In November of 2022, generative artificial intelligence program ChatGPT touched down. Since then, stepping foot online as a professional copywriter has felt a lot like this:
Fearing programs like this, while entirely understandable (hi Dale, it’s me, your impostor syndrome), is obscuring the real argument to be made here. Artificial intelligence tools in their predictive form have been around for a hot minute, and while the mass adoption of programs like ChatGPT has something of a warning shot sound to it, experts smell something beneath the gunpowder.
I value your time, so here’s the argument:
A.I. copy, on the whole, is sh*t (at least right now). But these tools are far from useless. We stand to gain a lot if we remember to use generative A.I. tools in the right ways, at the right times, and with the right intentions.
Interested? Let’s disarm this together.
The Mortal Coil
A.I. tools like ChatGPT and Bard are designed to answer prompts by drawing from a pool of data. They’ve got a direct line to the biggest, most luxurious pool of data known to humankind: the Internet. An informational superhighway not unlike the Wild West, the Internet is an excellent source of information, but also a source of misinformation.
As this digital region’s newly-introduced hunter gatherers, these programs cannot tell the difference. They’re innocents, running off into the ether to find answers to your query and excitedly bringing them back for your consideration. As of now, they have no framework for evaluating nuances like truth or ethics on these quests for content.
This speaks to their core purpose, which is to generate content at speed, not curate content to suit a given perspective. The key attraction? Ease.
Using an A.I. tool to generate a piece of written content is undoubtedly easier than planning, writing, and editing a piece of content. It’s accessible, open source, and anyone can jump in to churn out content at a previously unprecedented rate. But with ease and accessibility like this, A.I.-generated content is poised at the top of a death spiral.
As more and more people adopt this technology, more and more A.I. content will hit the airwaves. A.I. being reliant on its data pool, it will eventually begin to feed on content produced by itself. Down and down we go, until content becomes merely a cannibalized version of its past self.
The Point of Content
Let’s remember, the point of content is not just to put words on the page. If that were the case, an empty page or blocks of Lorem Ipsum would be just as effective at converting customers as would pages of meticulously-crafted copy.
Content is a vehicle. In my opinion, it’s a shiny red V8 (I might be biased), but it’s a vehicle nonetheless. Its purpose is to demonstrate your point of difference. To resonate. Content is your siren song, the call your customers hear because what you’re saying – in one way or another – matters to them. At its core, it’s meaning.
The Institute for Business Value conducted a massive study in 2022 to uncover what consumers around the world want from brands (stay with me, here). According to them:
“Purpose-driven consumers, who choose products and brands based on how well they align to their values, now represent the largest segment (44%) of consumers.”
Translation?
Conversion is about connection. Plain and simple. You can have a well-researched and beautifully-defined audience, you can have the most robust values in the world, you can have products and services tailored to the cutting edge of your consumers’ needs. But if they don’t know about it, they can’t get to it.
Content is your bridge, and in an age where consumers are making decisions about the brands they want to frequent based on connection, humanity in your content is wildly essential.
A Race to the Bottom
We’ve seen the effects of mass adoption in the past. Pure SEO’s Richard Conway, CEO of New Zealand’s most awarded search agency, compared the effects of generative A.I. programs to the initial advent of link building on a recent episode of Good Content | The Official Podcast of Pure SEO.
“I think one of the biggest problems is people relying too heavily [on A.I.] and people taking shortcuts. In business, laziness is never good. You take shortcuts, and you’re going to come unstuck. I don’t think that we should become too reliant on it, at this stage, but I think many will.”
These mass adoptions spark optimization ad infinitum, prioritizing speed and volume over quality. In digital marketing – and almost everywhere else – this quickly becomes detrimental. It’s a race to the bottom, for all those who care to play. If you’re swimming downstream with everyone else, it’s very difficult to stand out.
But for those who choose to stand against the tide, this is a powerful opportunity. It’s easy to use generative A.I. to churn things out for absolutely anybody. It’s more difficult to take your time, understand who your brand is, who you’re talking to, and craft with intention. But with that difficulty comes distinctiveness, and above all, payoff. Build a deliberate bridge for your customer to cross, and they’ll know exactly what they’ll find on the other side.
That’s not to say that A.I. is entirely useless, far from it.
Infinite Game, Infinite Possibilities
In the same podcast episode, Wendy Thompson – wildly accomplished Social Media Marketer and Founder of Thompson Spencer – gave her insights on how we can apply A.I. to the task of advertising and content creation correctly.
“Are you just doing it to – as a marketer – talk to the right person at the right time, which is straight advertising that now, pretty much anyone can do. Or are you actually trying to tell your story, create a community, build a brand? And I think that is very hard to do with A.I. It requires more thought and magic.
Use A.I. for the things you don’t want to do, then get back to the magic.”
In short: by using it to do the busy work, and leaving the creativity to the humans.
Her solution is one that many other experts in their respective spaces are singing in a chorus: use A.I. to enhance, not replace. This sentiment is echoed by the authors of ‘Workforce ecosystems and AI’, a Brookings Institution paper that explores potential harmonies between human employees and A.I. tools.
“Decision-makers should strive to develop policies that increase rather than constrain innovation for future work arrangements that benefit both workers and organizations. Policymakers should explicitly allow experimentation and learning while limiting regulatory complexity associated with AI in workforce ecosystems.”
This is their summary, and while it has a lean toward considerations around policy, I think there’s some gold to be found in here when it comes to how A.I. relates to the field of copywriting.
The keywords here are innovation, experimentation, and learning. If organizations and potential freelance clients alike can recognize that there is no real competition between a human writer and a program, then that opens the door for said writers to find new and inventive ways to eliminate busy work and deliver more creative, effective results.
A far-from-exhaustive list of the ways we can wield A.I:
- Topic research and information synthesis
- Customer or demographic research
- Brainstorming or iteration
- Competitor research and trend gathering
When it comes to copywriting, A.I. copy is the proverbial bathwater, and A.I. itself the baby. Let’s not throw one out with the other. Using these tools with intention can make us better, because at the end of the day they are tools, and us their wielders.
Great writers are great because they’re more than writers (believe me, I’ve been lucky enough to meet quite a few in my line of work). They’re bleeding hearts, strategists, creatives, and experienced business people themselves. They’ve got the heart and soul to know when words resonate, or when they ring false. Beyond that, they can steer you right when something leads you wrong.
TLDR
We’re all being called to err away from the temptation of black and white. As a well-built engine will never replace an engineer, so will an A.I. never replace a creative. But it doesn’t make sense to completely reject either one.
If we can collectively answer the call to symbiosis, we can create our very own ouroboros. A cyclical balance of soul and system that guides us to infinite growth, if we let it.
Downwright 
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