Developer Community Author Gergely Orosz Criticizes AI-Generated Pitches for Destroying Interpersonal Connections
Well-known software engineering author Gergely Orosz posted on social media that he recently received an AI-generated pitch email from an entrepreneur he had previously interviewed.
This action instantly erased his personal impression of the entrepreneur. Orosz questioned why people do not realize that the cold, mechanical content generated by AI can erase the interpersonal trust established earlier.
From a market mechanism perspective, AI tools lower the barrier for creating pitches and accelerate bulk outreach, but they also dilute real relationships. Quality founders and investors tend to prefer communications that have a human touch, putting pressure on startup teams that rely on templates.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Gergely Orosz has long shared insights on software engineering and AI tools through The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, including multiple discussions on the pros and cons of AI-assisted coding. His criticism of AI pitches continues his consistent emphasis on the importance of interpersonal connections and authenticity. He has warned in several articles that over-reliance on AI may weaken engineering culture.
From a capital perspective, entrepreneurs use tools like ChatGPT to quickly generate personalized-looking pitches to reach more investors, aiming to expand their funding network at a low cost. However, this practice undermines the trust built through offline interactions, leading to lost potential collaboration opportunities and forcing high-quality projects to invest more in genuine interactions.
Similar to the backlash against trust caused by bulk email marketing in the early social media era, the phenomenon of AI pitches is currently transitioning from an efficiency tool to a factor that damages relationships, prompting founders and investors to reassess the weight of genuine signals in funding decisions.
Essentially, this represents a technological substitution and restructuring of the industry chain: AI-generated content directly replaces personalized communication channels, compressing the cost of relationship building through zero-cost scaling, but also triggering a trust crisis and pushing communication tools towards a mixed model of real + AI verification, reshaping the trust structure in startup financing.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
As efficiency increases, interpersonal connections become a scarce premium.
The cheaper the tools, the more valuable the real signals.
Bulk replication is easy to obtain, but trust has always been manual.