Why I think Bonzai is the future of blogging

I just found out about Bonzai today. I dove right in while I was driving, because it looked really, really useful, and I've already created about half a dozen pieces. This is one of them: I spoke it, and Bonzai turned what I said into the story you're reading. So yes, I'm praising the same platform I used to make this. But nobody's paying me for it. I'm speaking from my own experience, even if it's only a day's worth.

Finding it felt almost serendipitous. To use a colloquial phrase, it's an answer to a prayer in a way. I'm always looking for how to use technology to do practical things in my life, and mainly what I want to do is communicate. I'm a marketer at heart. I'm a self-promoter, and that's something every business owner wants to do, along with anybody who wants to be independent and earn money on their own. I really feel like this is a tool that will help me do that, because now I can literally speak these pieces into existence.

It also pairs with something I already do. I podcast while I'm driving. Now, on top of that, I can speak things into written form, so Bonzai becomes a companion to the way I podcast. It really doubles it up.

Not long ago, I was introduced to something called Party Line. It was an integration with my WordPress site that let me take photos and upload stories from the road, and I thought it was going to be pretty promising. It didn't pan out to be exactly what I wanted.

Bonzai is different. I talk, and the stories get created from what I'm saying, even from the road. If I wanted to, I could copy and paste these stories into my blog and add links back to the originals on Bonzai. Speaking things into existence is a much quicker way to create content.

The voice I'm talking to is very lifelike. As far as I can tell, the voice interaction is more advanced than Google Gemini. I do have a good time using Gemini, but it doesn't do what this system does. The interface is smooth and clean, and the whole thing is dedicated to one job: creating newslike stories from the speaker's own voice. Being able to dictate my stories, stream of consciousness, is a really powerful tool. I really feel like this is the future of blogging, and of news.

Talking instead of typing

A lot of people are busy like me. They don't have time to sit down in front of a keyboard of any kind, whether it's on a computer, a word processor or a typewriter, and they especially don't have time for pen and paper. Being able to speak your ideas out and have them turned into a published, readable piece on an organized platform is a game-changer if people use it correctly. I think it's closer to what a lot of people started calling vibe coding, though I don't know how close it really is.

And I don't want to say there's an incorrect way to use it. Some people might use it for a journal. Some might want to speak poetry into existence and tell the system, "Don't change my words at all, just help me dictate my poetry." Others might use it to be like news reporters and put out local news stories, which is something I might eventually do as well.

The practicality, the utility and the accessibility make it viable for a lot of people to get really high-quality content out there without going through a lot of the editing and polishing themselves. The system does a lot of the heavy lifting. What we'll mostly have to do is be proofreaders and editors after the fact, before anything gets published.

What I check before it goes out

When I go back over one of my stories, I'm looking for factuality first: Are the things I've said represented the way I know them from my own lived experience? Nothing should be embellished or changed. If something I said wasn't clear and the story makes it clearer, I might tolerate that. But for the most part, I want it in my own voice.

I also look for AI artifacts, anything that deviates from how I actually speak. My own voice is what matters, because I'm the only person who can be me, and I'm the only one who sees things the way I do.

My own voice is what matters, because I'm the only person who can be me, and I'm the only one who sees things the way I do.

So I check the vocabulary. I check the pacing. When I read it, I want to hear it back inside my head and have it sound like me.