There’s been a lot of excitement around ChatGPT and AI-generated content, where articles can now be written within seconds, at the touch of a button. On the surface, this looks like a cost-efficient way to create lots of content, but is using AI better than employing a human copywriter to do the job? Let’s explore.

Note: This article was written by a human copywriter, so I may be a bit biased. But I’ll try not to be. ☺️

Can AI convince your audience?

It’s been shown that effective copywriting is insightful, informative, engaging, and provides value to the reader. And more importantly, it inspires people to take action. Can AI-generated content be persuasive enough to motivate people to take action?

Chat GPT (the most commonly known AI tool) is a natural language processing tool (i.e. chatbot). It uses Artificial Intelligence to build meaningful sentences, and works by using large data sets (such as the internet) that help them predict the next word in a sentence.

Given that people aren’t generic, and your copy needs to speak to the people who you want to read it (i.e. your ideal customers), a deep understanding of the target audience is vital for successful copywriting. This is why a good copywriter will spend time and effort getting to know your business, competitors and target audience, which takes time, research, and dialogue with the client.

Copywriters understand the psychology behind buyer behaviour, which they can translate into persuasive copywriting that inspires people to take action. In other words, they can help you to connect with your customers on a human level.

Because of how ChatGPT works, it doesn’t gain a deep understanding of the uniqueness of your business, the industry you operate in, or the needs, wants and desires of your customers. Instead, AI creates generic content based on the data it has. So, you could end up with something written for the wrong market, in the wrong tone, and using the wrong language.

What seems to be missing in AI is true understanding – a key ingredient in the copywriting process. Without a true understanding of the target audience, it’s more difficult to write content that will convince people to become customers.

Can AI be creative?

Creativity is an essential ingredient for persuasive copywriting. Copywriters spend lots of time brainstorming to dream up new ideas and create unique and engaging content to spark a customer’s interest and curiosity.

AI works by machine learning, which involves feeding it with information that can help it generate new content based on what it has learned. Therefore, it can only produce content based on what’s already there and can’t come up with new concepts or be original.

Is AI-generated content trustworthy?

Because AI writes content based on its existing dataset, it can’t fill in any gaps or fact-check the information it provides. Furthermore, because ChatGPT was trained on data from the internet, the results you get could be out of date or inaccurate. At the time of writing this article, the dataset for Chat GPT only goes up to 2021.

It raises the question of how reliable the information that it creates is, and how reliable are the sources the information has come from?

Here’s what Open AI (the owner of ChatGPT) has to say about it:

“Can I trust that the AI is telling me the truth?

ChatGPT is not connected to the internet, and it can occasionally produce incorrect answers. It has limited knowledge of world and events after 2021 and may also occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content.

We’d recommend checking whether responses from the model are accurate or not.”

Source: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-what-is-chatgpt [accessed: 15 May 2023]

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Additionally, ChatGPT doesn’t typically tell you where it got its information from, although, you can ask it to quote sources. In my experiments, I asked an AI to give me quotes related to marketing statistics. Not surprisingly, it couldn’t give me the most up-to-date statistics. However, I also noted that most of the links it gave me didn’t go anywhere, making me wonder if they no longer existed, or if it had just made them up.

Interestingly, I recently came across an article by the Washington Post that outlined how Chat GPT had made up a sexual harassment case and named a real lawyer. According to the article, the AI cited a piece by the Washington Post as the source for this information. However, the post in question didn’t exist and the AI had made it up.

Putting my amusement aside, this is concerning as it can be damaging to a real person’s reputation. It also makes me wonder how much inaccurate AI-generated content is going to be spewed out into the world, adding to the problem of misinformation on the internet.

AI-generated content sounds confident, especially when it’s wrong, which can be dangerous. As Open AI themselves suggest, I would recommend that if you use AI for research, make sure you check the sources and that the ‘facts’ are accurate.

How will AI content rank in search engines?

Search engines look for quality content (i.e. content that is relevant, accurate, and high-quality). And they are always getting better at spotting it. Therefore, how AI content will rank in search engines will depend on the quality of the content itself.

In their guidance for AI-generated content, Google state that “Using AI doesn’t give content any special gains. It’s just content. If it is useful, helpful, original, and satisfies aspects of E-E-A-T*, it might do well in Search. If it doesn’t, it might not.”

*E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and is a set of guidelines that Google uses to assess the quality of a web page.

In other words, Google reward content that is written for people, not bots, and has even created guidelines to help content creators produce helpful and reliable content, which will in turn help them to rank better in search results.

Google does, however, frown upon the use of AI to create content purely to manipulate search results. In their guidelines, they confirm that “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies.”

So, whether content is created by AI or humans, it should be good quality content that provides value. Churning out lots of spammy content to manipulate search results isn’t going to impress the Google search bots.

How good is the quality?

During my initial experiments with AI, I found that the texts it produced were okay but not up to the polished standard I would usually send to a client and therefore needed edits or changes. The language was sometimes clear and concise, but often it was stilted as if it had been translated poorly. However, it did help with idea generation, which gave me a good starting point.

As we’ve seen above, other issues with AI-generated content that could affect the quality of a text include accuracy, tone, and understanding of the intended audience, all of which will need to be checked by a human before putting it out into the world.

Additionally, the quality of the prompt is important and can require a lot of thought. It’s not just a case of asking it to “write me an article about xyz”. Making the prompt as detailed as possible can improve the output.

It should also be remembered that AI programmes, such as Chat GPT, were created for chatbots and not copywriting. Therefore it’s not going to produce the best quality copywriting because it wasn’t designed for that. The problem then lies not with the AI itself, but with how people use it. There seems to be a case of big tech selling AI as something other than what it really is.

Who owns the copyright?

The introduction of AI content has opened up plenty of legal and ethical questions, especially in relation to copyright. I’m not a legal expert, so I’m not going to go into the arguments here, but I think it is worth checking:

• Who owns the copyright to the AI-generated content? (e.g. you or the software company?)
• Can you use it for commercial purposes?

There’s also the question about the rights of the people who own the works that were used to train the AI. Is it ethical? Is it just copying people’s work without permission?

These questions and more are already being tested in court as well as being addressed with new legislation and controls.

In Summary: AI vs The Copywriter

AI is kind of like an enthusiastic but ill-informed intern. It will confidently give you words that make up an article but doesn’t check its facts. So, even if businesses decide to use programmes such as ChatGPT to create articles, the work still needs overseeing by humans. Additionally, the output is only as good as the input (i.e. garbage in, garbage out), so whoever is prompting the AI will need to know how to write good prompts to get the best out of it.

Empathy is an essential part of good copywriting because it helps customers to relate to the copy, making them more likely to take action. For the time being, copywriters still provide the human touch that is necessary to connect with customers. They take the time to get to know the company and the market they operate in. Human copywriters understand people and buying decisions and can tailor content accordingly. AI can’t currently do this.

AI cannot be creative, which is another essential ingredient in the copywriting process. Copywriters spend time mulling over ideas to come up with original and creative ways to write their copy, often drawing influence from their own experiences, knowledge, and the world around them. AI’s output is based on what’s been fed into it, meaning it can copy and paste information together to make something new, but can’t come up with original ideas. For that reason, I would argue that human creativity succeeds in this area.

Personally, I found AI to be good for idea generation, but it wasn’t very helpful for research or writing – big parts of the copywriting process. The sources were out of date or didn’t exist at all and the text needed editing to make it fit for purpose. AI could get better at these things in the future, but we’re not there yet!

You could argue that AI is more cost-effective for businesses: it’s (currently) free, takes less time, and doesn’t demand sick or holiday pay. However, if you’re looking for quality and trustworthy content that resonates with your audience, AI still falls short in this area.

So for now, human copywriters still rule…unless AI becomes a lot more human…but then we’re all doomed! 😉

Want human-sounding copy that delights your audiences and convinces them to open their wallets? Get in touch today to see how I can be of service.

P.S.

I asked AI to write an alternative ad for my services to go at the bottom of this blog post. Here’s what it came up with:

“Need help with your words? Hire a professional copywriter for your next project. Contact us today for flawless content.”

Meh, I think I prefer my version; it has more cheekiness! What do you think?