I, For One, Welcome Our Robot Overlords
The art of copywriting takes talent and emotional intelligence to understand a brief, to make words sing in a way that brands are looking for. But can this one day be done by AI? The answer is unclear. Either way, Jim Compton-Hall tells us to hone our craft and, well, be better.
“If you gave a human copywriter what we give to AI copywriters, you would have an empty gin bottle thrown at your head. And then you’d receive a barrage of questions…”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been promised a revolution. Robots will take our jobs. Possibly also our lives but definitely our jobs. I was promised I could be sipping fruity cocktails on a tropical beach somewhere while the bots did my work for me. That they would do the work even better and more efficiently than any lousy human copywriter ever could AND they wouldn’t whinge about employment rights. And if that eventually leads to the destruction of the human race because a few uppity robots get a teensy bit genocidal, well then I think that’s probably a fair price to pay.
But decades later and nothing. Sure, there are dozens of AI copywriting tools these days. But I can’t find one that actually works. And I’ve looked. Some of these tools only charge about £500 per year. We’ll spend that per day on just one copywriter. Imagine the savings. I could finally realize my childhood ambitions of being Scrooge McDuck.
Is AI copywriting really so awful?
Yes. Some will say the technology is in its infancy and it just needs to mature. I disagree. I think it’s way too soon to call this infancy. The right technology has really yet to be conceived. What we have now is not the equivalent of Bell’s crazy new telephonic invention to the modern smartphone. It’s more the equivalent of just trying to shout at each from really far away. HUH?! WHAT?! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! YOU’RE TOO FAR AWAY!
Ok, so it’s bad… but, erm, why is it bad?
A common belief is that the problem is that robots don’t have the ability to think creatively. They can’t come up with original ideas and concepts that solve problems in new and exciting ways. All they can do is scour the web and copy the average, inevitably resulting in horrendously generic rubbish.
I don’t think that’s quite fair. Honestly, right now, AI copywriting is almost just as good as human copywriting. The problem isn’t what’s coming out, it’s what’s going in.
So what is going in?
Sweet fuck all. If you gave a human copywriter what we give to AI copywriters, you would have an empty gin bottle thrown at your head. And then you’d receive a barrage of questions…
● What’s the product?
● What’s the brand and positioning?
● What’s the tone of voice?
● Who’s the audience?
● What’s the strategy?
● Are there key features/benefits to highlight?
● Who are the competitors and what are they saying?
And that’s just to start. Meanwhile, AI copywriting tools ask for a type of text (e.g. blog or social media ad) and a topic. That’s it. The best copywriter in the world would produce generic, irrelevant garbage with such a non-brief. In fact, any copywriter worth their sea water would simply refuse to work on it until they had more information.
So it’s no surprise at all that an AI copywriter can’t produce anything good either. Without a proper and unique brief, how can you expect proper and unique copy?
It’s like giving a surgeon a patient and telling them to perform surgery on their torso. With no other information, that operation probably isn’t going to go too well. Of course a human surgeon would push back and ask for more information before putting their scalpel to skin. They aren’t programmed to just do the surgery anyway and see what happens.
Then how do we make AI copywriting better?
The biggest problem is that these tools are not made by copywriters. They’re made by developers. Developers who don’t understand what goes into crafting good copy. And there’s a really simple fix: consult with copywriters (we’ve put out publicly that we’re available to consult on such projects, but have yet to be taken up on it).
All the things mentioned above need to go into copywriting. There have been AI art tools for some time, but the likes of DALL-E have taken things a step further by allowing much more detailed briefs. Instead of “house”, you can input “a metal art-deco house floating in space, painted in the style of Monet”. Of course, the creativity here is still on the human user and for AI to truly be able to write copy, it will need to handle that itself.
I don’t know if AI will ever catch up with humans when it comes to copywriting. But if it’s going to try, it’ll need to start with a good brief.
What do humans do when the robots come for our jobs?
“I don’t know if AI will ever catch up with humans when it comes to copywriting. But if it’s going to try, it’ll need to start with a good brief.”
Relax? Train to be a Bot Whisperer? Drink? It still seems so far off that who knows what the world will look like by the time AI can actually write effective, engaging copy?
In the short term, if you’re looking to compete with the current tools and any slight improvements they have over the next few years, the answer is easy. Be better at your job. AI copywriters could quite possibly replace bad human copywriters at the moment but they don’t stand a chance against a real professional. Spell checkers have been around for 50 years but we still need to use human proofreaders. Because quality. Software may be cheap and quick but right now, the quality is poor.
“Hone your skills. Be the best. That’s the best way to protect your job into the future. And if that means asking clients for more, then you should be asking clients for more.”
Hone your skills. Be the best. That’s the best way to protect your job into the future. And if that means asking clients for more, then you should be asking clients for more. More time, more money, more access, more information. Stop working on generic non-briefs. Craft copy that AI can’t.
In the long term, maybe copywriting won’t exist as a job anymore. At that point, I honestly won’t care. I’ll be on a beach somewhere in Bali, drunk off cocktails, telling entitled kids how I used to do this thing called “work” before the great robot revolution.
Author: Jim Compton-Hall, Copy Director
Award-winning copywriter and founder of boutique copywriting agency Jim Writes Stuff, specializing in tone of voice development, verbal strategy and creative campaigns, Jim has worked on some of the most exciting brands in the world – including Warner Bros., Mercedes-Benz, Dyson, Virgin Media, ASICS, Samsung, KFC, Pepsi Max and more.