Is Your Battery Advice Coming from a Real Expert? How to Tell
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- Sponsor
- OPTIMA Batteries
- Location
- Glendale, WI
The rise of Artificial Intelligence is already changing our lives in ways we never would've dreamed of just a few years ago. One of the ways it is changing in the battery industry is that some brands use AI-generated content and fake authors to present information about their products to consumers. Is it important to get battery advice from real humans? While AI-generated content can certainly offer some useful information, anyone who has spent a decent amount of time using various AI tools can definitely share stories with you about when AI gave incomplete or completely wrong answers. Every time we've asked AI tools to name all the 12-volt lithium battery brands that have gone out of business (Ballistic, Alien Motion, Chimera, Enduro Power, etc...), it always misses a couple and sometimes includes brands that are still being sold!
Presenting AI-generated content as authentic human-generated content may also make consumers question the authenticity and expertise of the brand they are considering. If the people behind that battery brand don't know enough about batteries to write about them, do they know anything about manufacturing batteries or did they just buy some cheap batteries off a website and rebrand them to sell to you?
We've also found some of the battery brands using fake authors and AI-generated content on their website and social media also lack a customer service team staffed by real humans. This forces many of their customers into Facebook groups, where other customers attempt to trouble shoot each other's problems. So how can you pick out the pretenders from the real deal?
Ask Who Wrote the Article?
Start with the author. It may seem hard to believe, but every blog on the OPTIMA Batteries website (at least as of June 2026) was written by OPTIMA's resident eCare Manager, Jim McIlvaine. He has worked full-time for the OPTIMA brand since 2009 and you can see his LinkedIn profile here. While Jim has worked for the OPTIMA brand for quite a while and has an even longer background in the automotive industry, he is not an engineer. When he needs assistance or input that is more technical in nature, he does have a staff of engineers he can call on, including Daryl Brockman, Jack Reesman and Caleb Abegglen. These engineers work on batteries and battery chargers full-time for OPTIMA and our parent corporation, Clarios, not as one of many side projects for various customers. One of the unique things about OPTIMA Batteries is that our employees don't just work on batteries for a living. They are passionate enthusiasts who often spend their free time out in the garage, at the track or on the lake.
We included links for all those OPTIMA employees that lead to OPTIMA YouTube videos, LinkedIn profiles and posts on the OPTIMA LinkedIn page, because you should expect to be able to find evidence of their existence beyond a byline on a blog with a generic name and an alleged engineering degree from an impressive university. You can also see some photos of these real OPTIMA employees below. Some brands may try to claim their batteries are designed and/or engineered in the United States, but do those brands even have a LinkedIn page or employees on LinkedIn with a degree in any kind of engineering? If a battery brand isn't being honest about the source of their content, what else are they not telling you?
Look for Original Photos and Videos
Even casual Internet users can often spot an AI-generated image or stock photography and more than a few battery brands employ both with reckless abandon. They use images that don't even make sense, like a center console boat beached on a snowy shoreline with a trolling motor in water that is somehow deep enough and hasn't frozen, to illustrate cold temperatures in a marine application or a bearded man in a white lab coat, looking into a microscope to suggest some technical expertise. Anyone with an iPhone can take a photograph or record a video, so if a battery brand is more than just a digital storefront, they'll have plenty of videos and photos that are clearly unique to them. Some browsers allow you to right click on an image to run a search to see if a photo is being used elsewhere online, which often happens with stock photos.
Use AI to Identify Itself
If there's still any doubt in your mind whether you are getting AI or human-generated information from a battery brand, just ask your favorite AI tool. Many AI tools like ChatGPT or Grok can identify AI-generated content with reasonable certainty if you just copy and paste an article or link into their query bar.
In an age where anyone can publish information and AI can create thousands of articles in a matter of minutes, we've found the most valuable battery advice still comes from people who have earned their expertise the old-fashioned way- through experience.
Presenting AI-generated content as authentic human-generated content may also make consumers question the authenticity and expertise of the brand they are considering. If the people behind that battery brand don't know enough about batteries to write about them, do they know anything about manufacturing batteries or did they just buy some cheap batteries off a website and rebrand them to sell to you?
We've also found some of the battery brands using fake authors and AI-generated content on their website and social media also lack a customer service team staffed by real humans. This forces many of their customers into Facebook groups, where other customers attempt to trouble shoot each other's problems. So how can you pick out the pretenders from the real deal?
Ask Who Wrote the Article?
Start with the author. It may seem hard to believe, but every blog on the OPTIMA Batteries website (at least as of June 2026) was written by OPTIMA's resident eCare Manager, Jim McIlvaine. He has worked full-time for the OPTIMA brand since 2009 and you can see his LinkedIn profile here. While Jim has worked for the OPTIMA brand for quite a while and has an even longer background in the automotive industry, he is not an engineer. When he needs assistance or input that is more technical in nature, he does have a staff of engineers he can call on, including Daryl Brockman, Jack Reesman and Caleb Abegglen. These engineers work on batteries and battery chargers full-time for OPTIMA and our parent corporation, Clarios, not as one of many side projects for various customers. One of the unique things about OPTIMA Batteries is that our employees don't just work on batteries for a living. They are passionate enthusiasts who often spend their free time out in the garage, at the track or on the lake.
We included links for all those OPTIMA employees that lead to OPTIMA YouTube videos, LinkedIn profiles and posts on the OPTIMA LinkedIn page, because you should expect to be able to find evidence of their existence beyond a byline on a blog with a generic name and an alleged engineering degree from an impressive university. You can also see some photos of these real OPTIMA employees below. Some brands may try to claim their batteries are designed and/or engineered in the United States, but do those brands even have a LinkedIn page or employees on LinkedIn with a degree in any kind of engineering? If a battery brand isn't being honest about the source of their content, what else are they not telling you?
Look for Original Photos and Videos
Even casual Internet users can often spot an AI-generated image or stock photography and more than a few battery brands employ both with reckless abandon. They use images that don't even make sense, like a center console boat beached on a snowy shoreline with a trolling motor in water that is somehow deep enough and hasn't frozen, to illustrate cold temperatures in a marine application or a bearded man in a white lab coat, looking into a microscope to suggest some technical expertise. Anyone with an iPhone can take a photograph or record a video, so if a battery brand is more than just a digital storefront, they'll have plenty of videos and photos that are clearly unique to them. Some browsers allow you to right click on an image to run a search to see if a photo is being used elsewhere online, which often happens with stock photos.
Use AI to Identify Itself
If there's still any doubt in your mind whether you are getting AI or human-generated information from a battery brand, just ask your favorite AI tool. Many AI tools like ChatGPT or Grok can identify AI-generated content with reasonable certainty if you just copy and paste an article or link into their query bar.
In an age where anyone can publish information and AI can create thousands of articles in a matter of minutes, we've found the most valuable battery advice still comes from people who have earned their expertise the old-fashioned way- through experience.