Using AI Tools

People occasionally ask whether we’re using AI to write articles, so let’s be straightforward about it. Every article on Claire Lives comes from real people dealing with real houses – me painting walls while recovering from NHS burnout, Sarah teaching herself to tile from YouTube, Raj methodically transforming his beige new-build flat, Marcus squeezing projects around teaching schedules, Aisha renovating with a toddler climbing on everything. The ideas, experiences, and advice all come from what we’re actually doing in our own homes.

That said, none of us are professional writers. I’m a former nurse doing part-time care work. Sarah managed a Boots for years and now does home content. Raj writes code for a fintech company. Marcus teaches geography to teenagers. Aisha’s working part-time office admin while looking after a three-year-old and being heavily pregnant. We write about home design because we care about it and have things to share, not because we studied journalism or writing.

Our first drafts can be rough. Sentences that ramble or don’t flow well. Grammar mistakes we don’t catch. Structure that needs work. So yeah, we use AI tools sometimes to help clean things up – think of it like having an editor who helps tighten sentences and fix obvious errors. We write the full article based on our actual experiences, then we might run it through tools like Grammarly to catch issues and improve readability.

The process usually goes: one of us writes a complete draft about something we actually did or learned. Then we review it ourselves, maybe ask another contributor to read it, might use AI to help polish the final version. Every article gets checked by at least one other person before it goes live. If something doesn’t sound authentic or seems like generic content that could apply to any house, it gets sent back.

We’re protective about keeping things genuine because that’s the whole point. If an article sounds like it could’ve been written by anyone who’s never actually tiled a bathroom or painted a room or dealt with rental restrictions, it’s not good enough. The goal is real experiences from people figuring this out, not content scraped from other home blogs.

About the images: some are AI-generated and we’re honest about that. Here’s why – we can’t photograph everything we write about. Sarah’s done loads to her house but she doesn’t have photos of every single technique or room style we discuss. Raj’s flat is transformed but it’s one small flat in Chorlton, not every possible space configuration. My terrace in Leeds can’t represent every type of home. Marcus’s Victorian conversion is specific to that style. Aisha’s semi is kid-chaos most of the time, not exactly staged for photos.

We also can’t just take images from other people’s houses without permission. And honestly, taking professional-quality photos of everything would require time and equipment none of us have while juggling actual jobs and lives.

So when we need visuals to illustrate something and we can’t photograph it ourselves, we’ll sometimes use AI to generate images that represent the concept. We try to make them useful and realistic, not obviously AI-generated with weird proportions. They’re there to help readers visualize ideas, not to mislead anyone.

What you won’t find here is AI-generated articles that are just generic home design content. We’re not using AI to pump out “10 Budget Bathroom Ideas” based on scraping other websites. Every article comes from someone’s actual experience – me discovering that paint colour affects mood during a difficult time, Sarah’s disasters learning to tile, Raj’s methodical approach to small space design, Marcus fitting DIY around teaching, Aisha making things work with toddlers and tight budgets.

We’re working out how to use new tools without losing what makes Claire Lives useful – genuine perspectives from people with different situations all trying to make their homes work. Our promise is that every article starts with real knowledge from actually living in and working on our own houses.

If you’re wondering whether something was written by AI, the answer is no – it was written by one of five people dealing with actual home renovation and design challenges, possibly with some editing help to make the writing clearer. But the experience, the voice, the specific details about what worked and what didn’t – that’s all human, all real, all from our actual houses.