AI vs. Copywriters:
Will Robots Take Our Jobs?
Sandy, an experienced copyeditor and smart-as-a-whip copywriter, stared at the blinking cursor, her usual spark of creativity fading.
“Can an AI really write better than me?” she thought as she felt a knot of anxiety forming in her stomach.
This fear of AI replacing humans in most knowledge-work industries is a common problem.
Today … we need to talk about the elephant in the room. AI is here to stay. And it’s only going to get smarter.
Breaking News: AI is Not Sentient
Just like musicians who use synthesizers, or artists who use digital instruments, AI can be a powerful tool to complement your talent.
It is not a person who has stepped into your office to take over your job. It is not a competitor.
This may seem absurdly obvious, but many online publishers are proudly putting up a banner: “No AI allowed.”
They act as if AI is a person, a foreign enemy who has invaded our turf, one who threatens the welfare of the human race.
The result?
As writers, we’re back to hours of hard labor for little reward.
What AI can do in a few minutes, humans take hours to do.
And guess what?
We also confabulate, hallucinate, repeat ourselves, and use sesquipedalian words.
We also tend to write long-drawn out sentences, adding more words than necessary to carry an idea.
We also make egregious grammatical and punctuation errors.
As for AI posing an existential threat — well, we’re pretty good at that, too.
In Defense of AI
AI is great at automating repetitive tasks like writing product descriptions and posting to social media, freeing up time for creative brainstorming or replace human writers. Imagine an editor suffering from writer’s block.
It can provide new ideas and drafts to overcome obstacles or the replace bad human writers.
The Absurdity of AI Detectors
I’ve been in many Facebook writing groups where someone’s copy was rejected because it was detected as AI.
They were dejected because they had written every word themselves and didn’t even know how to use an AI writer.
Here’s the thing: the better you write, the more likely you are to write longer sentences, use college-level vocabulary, and deploy sequential logic.
The result is a false positive.
Anti-AI online editors are punishing seasoned writers for being experienced and overzealous teachers are failing smart students for their hard-earned writing ability.
AI detectors are causing misery all over the world!
If you don’t believe me, believing I have a dog in the fight, then here’s an article I suggest you read, Why AI detectors think the US Constitution was written by AI.
Benj Edwards starts his article with a bang,” If you feed America’s most important legal document — the US Constitution — into a tool designed to detect text written by AI models like ChatGPT, it will tell you that the document was almost certainly written by AI. But unless James Madison was a time traveler, that can’t be the case.”
Can We All Just Get Along?
Copywriters using AI can produce significantly higher quality content than when working alone.
It works in the same way mathematicians who use scientific calculators, like Casio fx-991EX, Texas Instruments, or TI-36X Pro, make less mistakes.
To succeed in this evolving environment, editors can use artificial intelligence tools and experiment with their capabilities.
Meanwhile, you, as a savvy copywriter, can focus on sharing your unique interpersonal skills such as storytelling, empathy, and critical thinking.
Another advantage of being human is that you have an advantage over AI. You move and breathe, walking around in the real world. You’re equipped with a sophisticated sensorium that took eons for evolution to develop.
In other words:
You can smell flowers. You can taste honey. You can feel the sun on your cheek. You can enjoy the breeze blowing through your hair as you bike along a trail. All that’s worth writing about, too.
This means you can contribute to the narrative where human expertise is essential.
Stop the Insanity
I’ve got some more heartbreaking news for you — AI is not going to go away if you disapprove of it long enough.
Once AGI, artificial general intelligence, is released, it’s game over. AI will have surpassed human intelligence.
What’s more, it’s going to evolve much faster than the evolutionary leaps of processing power of CPUs in the early days of the personal computer.
I suggest you adapt, stay flexible, and survive as a writer or editor.
Continuous training and development will allow you to remain relevant in the age of artificial intelligence.
The future of writing is not a human-versus-AI issue.
It’s an unfolding story about humans and artificial intelligence working together to create something amazing.
As usual, please comment. I’d love to know what you think about this whole AI vs human thing. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I wrote this myself — not bad for a human, hunh?
Sharpen your copywriting skills with my FREE book
