Copy and Content Writing in the Age of AI

Is artificial intelligence the end of human copywriters?

Short answer: No way.

But let’s talk about why AI won’t replace copywriters anytime soon, plus how you can use AI tools in positive ways to improve your writing and content.

Will AI replace copywriters?

I met someone new in a group setting a few months ago, and they asked what I did for work. I explained that I'm a copywriter, and immediately this person exclaimed,

“Well, you know AI is going to take your job! I use AI to write all my blogs for my business.”

Yikes.

It was one of those awkward moments that I was utterly unprepared for, so an uncomfortable laugh was all I could squelch out.

Hindsight, I wish I’d had a witty retort on hand, but in the midst of it, I seriously didn’t know what to say.

I took the loss from that small convo. But I decided I would know exactly how to reply if something like that happened again. (Hello, throat chakra lesson!)

So, I donned my trusty researcher hat (aka my blue-light glasses) and got to work.

It was time to discover if the prospect of writers becoming completely obsolete in the age of AI had any merit.

Is AI as good as a copywriter?

What did I find out?

Well, while AI can be a helpful tool for copywriters, marketers, biz owners, and beyond, it isn’t a substitute for our own brains and creative output, period.

If you want quick clicks, AI-generated articles and posts may get you the initial traffic and desired results you're looking for.

But if your real goal is to deeply connect with clients and customers while facilitating conversions that lead to long-term relationships, AI falls well beyond short.

Even when using AI tools, you still need to know what to input to trigger the quality of response you want. You also should know how to revise and edit AI’s output to seamlessly mesh with your brand voice and honestly empathize with your customer’s pain points. That’s something AI isn’t quite fine-tuned enough for.

So, no, any AI program is certainly not as good as a copy or content writer.

AI is not sentient, meaning it doesn’t feel.7 We can’t forget that a deep understanding of psychology and emotion (feeling!) is crucial to best business practices, including marketing. At the end of the day, these are, and should remain, very human endeavors.

Human-Centered AI (HCAI)

One concept working to keep humans in the driver’s seat is human-centered AI (HCAI). HCAI is a field of study and thought that considers the implications of AI use in terms of what it means in the daily lives of humans.

Let’s learn more about HCAI:

What is Human-Centered AI?

IBM defines human-centered AI (HCAI) as “an emerging discipline intent on creating AI systems that amplify and augment rather than displace human abilities.”

This means “the user experience of creating both physical and digital artifacts will become a partnership in which people will take the role of specification, goal setting, steering, high-level creativity, curation, and governance, whereas AI will augment human abilities through inspiration, creativity, low-level detail work, and the ability to design at scale.”9

According to University of Maryland Distinguished Emeritus Professor Ben Shneiderman in an article focusing on the benefits of HCAI,

“We should reject the idea that autonomous machines can exceed or replace any meaningful notion of human intelligence, creativity, and responsibility.”

“HCAI is a vision of how machines might augment humans, and even encourage our best impulses toward each other, rather than how they might replace humans with something supposedly better,” Schneiderman continues.

Ultimately, the goal of HCAI is to “amplify, rather than erode, human agency.”

In fact, says Schneiderman, if HCAI made a bumper sticker slogan, it would be “Humans in the group, computers in the loop,” meaning that “computers should play a supportive role, amplifying people’s ability to work in masterful and extraordinary ways.”25

How long has AI existed, anyway?

You may be surprised that artificial intelligence has been around for over seventy years. The first AI conference in the US was at Dartmouth in 1956; there was also another, earlier conference in Paris in 1951.20, 3

This means that AI-related issues aren’t popping up out of nowhere. We’ve been slowly integrating increasingly complex modes of AI into our lives for decades as scientists and researchers have studied AI concepts. Now, we’re just at another threshold of advancement, which allows us to explore how we’d like our future with AI to look.

AI + Copywriters = New Ideas and Innovation

Let’s see what the folks working at AI writing generator companies, like JasperAI, have to say about AI’s role in the writing process…

Alex Cattoni, copywriting queen and creator of the internet-renowned Copy Posse, recently interviewed Jasper AI copywriter Austin Distil to dispel rumors of an impending AI takeover.

You read that right: real-life copywriters work for AI copywriting companies.

In line with an HCAI paradigm, studies show that instead of replacing humans, AI is augmenting the capabilities of humans in positive ways when used appropriately.6

That means that when we use AI ethically and consciously, meaningful jobs for writers can be created, not taken over. AI content tools can function to assist people, including writers, with more menial tasks, leaving room for expansion and new innovations.

What do copywriters do?

“Great copywriters exist to find the story,” Austin explains. “[They] find the pain points, bridge it to a product – the features, the benefits – and present it at the right time, at the right pace, with the right tone.”4

It isn’t as simple as just putting words on a page – copywriting is a nuanced, detailed process involving both critical and creative thought.

Copywriters employ not only their language-crafting skills but also psychology, sociology, marketing, and even their individual experience and intuition to craft compelling copy and content.

AI is not a master of synthesizing all knowledge into bite-sized blog posts, and we shouldn’t want it to be. Knowledge, and the wisdom gained by collecting knowledge over time, is a profoundly human thing.

AI doesn’t have experiences and wisdom in the way humans do. AI programs function via statistical information, using different sets of data in different ways to select the next best word or phrase.17 This process is quite different from the nuanced creativity of the human mind and its ability to create new neural pathways of thought through our exploration of the world around us.21

How to Use AI to Help You Write

All in all, AI applications like Jasper aren’t comparable to real-life copy and content writers. But they’re still excellent tools for writers, business owners, and marketers to have on hand for a more seamless content-creation process.

What programs like JasperAI can do well is help you streamline your writing process. As a copywriter, I can attest to having tried two different AI programs to help expedite my writing process: JasperAI and Copy.ai.

After using both programs when writing blog posts, I noticed that these AI tools helped me organize my ideas and streamline the drafting process.

I liked using the writing generators between research and the first draft as a “pre-drafting” mode. After doing keyword research, topical research, and developing a rough outline, I input my thoughts into the AI generator. Then, I can use the ideas the AI program suggests to formulate further thoughts to help jump-start and streamline creativity.

That’s how it’s worked for me. I preferred to use the AI tools as a sort of “brainstorming buddy” that reflected my own ideas and thoughts back to me in a more expanded way and perhaps from a different angle.

All in all, AI can be useful in the writing process by helping you:

• Brainstorm ideas.

• Create an outline or rough draft.

• Think of new headline or subject line ideas.

• See your own ideas from a new angle.

• Organize longer pieces of copy or content, like a blog post.24

Essentially, AI tools can help you set the foundation for your project, and you can continue to build on AI-generated material to make it your own by infusing it with humanness and brand voice.

While AI can create content, “It takes a human brain to spot what’s magic and what’s not,” Austin from JasperAI reminds us.4

Is AI content high-quality?

One issue with AI is that it can produce repetitive and, quite frankly, boring content.

Flaws that abound in AI-generated text include:

• Lack of syntactic and lexical diversity

• Repetitiveness

• Lack of coherence

• Lack of purpose8

How often have you seen suspiciously similar articles or blog posts on the web? If everyone’s churning the same content around, then we’re not sparking new ideas or learning more. And isn’t that part of the point of creating content (and being human), anyway?

According to bestselling author and web influencer Neil Patel in a recent Web Summit panel discussion, the influx of AI-written material has only made creating unique, high-quality content all the more crucial.

Neil mentions the importance of considering Google’s E-E-A-T factors of Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust when creating content.

By keeping these four factors in mind, you’ll continually be able to create excellent, engaging, and aligned content.

The Secret to Great Content: Google E-E-A-T

When you continuously seek to create content that meets Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, you’ll always prioritize high-quality content by the nature of your focus.

Experience

Remember how JasperAI copywriter Austin said that copywriters exist to find the story?

Think of your experiences as anecdotal stories that you can use to illustrate points while writing.

As humans, experience is one of our greatest teachers. When we can weave a personal experience we’ve learned from into a larger idea, our writing is all the more memorable and relatable.

Expertise

One thing you have that AI definitely doesn’t? Expertise in your subject matter.

Think of the time you’ve spent learning and honing skills in your niche. What makes you qualified to give your opinion?

Your expertise may come from formal training, like a degree or certificate, or it can be garnered by self-learning and simply having and overcoming different experiences relating to your niche.

Authority

Your authority is the reputation you have in your industry. Are you a go-to source for information? Is the information you provide easy to access and understand?

Use your expertise to create authority by providing top-quality content that reflects how much you know about your subject.

Trust

Trust is the most critical aspect of E-E-A-T. You facilitate trust when you combine your experience, expertise, and authority. As you build more and more trust with your audience, they’ll continue to come back to you and refer others.

For a deeper dive into each E-E-A-T factor, I highly recommend reading Gotch SEO’s E-E-A-T blog series. There are four blog posts, and they’re lengthy reads, but Gotch provides excellent information not only about E-E-A-T in terms of content, but also SEO.11, 12, 13, 14

Everything falls into place when you strive to create quality content that fills the gaps and honestly helps people. You can ensure your content is high quality by keeping the E-E-A-T principles in mind and developing a content creation strategy that optimizes each factor.5, 15, 22

AI copywriting tools can certainly be a part of your writing process – even copy and content writers themselves can benefit from using these programs! Nonetheless, we mustn’t come to rely on AI simply writing articles itself. Doing so can only lead to lower quality, less human-centered content. I vote a determined “No” to that!

The Three Keys to Writing Copy That Works in the Digital Age

As I've mentioned, good copywriting is more than just putting words to a page. It’s about strategically communicating with your audience in order to build relationships, drive conversions, and achieve your company’s ultimate mission. Let’s not leave something so important as that up to a machine.

When it comes to writing copy that gets you the bang for your buck in the digital age, I love copywriter Robert W. Bly’s advice. In his excellent book, The Copywriter’s Handbook, Bly outlines three keys to creating content that thrives in our technologically-driven world:

1. Human Emotion (Psychology)

Understanding people, namely, your audience, is vital. How does your audience think? What are their motives? Their pain points? Why are they purchasing?

The more you get to know your audience, the more they’re going to trust you – meaning you’re focusing on the most important E-E-A-T pillar of trust.

2. Data Analytics

Data Analytics has two essential parts to consider. Firstly, it’s imperative to look at and take into account the data you collect in regard to your business. Meaning, what results does your copy get? This is pure factual evidence, as you’ll look at reports, including numbers of clicks and conversions, to determine what’s working and what’s not.

While all creatives (myself included!) like to rely on their feelings and intuition to determine what to write, it’s important to value hard data just as much. Knowing what realistically works based on factual evidence can help you channel your creativity into creating the kind of content that feels good and gets results.

Secondly, choosing the correct data to back up what you’ve said in your copy is essential, especially in a world filled with #fakenews. You always want to be reliable and factual. Combine data and emotion to strike a real chord with your readers. And don’t forget the importance of citing your sources correctly to avoid plagiarism. (Something AI doesn’t do – according to ChatGPT itself. Yes, I asked. See below.)

From a chat I had with ChatGPT about an aesthetics/skincare-related topic. It’s crucial to cite sources, especially when referencing medical studies and data pertaining to treatments and ingredients.

3. Digital Compliance

Compliance means that you’re following the rules set out by search engines, social networks, or other digital platforms you use. Obviously, when you follow the requirements, your content is more likely to be seen, so it’s important to stay in the know and up-to-date with changing guidelines.

The Future of Copywriting and AI

No one can say for sure what the future will bring, but it all comes down to how we use the technology we have at hand. AI isn’t going anywhere, so we must consciously choose how we'll interact with its ever-expanding automation abilities.

When we use tools like AI writing generators to optimally assist us with real, human processes, we open the doorway to new human potential. Let’s aim for that, not for an internet strewn with articles written by bots.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

Firstly, a quote from Fei-Fei Li, Stanford Computer Science Professor and Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence:

And finally, a word of inspiration on how to handle AI from the self-proclaimed “best rapper alive.” I hope we can all have this confidence and self-assuredness in our unique human gifts and abilities as we continue exploring AI and other aspects of the fourth industrial revolution.

Now that I’ve let you know my take, I want to hear from you!

What do you think about AI copywriting tools and AI in general? If you’re not a writer, how has AI impacted your work? What AI apps or programs have you tried, and what did you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

♡︎ B

Resources

1. Bly, Robert W. “The Three Keys to Writing Copy That Works in the Digital Age.” The Copywriter’s Handbook, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, NY, 2020, pp. 9–12.

2. Brown, Tom B, et al. “Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners.” 22 Jul. 2020, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2005.14165.

3. Bruderer, Herbert. “The Birth of Artificial Intelligence: First Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Paris in 1951?” International Communities of Invention and Innovation, Edited by Christopher Leslie and Arthur Tatnall, vol. 149, 2016, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49463-0_12.

4. Cattoni, Alex. Will AI Replace Copywriters? Watch This Insider Interview With Austin Distel From Jasper AI. YouTube, 26 Oct. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ula3kl357Vg&t=338s.

5. “Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content.” Google Search Central, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content.

6. Davenport, Thomas, et al. “How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Future of Marketing.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science , vol. 48, 2020, pp. 24–42, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00696-0.

7. De Cosmo, Leonardo. “Google Engineer Claims AI Chatbot is Sentient: Why That Matters.” Scientific American, 22 July 2022, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/google-engineer-claims-ai-chatbot-is-sentient-why-that-matters/

8. Fröhling, Leon, and Alexander Zubiaga. “Feature-Based Detection of Automated Language Models: Tackling GPT-2, GPT-3 and Grover.” PeerJ Computer Science , vol. 7, 6 Apr. 2021, https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.443.

9. Geyer, Werner, et al. “What Is Human-Centered AI?” IBM, 31 Mar. 2022, https://research.ibm.com/blog/what-is-human-centered-ai.

10. “Google Search’s Guidance about AI-Generated Content.” Google Search Central , 8 Feb. 2023, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content.

11. Gotch, Nathan. “Google E-E-A-T (Part 1): How to Demonstrate Experience.” Gotch SEO, 5 Apr. 2023, https://www.gotchseo.com/experience-google-e-e-a-t/.

12. Gotch, Nathan. “Google E-E-A-T (Part 2): How to Demonstrate Expertise.” Gotch SEO, 12 Apr. 2023, https://www.gotchseo.com/expertise-google-e-e-a-t/.

13. Gotch, Nathan. “Google E-E-A-T (Part 3): How to Demonstrate Authoritativeness.” Gotch SEO, 4 May 2023, https://www.gotchseo.com/authoritativeness-google-e-e-a-t/.

14. Gotch, Nathan. “Google E-E-A-T (Part 4): How to Demonstrate Trustworthiness.” Gotch SEO, 31 May 2023, https://www.gotchseo.com/trustworthiness-google-e-e-a-t/.

15. Handley, Rachel. “What Are E-E-A-T and YMYL in SEO & How to Optimize for Them.” Semrush, 27 Apr. 2023, https://www.semrush.com/blog/eat-and-ymyl-new-google-search-guidelines-acronyms-of-quality-content/.

16. Hermann, Erik. “Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Marketing for Social Good—An Ethical Perspective.” Journal of Business Ethics , vol. 179, no. 1, 2022, pp. 43–61, https://doi.org/ doi:10.1007/s10551-021-04843-y.

17. Holtzman, Ari, et al. “The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration.” International Conference on Learning Representations, 14 Feb. 2020, pp. 1–16, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1904.09751.

18. “How Results Are Automatically Generated.” Google, www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/how-search-works/ranking-results/.

19. “Jasper - AI Copywriter: AI Content Generator for Teams.” Jasper.AI, www.jasper.ai/.

20. Moor, James. “The Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference: The Next Fifty Years .” AI Magazine , winter 2006, pp. 87–91.

21. “Neuroplasticity.” Psychology Today, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/neuroplasticity.

22. Patel, Neil. “Human Intelligence vs Artificial Intelligence: Winning at Content Creation.” YouTube, 13 May 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2PH3lG8d9Q.

23. Reese, Hope. “A Human-Centered Approach to the AI Revolution.” Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence , 17 Oct. 2022, https://hai.stanford.edu/news/human-centered-approach-ai-revolution.

24. Rubio, Guillermo. “Will AI Replace Copywriters?” American Writers & Artists Institute, www.awai.com/ai-copywriting/.

25. Shneiderman, Ben. “Human-Centered AI.” Issues in Science and Technology, vol. 37, no. 2, winter 2021, pp. 56–61, https://issues.org/human-centered-ai/.

26. “Write Better Marketing Copy and Content with Ai.” Copy.Ai, www.copy.ai/.