Is our Love Affair with AI Copy Ending?

The circus is in town. And we’re all crammed into the Big Top watching the final show. Sardines staring at the swirling colours. A night to remember. Before a chill dawn wind roves through empty tents, cleansing the sultry air of sugar and meat fairground musk, and we ask ourselves, is our love affair with AI copy ending? 

The hype is dying, and we’re realising just that; that AI copywriting is over hyped. 

That’s not to say it isn’t a clever invention, it is. But it’s not the free ticket to quality content forevermore that some people and brands think it is. 

Bubbles go boom

 Both economically and professionally. And AI is a bubble. The share price associated with anything AI related has gone skyward in the last couple of years, yet as a technology it doesn’t offer the best return on investment. Basically, it’s very, very expensive to create. So much so, that it may not be the golden goose venture capitalists claimed it was. We’re also starting to calm down and notice AI has limitations. This is particularly clear in the writing world.

 AI is great for low quality blog farming, SEO optimisation, frame working and light research. However, when it comes to emotive human writing, it’s sh*t. And when we say sh*t we mean shit. Not ‘the shit’, just shit.

There, we said it. But it shouldn’t come as a revelation to anyone. After all, expecting AI to write with the depth of experience an actual lived life gets you is, and probably always will be, science fiction. Even if it’s possible, the data and energy required to keep powering AI improvement is staggering and finite.

Expecting AI to write factually accurate copy is also a fantasy, because AI hallucinates and makes sweeping assumptions about human behaviour, history and culture. This is (or should be) a big issue for businesses, because wooden copy is one thing, but incorrect?

The love affair with AI copywriting is ending.

Existentially shortchanged

 Won’t someone think of the readers? No really, everyone is so wrapped up in the AI copy ‘gold rush’ they’re forgetting who tastes and critiques the word soup. Readers.

 Customers. People. The final arbiters of quality. We should never assume our readers are unobservant and ‘dunno’ when they’re reading AI copy. People get that prickly neck feeling when they’re in the Uncanny Valley. 

As more content is churned out by algorithms, the sameness in tone, style, and substance will be obvious. This will lead to audience fatigue: ‘Ugh, another soulless AI article’. People don’t want to read AI writing, except maybe as a novelty. Why? Because it breaks the contract between writer and reader. Which is that, as a writer, you’re transmitting your humanity to a reader. Human to human experiential telepathy. If the writer is not human, we feel uneasy. Existentially shortchanged. As if drifting in the cold void with Hal 9000.

 With AI, you’re always alone.

 C3P-Oh no!

Creativity and humanity aside, what about the ethics of ditching human writers in favour of AI? As the enthusiasm wanes, we should look at its current and possible future effects on the creative industry and have some heart. Do we really want to devalue creative professions? Creative people?

 Because, if content creation is increasingly outsourced to machines, it will leave even more writers (and designers) jobless and struggling. For what? Businesses could try and launder themselves by saying ‘it’s just business’ – but it might not be more profitable in the long term, especially when audiences reject AI in favour of authenticity. It’s not just about how cheaply you can create; it’s the impact of what you create.

Looking ahead, businesses will need to adopt ethical practices in their use of AI. This means a human review process to ensure content is accurate, inclusive, and aligned with brand values. Companies will also need to be transparent with people about when content is AI-generated, keeping their trust in an increasingly automated world.

 That said…

 Go exclusively human

(If you want good writing).

 While as copywriters we’ve been banging the drum from the start, there are those only now beginning to understand you can’t just run with AI copy.

Nope, there’s always something or many things off with it.  For a copywriter this is no problem, we can turn even the blandest word dump into something exquisite. But, for businesses using what AI blurts out unedited, it’s annoying – damaging even. Sorry though, our heart doesn’t go out to you.

Fooled by the shiny beads and dreams of cheap, well-written copy. 

AI is not and will never be a replacement for human insight and creativity. Any business that thinks otherwise is misguided. And at Craft Words we’ll go a step further and say that, in our case, large language models are exclusively a tool for professional writers to use, if we wish and when we wish. 

Why? Because – and this is the absolute crux of it – we’re the gatekeepers of good brand writing and it’s our prerogative. And we’ll pout about it if we want to.