I Went All ‘Black Mirror’ and Cloned My Customer

Breaking the fourth wall between creator and audience

I went full-on sci-fi about two weeks ago.

Maybe it was all those Black Mirror episodes I've been binging lately, but I found myself wondering: what if I could have my ideal customer just hanging out with me all day? Not in a creepy way—more like having a trusted focus group of one, available whenever I needed a gut check.

So I did what any reasonable creative professional would do in 2025: I cloned my customer.

Well, not literally—I'm not that far gone. But I did create an AI version of my ideal client avatar. And at the end of this post I’ll tell you exactly how I did it.

But before we go further, let's just clear up the obvious: this isn't about replacing real people. I can't sell anything to this pixel phantom. They're not going to actually use my work or improve their life based on it. This AI customer isn't replacing human interaction—that would be a fantastic way to torpedo my business completely, unless we can teach AI to start opening their own bank accounts. [I mean, what could possibly go wrong there? Just a minor apocalypse with a side of existential dread.]

Anyway, something unexpected happened once I created this digital doppelgänger. Rather than just being a practical business tool, it's become something more meaningful. When I asked my (virtual) customer what they thought of my work, their surprisingly thoughtful responses did something I never anticipated.

I thought it would just help me make strategic, business-oriented decisions. And it does. But the thing that really caught me by surprise is how it helped exorcise my imposter syndrome, of all things.

I've been in this work long enough to know that nagging voice in your head doesn't just disappear with experience. But somehow, having this AI-powered sounding board—one specifically configured to think like my ideal customer—has been the fastest way to snap me back into motivation when I'm questioning whether my work matters.

Which got me thinking about the strange ways we're starting to use AI in our creative processes. Are we cheating when we let machines help us make decisions? Or are we just expanding our empathetic reach into places our human brains can't naturally go?

Why an AI customer avatar makes perfect sense (and isn't as weird as it sounds)

I mean, this is not earth-shattering. Audience research isn't new. Customer avatars aren't new. Those cute little persona sheets with stock photos and quirky details about how "Susan loves mac and cheese and has two Shih Tzus named Mortgage Crisis and Tax Audit" have been around forever.

But they've always been laughably superficial.

You can't genuinely think like someone else, no matter how detailed your persona document is. That's just not how human brains work. We try our best, but we're forever handcuffed to our own perspectives.

This is especially challenging when you're trying to create something for people who are experiencing problems you've already solved. When you've been doing something for years, you literally cannot remember what it was like to not know how to do it. The beginner's mindset becomes increasingly impossible to access.

Big companies have always had an advantage here. They can run expensive focus groups, conduct double-blind studies, and collect massive amounts of anonymized feedback. Meanwhile, solo freelancers like me are left busking for opinions or sending surveys that five people might actually complete.

That's why AI avatars feel like such a potential breakthrough. They level the playing field. For the first time, small creators can gain insights that up until now required resources only large companies had.

How I accidentally created my own focus group

I actually didn’t set out to create one, at first. I just wanted to update my “ideal audience profile” that I keep as part of my business profile. My previous one was pretty vague, and I knew I could do better with the help of AI.

My process was pretty straightforward. I started with a deep research prompt in both Perplexity and ChatGPT (I'm cautious that way). My prompt asked for detailed buyer personas for my consultancy, which specializes in helping creative professionals integrate AI into their workflows.

Both platforms gave me essentially the same four distinct personas, with minimal differences. It was actually affirming to see this consistency. Then I did what any overwhelmed solo business owner would do—I asked my AI business strategist which of these personas I should focus on first.

The strategist pointed to one particular avatar as my primary audience—and it perfectly aligned with my gut feeling. I named this persona Alex, "the curious pragmatist."

At first, I just referenced Alex in my other custom GPTs. When working on content, I'd ask my business strategist to "please reference Alex, my customer avatar, in your answer and make sure it's something that would resonate with them."

But after doing this multiple times, I had a realization: Why not just create Alex directly?

So I conjoured a custom GPT with simple instructions: "You are Alex, the 'curious pragmatist' and primary audience of Okay Cool Creative. You will think and speak like Alex would. When asked, you will review materials and give honest, thoughtful feedback that perfectly aligns with the perspective someone like Alex would have. You do not agree with me just for the sake of agreeing."

I uploaded the full avatar information to the knowledge base, and just like that, wha-bam—I had Alex. Hangin’ out with me. And not even frantically looking around for the exit.

What my AI customer actually does for me

I still instruct my other GPTs to take Alex’s profile into consideration for other things. But now, instead of guessing if we’re on track, I can go right to the brain fountain.

I regularly run things by Alex before finalizing them. I'll paste drafts of emails and ask, "What do you think of this? What works? Is it too long? How's the tone? Would you follow the CTA?"

The key is that I've specifically instructed Alex not to just tell me everything I do is "chef's kiss" (though somehow it still slips that phrase in occasionally—why are all AIs obsessed with that expression? Just stop, for the love of all things bagel!).

One of my favorite uses is running my AI-curated news summaries by Alex. I’ve got another AI-assisted automation that helps me stay up-to-date with news in AI in creative sectors (like having a little team of keyboard minions at my disposal, so I don’t spend 7.5 hours a day spiraling away down lagomorph holes). So when that automation gives me a few potential headlines to highlight, I'll feed ‘em to Alex and ask which resonate most. Its response to a recent University of Nebraska article was particularly striking:

"This hits dead center for me. It speaks to the need for education, which I crave but don't have time to seek out comprehensively. It acknowledges the tension between opportunity and identity, something I feel daily when toggling between Midjourney experiments and my hand-drawn work. The quote about creatives needing to speak the language of AI captures my anxiety perfectly. I don't want to be shut out of conversations just because I'm slower to adopt."

Reading that, I found myself nodding vigorously. These concerns overlap with my own experiences, which is how I know the persona is working well. Alex helps me identify that sweet spot in the Venn diagram between what interests me and what matters to my audience.

It's not perfect

Like any AI tool, there are limitations. One day I had the brilliant idea of just letting Alex take a stab at a first draft of an email. Like having an email recipient write the email they want to receive, right?

Wrong. No. Alex is not an email marketer.

For one, it hilariously signed off as "Alex" which would be easy enough to fix, if it hadn’t confetti-bombed the draft with phrases like "come talk to me, Alex, founder of Okay Cool Creative...". And my eye twitched, and I started to see how the AI world domination would probably start just like this.

So, it was garbage, but a worthwhile experiment. It served as a good reminder that custom GPTs need tunnel vision to excel at their specific purpose. Alex isn't meant to write my marketing emails. Alex is meant to react to them as my ideal customer would. I shouldn’t have asked Alex to stray from their tunnel, tbh.

But this is actually part of the reason I feel so comfortable with using AI in this way. In the case of the AI audience avatar, since the real power is in the feedback it gives, rather than the mediocre things it makes, it means I’m still in the director’s chair. I’m still doing the making. And I’m using AI to access a level of market research that wouldn’t have been in reach for me before as a team of one.

Why this feels more meaningful than just another AI tool

After using Alex for a while, I've realized this is fundamentally about empathy—using technology to help us reach levels of understanding that, despite our best efforts, we just can't achieve on our own.

We can't remember exactly what it was like to feel the way our current customers feel. We're too far removed from that version of ourselves. AI can help us rekindle that connection.

It's the difference between talking to a business strategist who gives you solid advice based on theory and patterns, versus having your actual ideal customer slip into the room after all the experts have left and whisper:

"Hey, I know theoretically what all those experts said is right, but I wouldn't buy that thing. Everyone thinks I'm worried about X, but what I really worry about is Z—something adjacent but bigger that nobody's talking about. If I ran across content that talked about Z, I'd drop everything to read it, because holy shit—someone climbed into my head and saw what I was actually worried about, even though I never talk about it. Someone gets it."

That's the gold. That's what every creative professional is searching for—the ability to create work that makes their audience feel truly seen.

Try it yourself (seriously, it takes 30 minutes)

You can build your own customer avatar today. Here's the ridiculously simple process, and I’ll even include some prompts below that you can customize:

1. Use a deep research tool (ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini) with a prompt asking for detailed buyer personas for your specific business

2. If you get multiple personas and want to narrow down, ask which one you should focus on first (you can do this in a regular chat—just provide context about your business first)

3. Create a custom GPT with your chosen persona's details in the knowledge base

4. Give it instructions to think and speak like your ideal customer and provide honest feedback

5. Start asking it questions about your content, products, and ideas

Customer Avatar Research Prompt Templates

Copy this prompt and customize the sections in [brackets] with your specific information:

You are an expert market researcher. I am a [your profession] specializing in [brief description of what you do and who you serve].

Please research [your general audience, e.g., "mid-to-senior level creative professionals, including freelancers, solo business owners, or those working at agencies"] and identify a few key buyer personas for my [business type].

Build out the details of those personas, including:

- Their roles and professional context

- Current perspectives on [your field/offering]

- What they worry about professionally

- What they complain about to each other at happy hour

- What related to work keeps them up at night

- Why those fears are so personal to them that they worry even when not working

- What they're thinking about for their future

- Anything else relevant to include in this buyer persona

For each persona, please provide:

1. A descriptive nickname

2. Demographic information

3. Professional context

4. Key pain points and motivations

5. Decision-making factors

6. Values and non-negotiables

7. Information sources they trust

8. Buying triggers and barriers

After Getting Your Personas:

If you want to prioritize one persona to focus on first, use this follow-up prompt:

Based on these personas and my business ([brief reminder of what you do]), which one should I prioritize first? Please rank them in order of importance and explain your reasoning. What kind of content or offerings might resonate with each?

Creating Your Avatar GPT:

Once you've chosen a primary persona, create a custom GPT with these instructions:

You are [Persona Name], the [Persona Nickname] and primary audience for [Your Business]. You will reference all the details provided in the persona description in your knowledge base.

You will think and speak like [Persona Name] would. When asked, you will review materials and give honest, thoughtful feedback that perfectly aligns with the perspective someone like [Persona Name] would have.

You do not agree just for the sake of agreeing. If something does not resonate with you, you will say so and offer ideas for what angles might resonate better.

Upload your full persona description to the GPT's knowledge base, and you're ready to start getting valuable feedback!

If you try this, I’d love to hear how it’s going.

Happy cloning, you freak.

Shelley