Why Beefree wrote an AI manifesto, and why creators stay at the center

The Beefree and AI Manifesto boils down to one idea, that AI should enable people to create better content, while still keeping the creative direction in the hands of humans. Beefree CEO Massimo Arrigoni led the writing, and in this interview he tells us how it started, where he draws the line on AI, and what he made of criticism that the manifesto was naive. 

We’d suggest reading the manifesto itself first, as this piece is about why it exists. But hey, if you want to eat dessert before your meal, you’re a grown-up. Whether or not you use our tools, Massimo’s answers are a good place to start if you’re still deciding how much of your job AI should touch.

Beefree is the company behind Really Good Emails, RGE Studio and Beefree SDK, so when Massimo talks about “our products,” RGE Studio is one of them.

Key takeaways

• Making films can be used as an analogy to explain how we view the role AI should play, with AI speeding up effects and editing while the filmmaker, and the marketer, keep the final say. 
• The team used AI to research the literature on human-centered AI and look for blind spots, while people wrote and rewrote the text.
• The manifesto is the team’s compass and points to explainability and traceability as a principle that has a substantial impact on the product roadmap.
• The manifesto doesn’t claim to solve the hard questions about AI, just provide a set of workable principles

Where the manifesto started

How did the idea for an AI manifesto come about, and why then?

I was working on my presentation for the company retreat in the spring of this year [2026]. Beefree is a remote company, and we try to get together at least once a year. I wanted everyone to have a serious discussion about how AI is affecting our customers, our products, our company, and content creation more generally.

My presentation started with a question I was asking myself first: “Any hype aside, why do we add AI to our products?” It’s a simple question, but if you take it seriously, you end up having to write a manifesto about what you believe: why, what, how. So I started writing that document and pulled in a bunch of people. 32 versions later (I went back to the Google Doc and counted them, LOL), there was our manifesto.

Where Beefree draws the line on AI

Massimo’s answer separates AI that gives you more capacity from AI that takes your place, and he uses film to explain the difference.

Were there uses of AI that felt easy to take a position on, and others that felt harder?

For years in the martech industry, and especially in the email world, we’ve talked about people wearing lots of hats and being asked to deliver all sorts of campaigns with limited resources. That’s the picture I have in mind when I think about situations where it’s easy to look at AI positively. It can give those same people the ability to do more. At the core, that’s what we believe. Sensible addition of AI to our tools can help more people create better content, at scale.

It immediately gets harder when you think about people completely delegating content creation to AI, potentially replacing other humans who used to be part of the process. That vision of AI is not human-centered. It’s tech-centered, and we don’t believe that will ultimately lead to successful outcomes. So in our manifesto, we take a clear position in favor of a human-centered approach.

My wife works in the film industry. We talk about the impact of AI on creators all the time. She challenges me to reflect deeply on this stuff, and I’m grateful for that. When you think about a film, things become even clearer. Do we want AI there to help filmmakers create special effects more easily and affordably, speed up film editing, and so on? Or do you want to replace the filmmaker?

We do not believe in replacing the filmmaker. We do not believe in replacing the marketer.

How the manifesto was written

How did the document take shape, and who was involved along the way?

It was a very collaborative effort. I’m very lucky to be able to count on so many talented and opinionated people at Beefree who want to contribute to something like this. It took a ton of iterations, comments, and live discussions.

At first, it was mostly myself, Guillermo Padilla (Head of Product and one of the Beefree co-founders), and Mike Nelson (Head of Growth, and one of the Really Good Emails co-founders). We got to a point where the management team felt good about it, and then we opened it up for comments from the entire company. That led to some additional editing. Once the text was final, the fantastic Beefree design team turned it into a beautiful document, as they always do, and there is now a great-looking web version of it, too.

We did use AI as an assistant, by the way. Not to write the document, but to research the extensive literature around human-centered AI, and to find blind spots in our thinking.

How did you decide what to include and what to leave out?

That’s the hard part. We wanted to be authentic, detailed enough not to be accused of saying too little, but succinct enough that the document would be very quick to read.

My personal goal was to put out something that I could easily memorize, so I know exactly what is in it if someone asks me. That’s because, again, I wanted it to be authentic. Something that we truly believe and practice.

The Beefree and AI Manifesto in short:

• Collaboration between humans and AI. AI handles speed and scale, while people keep control of quality, judgment and creative direction.
• Explainability and traceability. You should be able to understand how the AI reached a conclusion, and its actions are logged.
• Human accountability. A person stays in the loop and supervises the AI where the law or the situation requires it.

Three questions to ask before you add AI to your email workflow

These questions are our own reading of the three principles, and they work whether you use our tools or someone else’s.

1. Who makes the final call? AI can draft and suggest, but check that a person reviews and approves every email before it goes out.
2. Can you see what the AI did? You should be able to tell which parts it generated, which parts you changed, and why it suggested what it did.
3. Who owns the result if something goes wrong? If the honest answer is “the AI,” your workflow needs a human checkpoint before anything reaches the inbox.

Read the manifesto online or download the PDF.

How the manifesto is used in practice

What role does the manifesto play when the team makes product decisions?

It’s our compass. It helps us choose where to go. For example, take “Explainability and traceability.” That principle has a substantial impact on the product roadmap, now and for the foreseeable future.

The manifesto leaves the roadmap open on purpose, because the team expects it to change as AI capabilities do. While the roadmap stays open, you can already see that human-centered approach in RGE Studio’s AI Assistant. The Help Center presents it as support for your work and asks you to review anything it generates before using it. 

How, if at all, does the manifesto apply to the way the team uses AI internally?

The manifesto is focused on our products. Why AI in Beefree products? What does it mean? How is it actually implemented? That said, it speaks more broadly about the role that we see for AI in content creation, and we want to be true to that as a company as well.

For example, I don’t see our Really Good Emails newsletter ever being written by AI. AI may be used as a collaborator in the process of writing the newsletter, but it will not replace our (really funny!!) writers.

The conversation around the manifesto

What would you say to email professionals who don’t want to use AI at all?

A smart assistant can be helpful, in all sorts of ways. Imagine you had an assistant with a bunch of time and resources available to them. They could help you research the topic you’re writing about, critique your writing, check the content against recent product or company updates, ensure design consistency, and so on. There are so many ways in which a helpful assistant can be helpful.

Every task Massimo lists sits around the writing and the design, which stay with you. That’s close to what email marketers told us in our September Email Support Group, summed up in AI in email marketing: let it do the boring parts.

What reactions have you had to the manifesto, inside and outside the company? Has any of it changed how you think about it?

We’ve received many positive reactions, with people appreciating the fact that we took a clear position. We’ve also been laughed at for being naive and superficial.

AI is a complicated topic and an extremely fast-moving reality. We don’t pretend to have the answer to any of the hard questions. We just wanted to take a position and try to be honest about it. In the end, we believe that’s way better than not taking any position at all. How do you make decisions around AI otherwise? Which way do you go if you have no path to follow?

The manifesto says something similar about itself. It describes its principles as the team’s current best thinking and commits to revisiting the document openly as the technology and the regulations change.

Why the creator still matters

Massimo’s last answer goes back to the question he started with, and to the people he had in mind when he asked it.

What would you want people to understand about the manifesto that the document itself doesn’t say?

We really do care about the community of content creators that we have had the privilege of serving with our products. Millions of people have built emails, pages, and other digital content with our tools over the last 12 years. Countless marketers helping their businesses be successful. Fundraising staff at a nonprofit. Teachers at a high school putting together a newsletter for parents. Restaurant managers inviting customers to a special event. You name it.

We love that and really appreciate how many humans have touched our technology. We want them to continue being creators. We truly hope that what we are building is better versions of sensible tools that will help create better content. AI is just there to help.

Read the full Beefree and AI Manifesto.