Copywriting and artificial Intelligence. Is it time to review my position? | Fi Darby

In November 2019 I wrote a post about artificial intelligence and copywriting. In it I suggested that the time might come when I would need to compete with AI, or more specifically natural language generation, to win copywriting jobs.

That time has already come.

Businesses use AI to write blog posts

I’m serious. Instead of paying writers like me to write their web copy, some organisations are already using computer generated blog posts, articles and web pages. A quick online search will take you to at least five popular AI copywriting services, all of whom make interesting claims.

‘Create amazing web content 10X faster with AI.’ Jasper

‘Overcome writer’s block.’ Copy.ai

‘Leverage the secrets of the most powerful copy in the world.’ Closers Copy

At this stage in the development of AI for copywriting, the web content referred to above is far more likely to seem ‘amazing‘ and ‘powerful‘ to search engine algorithms than a human readership but if this means a place on Google’s first page perhaps that doesn’t matter.

After all, how often do you look beyond first page results?

Web content is big business

There are far more freelance copywriters around today than there were when I started back in 2016. The reason for this is simple; more people now rely on online sales and it’s very difficult to have a successful website without good quality copywriting, which means the size of the workforce required to create that web copy has grown. However, the definition of ‘good quality’ can be tricky to pin down.

What makes a successful copywriter?

Whether AI or human, a successful copywriter must be good at two things:

Because of its enormous capacity to analyse results, artificial intelligence always had the opportunity to be better than humans at manipulating search engine algorithms. But can it ever replace human writers?

Is AI taking over from human writers?

Last week I decided it was time for me to put that to the test.

So I asked one of the most popular chatbot systems, Chat GPT to write me a 200-word blog post (most posts are at least 1,000 words), on a niche topic I know really well. Wild camping on Dartmoor.

Here’s what it came up with.

Well first it came up with this (I sympathise with the ‘at capacity’ bit).

Then later, here’s what it came up with.

AI generated copy – a bit on the bland side

On the face of it the artificially generated text above is more than impressive. It makes sense, sells the experience, and appears to give some excellent advice. On top of that, the grammar is good and my trained eye can detect the type of well-integrated keyword usage that should make Google very happy.

This piece could possibly earn your site a place on that elusive first page.

But the artificially generated blog post above does lack a certain something. It’s hard to pin down. You find the same things missing in low-quality, person-generated writing.  You could call it ‘believability’, you could call it ‘detail’.

I call it life.

What makes human writing human?

But does good web copy need life? Well here’s a short section of a piece I wrote on wild camping on Dartmoor a few years ago for one of my favourite clients. I know the search engines like it because it keeps popping up on Google’s page one results (the quality of writing isn’t the only factor in this but it helps).

See what you think.

How to spot AI writing (and avoid it)

So what are the important differences you need to look for if you suspect a blog post has been written by AI and not an experienced writer?

It’s tricky to take an unbiased look at something that has such big potential to impact my livelihood so I sent the AI piece to Mr D (also a wild camper) to read. His response was interesting.

‘Doesn’t actually say anything noteworthy.’

Which kind of sums up my little experiment nicely. The AI-generated text doesn’t seem to say anything much at all.

But hold on a minute!

Some human writing is also bland

There are lots of people-generated blog posts out there that don’t say anything much at all. Even worse, you might suggest there are plenty out there that get things completely wrong (there certainly are about wild camping).

Which means that AI-generated writing is already beating us copywriters at our own game!

But is AI-generated writing dangerous?

Depending on your attitude to progress, this situation may or may not be of concern. You only have to look at social media to see that algorithms can be both ultimately useful and ultimately damaging. I imagine you would probably rather read something written by a person than a piece written by a robot but we humans are quick to adjust.

And we are already getting used to website chatbots.

It’s a strange world. But it’s also an interesting one. Am I worried about my job? Not at the moment no.

But I might be if I was 24 instead of 54.

I don’t want to retire yet but I will do one day.

Just like every other technical development we initially disliked, we’ll get used to reading AI-generated writing online. Sometimes it’ll be useful. Sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it’ll do good. Sometimes it won’t.

Just like person-generated writing.

If all this is putting you off reading anything at all online, you probably need to be aware there are also platforms out there offering…

Wait for it…

AI-generated images!