Uhlík vs Křemík · Czech podcast about artificial intelligence

Michal Schindler: AI never argues, the author answers for the text

Episode 18 · 16 September 2026 · 1:07:58 · Guest: Michal Schindler

Copywriter and creative Michal Schindler of Creative Dock laughed at AI writing in Czech in 2023, and today he treats it as a partner. On the podcast Uhlík vs Křemík with David Salomon and Adam Hanka, he talked about the creative process, how to spot a weak text, and the book the hosts wrote with the help of AI.

From mockery to partnership

Michal Schindler spent thirteen years at Vodafone, ran the customer magazine Čilichilli for about ten years, and has worked at Creative Dock since 2016. In 2023 he gave a talk on why people should not yet let AI write Czech texts if they do not want to look like fools. A year later he was already showing that ChatGPT can prepare an article almost ready for final editing.

The turning point came with a translation from English. Schindler stopped using DeepL and asked AI to translate a text into the language of a sixteen-year-old explaining technology to his grandmother. The result was so good that only a bit of style here and there needed fixing. Since then he talks to AI like to a normal person and says he does not need any prompting. According to him, everyone at Creative Dock became an advanced user within a few months. Today he uses AI even for his gym workout plan or supplements.

AI always nods along

Schindler describes his creative process as a mess in his head: he looks out of the window, goes for a walk, listens to metal. AI helps him shorten it. He has it generate ten ideas, which tend to be banal, so he keeps asking until something usable appears. But he always makes the choice himself.

He sees a threat in the fact that AI does not push back. "Because AI never argues with you. It recommends 10 things and I pick, say, the dumbest of them," he says. AI then goes on to explain why the choice was good. The discussion made the point that people need to be aware of this tendency of the machine and evaluate its answers critically. For Schindler the conclusion is clear: in the end there is always an author who is responsible for the text, whether they worked with a junior, with quotes from ten sources, or with AI.

Adam Hanka adds that creating the book with AI did not take creativity away from him, on the contrary, it unlocked a new form of it. He compares delegating thinking to artificial intelligence to a drug, though, one that needs to be handled carefully.

How to spot AI slop

Asked how to recognise a text written by AI, Adam Hanka names long dashes, which in his view do not belong in Czech, learned patterns built on contrast, and on social media pathos without substance. But according to him, people have always written stupid texts, it is just that they used to pass through newspaper editors. He himself once wrote a blog that he now considers worthless.

Schindler judges texts subjectively and looks above all for an idea in them. He gives the example of a novel that an editor put together from about a thousand pages of disjointed text, and nobody today blames the author for not managing it alone. In his view, AI often works much like such an editor.

A book as a recipe

The hosts sent Schindler their book Vaříme s umělou inteligencí (Cooking with Artificial Intelligence) in advance. He says it is written brilliantly and is very accessible, because it starts with something really simple, such as making tea. Adam Hanka described how most of the text was written by the Opus model in Claude, how he used a file of about 700 lines describing what Czech should look like, how he separately taught AI the order of words in a sentence, and how he worked with agents and personas of an author, an editor and a philosopher. Schindler sees it as a different kind of work, but just as deep: "behind it there really are hours, dozens of hours of work and above all your experience".

To beginning copywriters he gives the same advice as before. What you get from AI matches the quality you have inside you. "A person who wants to write has to read first and foremost." David Salomon reminded listeners at the end that it is good to keep some boring moments too, because they recharge us and open space for inspiration.

The full interview with Michal Schindler is available on the podcast Uhlík vs Křemík.

The episode is in Czech. Czech page with chapters, quotes and the full transcript