The rise of AI and its implementation across all areas of business, industry and commerce is arguably the biggest change since the Internet. As the popularity of apps like ChatGPT continues to surge, fears grow that this could spell the end for many of those who work in creative industries. As a content and copywriter, I wanted to delve into this and ask the question – will AI kill copywriting in 2024, or is there life in the old craft yet?

How is AI a Threat to Copywriters (and Content Writers)?

AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard and Jasper AI have the power to perform all sorts of writing-related tasks, using machine learning to generate anything from headlines and blog articles to image captions and social media posts. And on first glance, the results not only look impressive but they are also produced exceptionally quickly, in a mere fraction of the time it would take a human writer.

As such, it’s completely understandable for people to think that AI writing tools like this will eventually replace copywriters and content writers in the workplace.

In truth, it’s already happening.

I know of people who generate copy and content articles using artificial intelligence instead of using a writer. The human involvement comes in at the end, as a fact-checking and editing function as the words are read by human eyes and filtered through a human mind.

So, Will AI Replace Copywriters?

But it’s one thing to have a bunch of words that look like they do the job, and it’s a whole other thing to have the right words directed at a specific target audience that actually does the job.

And by does the job, I mean words that connect with the actual people the text is written to connect with and to persuade and compel those people to take the desired action. And this is the fundamental benefit that a copywriter brings to any business. For more on this, read How Copywriting Can Help Your Business to Grow.

As already mentioned, some companies are using AI content generation and copywriting to produce more content faster in the hope of building their business. This can be a very cost-effective way to produce a lot of content at speed.

But the danger for those companies who opt to get rid of skilled creatives and utilise AI technology is very real. The three main issues are:

1. Without deep understanding of the target audience, the copy will not be as effective and not convert as well as it could, meaning businesses lose out on revenue
2. AI cannot create anything new, it can only generate words based on what already exists on the internet. Companies that take a creative and original approach to their marketing are likely to stand out and win in the end.
3. The future of AI is sketchy. With companies like The New York Times suing Open AI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, who knows if, in the future, companies will be allowed to block AI technologies from using their words for AI to learn from?

Writing jobs are already being advertised that say no AI-generated content can be used and that content written by the writers will go through an AI detector to ensure it’s written by a human.

Also, Google’s algorithm is forever changing. Google’s guidelines currently state:

Google’s ranking systems aim to reward original, high-quality content that demonstrates qualities of what we call E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. We share more about this in our How Search Works site.
Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.

Google

But who is to say that several years down the line, as the technology develops and people change, that this will stay the same? I can’t ever imagine a scenario where Google will penalise a site for creating EEAT content and copy by human hand. But I can imagine a scenario where AI-generated text becomes frowned upon as people demand to read content written by other people.

Remember How AI is Generated in the First Place…

Let’s take a closer look at how AI-generated content is actually generated. If we type a prompt into ChatGPT, the words that are returned to us are essentially taken from the top-ranking pages on Google for related queries and then rehashed. AI isn’t writing those words. And without existing content to pull from, no text could be generated.

This actually gives content and copywriters a huge opportunity to write something truly original when composing content and copy. By creating something that contains something personal to a brand and something fresh and new to the existing content, it gives businesses a way of ensuring their content shines.

Matt Diggity sums it up fabulously in this video (from 4m:24s):

So when asking will AI kill copywriting, the answer is almost certainly, no.

5 Ways a Copywriter Is Still Better Than AI

1. People Respond to People

Brands and marketing are effectively based on people, not the product or service. It is people who nurture, develop, and build brands. and those brands are founded on a basis of ethics and reasons for that brand behaving the way it does and for it producing the product or service it produces.

And it does those things to sell its products or services to other people, be they businesses or individuals.

How would a brand’s customers feel if they knew that the words they were reading (or for that matter, the graphics they’re seeing, the art they’re delighting in, or the music they’re listening to) were produced by artificial intelligence? 

It all comes down to trust…

2. Trust

Brands can only truly build a long-term sustainable business if it is trusted by the people that choose to buy from it. Trust is measured in many ways:

• openness
• honesty
• integrity
• quality

All of those ethics put the customer first and help to build trust between a business and its customers. Trust breeds loyalty, and loyalty helps businesses to grow.

And in order for a customer-first approach to be genuinely effective, it’s crucial that a business knows who its customers actually are…

3. Customer Profiling

A vital step in any marketing strategy is understanding who a business is marketing to. Who are the people that a product or service has been created to actually help? AI is going to struggle to figure this out because it interprets data rather than understands humans. So this then means that the human prompt given to a tool like ChatGPT needs to be exceptionally well-worded to get anything close to the desired results, and even then it’s all based on data, not that essential human ingredient of emotion. Emotions are what really compel people to take action…

4. Empathy

One of the key core strengths a good copywriter has is the ability to empathise. Both with the client and with its customers.

Through digging into the customer profiles, both the copywriter and the business know what makes those customers tick and understand the reasons that make those people buy a particular product or service.

The answer to almost all behaviours can be pulled back to one word—emotion. Think about the last thing you purchased. Why did you buy it? Chances are you were driven by one of the following emotional impulses.

• Fear
• Greed
• Pride
• Envy
• Shame
• Altruism
• Happiness 

AI does not understand emotions. and cannot understand why a person will choose to buy a thing. As such, the words AI generates can not be as effective as properly crafted copy based on empathy.

5. AI doesn’t have a sense of humour or personality

Despite being a fan of Johnny 5’s quips in the classic 80’s movie Short Circuit, I do know that those comedy lines were of course written by a human script writer. AI cannot (intentionally, at least!) make humans laugh with the words it generates. And it cannot inject personality into those words, either.

If a business wants robotic-sounding, generic, text that is ultimately soulless, then AI can certainly do that. Editors can of course go through and scatter the human touch throughout, but AI cannot do it on its own.

3 Ways that AI can actually help copywriters

1. Ideas generation

For those copywriters who are freelance or work in a small department of one, AI can be a great work buddy to bounce ideas off. When the dreaded writer’s block hits or your brain is fried from thinking, just having the ability to ask ChatGPT to rephrase an awkward sentence or to come up with some headline alternatives can be a great tool and asset.

2. Keyword ideas

Choosing the right keyword to target is vital when it comes to search engine optimization for content marketing. AI can help to generate keyword ideas to spark off different areas for further keywrod research. Again, it’s like having a work buddy to bounce off.

What AI cannot do is replace thorough and in-depth keyword research to reveal search volumes, domain authority and topic clusters.

3. Translation into other languages

This feature is huge. If content can be quickly and easily translated into multiple different languages, then the extended scope for a business is massive. Recently, Spotify and Steven Bartlett have trialled it on the hugely popular DOAC podcast.

Watch this incredible short video to see it in action see it in action. Mindblowing, right?

Translators out there will be better placed to answer if the translation is accurate, but the audio technology is certainly impressive. AI can also perform translations in around 30 languages for the written word, but again, questions arise over the accuracy of the generated content. A native-speaking editor would still be needed to go through the translation to check for accuracy and errors.

So, will AI kill copywriting, or not…?

As more and more businesses and writers start to utilise artificial intelligence, 2024 will be an interesting year to see how the future of copywriting with AI develops.

Many copywriters are embracing AI and using it as part of the suite of copywriting tools that they have at their disposal, and brands are seeing how AI can help them gain a competitive advantage in challenging economic circumstances.

But the underlying reasons as to why a person buys a product are always based on emotions. And AI simply cannot manufacture those. People can. Good copywriters can. Because they will take the time to know the business and its customers, and through that process, will begin to understand the benefits that the product brings to people. And that benefit will often be based upon an emotion. 

Will ChaptGPT replace copywriters? I don’t think so.

There may be a shift over the next year or so whereby more companies lean into AI to see what it can do, and content and copywriters may feel that pinch.

But I feel that the outcome will be that human copywriters will be just as valued as ever. And that the real value of AI will be as an additional research tool and work buddy for existing copywriters so that they can further deepen and refine their craft and help businesses to grow, sustainably, openly and with trust.