it, figuratively and sometimes literally. When the course is hung on that structure, every lesson reinforces something only you teach.

Sam and Rachel are a good example. They’re DCC students who run a five-figure-a-month membership for graphic designers. Course Camp helped them stop throwing everything and the kitchen sink into their program. The kitchen-sink version is exactly the kind of course that blends in, because it tries to cover everything. The focused version, built around how they teach, is the one that stands out.

How do I make my course sound like me?

Start by writing down what you believe, not just what you know. Your beliefs are what make your course different from someone else’s course on the same topic.

I’ve seen agencies build courses for people without ever asking who they were. The results were fine and forgettable. At Dreampro, we ask who you are, what you believe, and how you talk, because that’s what ends up making the course feel like yours. You can do the same exercise on your own:

1. Write down three things you believe about your topic that a lot of people in your industry would disagree with.
2. List the stories you tell over and over on calls with clients. Those belong in your course.
3. Record yourself explaining your method out loud, then use that transcript (not a blank prompt) as the starting point for any AI drafting.
4. Read your lesson titles out loud. If they could appear in anyone’s course, rename them in your own words.
5. Ask one past client what they remember most from working with you. That’s usually the thing your course should be built around.

Is it too late to build a course now that AI is everywhere?

No. If anything, the gap between a forgettable course and a memorable one just got bigger, which is good news if you have real expertise. When generic content is everywhere, the courses that feel like they came from a specific person with a specific point of view are easier to notice.

The thing to avoid is building your course the fast, generic way and hoping it sells. Waiting isn’t the answer either. Waiting is just deferred revenue. Build it, build it on your method, and let AI speed up the parts that don’t need you.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use ChatGPT to create my online course?

You can use it to help, and I’d encourage that. Use it on your own framework, stories, and transcripts. If you ask it to create a course from scratch, you’ll get a course that looks like everyone else’s.

Will students pay for a course when they can ask AI for free?

Yes, when the course gives them something AI can’t: a proven method from someone they trust, a clear order of steps, and tools that help them implement. People pay for direction and results, and that’s what a well-designed course delivers.

Should I tell students I used AI to build my course?

That’s your call. What matters more is that the method, the examples, and the voice are clearly yours. If AI only helped you organize and tighten your own ideas, the course is still yours.

Is it OK to put AI tools inside my course?

Yes, and it’s one of my favorite ways to use AI. Tools that help students apply your method to their own situation make the course more useful. Just make sure the tool is guided by your framework, so students get your approach and not a generic one.

Build a course that sounds like you

If you want to build your course around your own method instead of the internet average, Dreampro Course Camp is where I teach how. It’s $497, we’ve been selling it since 2020, and it’s had hundreds of students and one refund request. You’ll learn how to create a course like an instructional designer without becoming one, framework first, so the thing you build couldn’t have come from anyone else.

Ariel Schiffer is the founder of Dreampro and an instructional designer with 15+ years of experience designing learning programs for Fortune 50 companies and nonprofits. She holds an M.A. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology.