I feel the same way hearing some online chatter about how Artificial Intelligence is going to kill off online courses.

They’re not only premature…

But they’re quite In 1897, the American author Mark Twain was shocked to see his obituary in the newspaper.

He instantly sent a cable to a reporter, telling him:

“Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

simply WRONG.

I get why these rumours circulate, though.

Because the thinking goes like this…

With AI tools like Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT, people can enter a request for information and AI will provide it within seconds.

For example, let’s say I wanted to start my own local upholstery service.

I might ask ChatGPT: “Act as my home business advisor. I want to start my own UK local upholstery service. Give me a detailed plan of how I would go about doing this.”

AI would duly provide an answer.

Or perhaps I was already setting up such a business, but I wanted advice on a specific task. I could ask ChatGPT something like this: “Give me a crash course in armchair upholstery.”

Or this: “How do I replace damaged or weak springs?”

In fact, for almost every task, there is a way to ask an AI tool to do some research, offer guidance and recommend resources.

Surely, then, that’s the end of Online Digital Courses?

After all, nobody will want to pay for information they can get for FREE on AI, (or for a measly £20 monthly subscription if they use the advanced versions).

But this shows a lack of understanding of what digital courses really offer, and why people want to buy them.

What’s more, I can debunk this rumour instantly with a direct comparison.

This Same Thing Happened Before With Google!

Cast your mind back 24 years to the year 2000…

That was the year when Google entered our lives.

Suddenly, every internet user had a powerful tool at their disposal, which could find information about almost any subject they wished for…

For FREE!

At the time, I was working for an international publishing company, creating courses, newsletters and membership services that cost anything from £97 a year to £1,997 (or more!)

I distinctly remember the same argument cropping up…

Why would anyone ever pay for a consultant, course or information product again when a magical tool could answer every query we ever had?

“There’s Google for that” (otherwise referred to TGFT), people would say, dismissively.

What they meant was that for anything you needed to know in life, Google could supply it in seconds.

Sound familiar?

Of course it does!

Today, critics are boldly announcing the death of paid-for information.

And yet, Google DIDN’T kill the info product industry.

The opposite happened.

After 2000, there was a meteoric rise in paid-for information products.

My own business, Canonbury, started in 2003 – THREE YEARS after the arrival of Google – with a subscription newsletter that offered home business advice and reviews.

And we were reviewing TONNES of newly created paid-for services that were cropping up all over the internet.

Information about trading, investing, arbitrage betting, self-improvement, eBay selling, import-export, copywriting, memory power – you name it!

You see, the explosion of free online content has done two things…

• It showed ordinary people that they could now access information that could improve their lives, just by searching for it online – thereby increasing the desire and demand for advice.
• It has helped info product creators reach vast, growing marketplaces of customers for free (or very cheap), meaning MORE supply of products that could help them.

Rather than kill off information products, Google helped spark a boom.

Sure, searching on Google might have allowed people to access useful information for free – but there were numerous problems with what they were finding.

• A lot of the material was untrustworthy or contradictory and from uncertain origins.
• There was often so much information on a topic that it was hard to digest it and put it into a logical order or coherent system.
• Much of the advice was strewn with jargon and technical detail, or it assumed levels of knowledge and experience which they didn’t have.
• Knowing the facts about a topic doesn’t necessarily help you in a practical way.
• The information lacked helpful advice, emotional nuance and the personal touch.

People realised it took time, patience and effort to collect all the relevant information, sift out the irrelevant stuff, then use it to achieve their goals.

Truth is, most of us are lazy, and would much rather get relevant information spoon-fed to us than doing our own research on Google.

And there were other issues too…

What happened if you tried something out and you got stuck – who would help you?

How would you know if you were doing something the right or wrong way?

This was why people were keen to pay for services that offered them the right guidance in a way they could understand, from someone they trusted.

They not only wanted the info delivered, step-by-step, but with plenty of hand-holding throughout the process too, so that they didn’t feel left alone.

The exact same thing goes for AI….

AI Is Brilliant But It Won’t Replace Courses

AI is ace, and a great tool for many tasks… in fact I’m currently adding some incredible AI tools and systems to my own Course Creation Academy to help my students.

But for most people who use it to achieve a big, important goal in life, it takes too much time, patience and effort.

• The answers AI gives are often basic and general, so you have to continually drill down into more details.
• AI often makes mistakes and sometimes invents facts, so you have to manually check and verify the advice.

To extract coherent step-by-step advice from ChatGPT is similar, in terms of time and effort, to actually CREATING a course.

The vast majority of people don’t want to do that!

They just want someone they like and trust, who has done all the legwork and who can give it to them straight.

And while AI can sound like a human, it isn’t human, so it cannot communicate its emotional ups and downs, or share its quirks and flaws, loves and hates.

It’s not a unique, emotional individual who has gone through a unique set of life experiences like you have.

So rest assured, you cannot be replaced by AI.

And just remember WHY people buy courses…

They want guidance from an expert they trust – or an ordinary person like them, who’s ‘been there and done it’.

They want the fastest, easiest, laziest way of getting the information they need.

And they want to be SHOWN what to do every step of the way.

AI cannot do any of the above.

This is why the death of digital courses has been greatly exaggerated!

If you’d like more information on the principles behind a great course that sells in the AI age then make sure you check out my free online masterclass here (if you haven’t already) to get started.