AI copywriting. Putting the art into artificial intelligence.

Putting the art into Ai copy

Are you reading this in virtual reality?

Or is your head headset free? Thought so. Virtual reality is on the list of technologies many claimed were going to change our lives, and didn’t. 30 years after the first grand announcements, Meta is just the latest player to fail to turn the supposed revolution into reality. But AI is not VR. So what about AI copywriting?

It has the potential to be the biggest change to the way we work (and live?) since the invention of the internet itself.

Perhaps it’s time to get all ‘Peter Parker’ and remind ourselves that “with great power comes great responsibility”. Because the ethical use of AI is something we must get right.

Here, for obvious reasons, we’ll look at how AI can enhance our work as copywriters, to make us more informed, more efficient and more focused. Just as a thesaurus nudges us towards synonyms we couldn’t quite put our finger on, AI can be an invaluable ally in making us better writers.

But we can’t allow it to make us lazy and use it to cut corners, (“don’t worry boss, the machines have got this”). AI can take some of the ‘manual labour’ away from copywriters so they have more time to be creative. This is where they add true value.

So, how do we use AI?

To spark ideas
AI’s great for generating initial ideas/concepts and headlines. (Although we need to remember that most of those will suck and it’s only a starting point.) But it enables us to go from 0–60 that bit faster and it can spark unexpected thoughts and connections.

To write faster drafts
AI can help us produce a rough first draft faster. It offers rough clay to shape so we can see what’s missing. That’s okay, we were always going to shape it anyway.

To unlock key words
This one’s particularly useful. We feed text into an AI tool and ask it to give us recommendations on SEO terms/keywords. Then refine the copy to make sure everything flows, and it doesn’t feel like the relevant terms have been crowbarred in.

To make unexpected connections
Feeding AI a strange request like ‘how does the production-line mentality connect to cloud computing?’ can lead to some gems. Yes you have to wade through a lot of nonsense, but inputting something related to the project and something less obvious can yield gold.

To identify audience interests
AI can be a big help in finding the hot topics for a particular subject, and a specific audience. This is one of our most valuable uses of AI. Because the stronger our audience insights and understanding, the stronger the work will be.

To set a direction
You can never just accept what an AI spits out without heavy rewriting and editing. Often, you need to rip it up and start again. But at least you’ll have some paint on the canvas.

How don’t we use AI copywriting?

To give us the feels
One of the hallmarks of good copywriting is emotionally connecting with people. To write something that makes them smile, laugh, cry even. That’s why we always treat AI copy like raw information that needs human treatment.
To be informal
AI struggles with natural, conversational writing. We need to weed out stiff language and odd word choices. No one wants to read robocopy.
To provide context
Quite simply, if you’re clueless, it’s useless. AI will always lack context, project knowledge and human experience. If you bring all of these things to any use of AI tools, you’ll do fine.
To provide quality as well as quantity
It’s so tempting to think AI makes copy cheap and plentiful. Sure it’s a game changer in compiling raw information But while it might be cheap and plentiful, it’s not quality. Not on its own. You still need the expertise of a copywriter.

Ultimately, our view of AI copywriting is that yes, it’s a super-useful tool

But only a human knows how to connect with fellow humans. And only a skilled copywriter can craft quality copy that connects every time. To paraphrase Steve Jobs, “creativity is about connecting dots, the more dots you have to connect, the better.”