Ai ate my bid response (and other tales from the portal of doom)
AI is everywhere. You cannot scroll through LinkedIn without someone shouting about how it is “revolutionising” their business.
The hype is loud. The reality, though, is a bit quieter, and a lot messier.
Left unsupervised, AI is like letting your dad loose on TikTok. It will produce something, sure, but whether it makes sense is another
matter entirely. Sometimes it is genius, other times it is pure nonsense.
The attraction is obvious: AI can churn out 2,000 words of apparently polished text in seconds. It never complains, never asks for pizza, and never forgets deadlines. But here is the rub: will it capture your client’s voice? Will it understand that “community benefits” does not mean you donated your office Christmas tree to the local library? Will it know that your company is not, in fact, responsible for inventing the wheel in 1992? Exactly.
AI is a brilliant assistant, but a terrible lead singer. It is excellent at summarising specifications, building outlines, or giving you a first draft when you are staring at a blank page. It can help tidy grammar, rephrase awkward sentences, and even check consistency.
Used properly, it saves time and brainpower.
But the magic in bidding is not just words on a page. It is evidence, relevance, strategy, and personality. Buyers want to see your proof points, your track record, and your human understanding of their needs. And no matter how clever the algorithm, AI does not
know what really makes your client tick.
As a great man once said: AI can spit words quicker than Busta Rhymes, but it cannot tell your story like you can.
AI hallucinates. Give it half a chance and it will make up case studies, invent statistics, and confidently assert that your business built the Pyramids in 2018. If you are not fact-checking every line, you could be sending buyers a work of creative fiction rather
than a serious tender response. And procurement teams are not in the market for fantasy.
So how should you use it?
- Treat AI like a junior assistant. Get it to draft, but check everything.
- Use it for structure and flow, not for substance.
- Always inject your own evidence, tone, and context.
- Never copy-paste blindly.
AI is not the enemy, and it is not the silver bullet either. It is a tool. And like any tool, it is only as good as the person using it.
In the hands of a skilled bid team, it is a time-saver. In the wrong hands, it is a liability.
So, use it wisely, laugh at its mistakes, and remember: the robots are clever, but the humans are still in charge. For now.