Me, Myself, and AI: ChatGPT as a Copy Co-Writer.
AI will steal my job.
But not all of it. (Phew).
That’s my hot take after playing around with ChatGPT to see how it stacks up in my world of professional freelance copywriting.
I had to admit, all the doom and gloom was a little unsettling. I mean, could this thing seriously just waltz on in and replace all that studying and degrees and years and years of copywriting experience overnight?
Hackles. Up.
Turns out the answer is yes. But with an asterisk.
Let’s start with its shortcomings
Sure, it’s only early days. And it is a learning tool, so we can safely assume this thing is only going to better (perhaps exponentially). But this may be my only time to get in a cheeky right hook.
It puts the copy in copywriting
When you give ChatGPT a prompt, it seeks to predict the best answer based on the data it was trained on. In other words, it treats writing as a purely mechanical act. That makes it great at mimicry, but if you’re looking for original work, you might want to look elsewhere.
Its copywriting is devoid of personality
Great copywriting is a creative endeavour. And since we live in a world of living, breathing, self-aware brands, people engage with those that have authentic and unique personalities.
Having played around with the tool for a while, you come to recognise patterns in its creative writing style, which for the most part appears to be the most generic and repetitive, overly verbose saccharine word vomit (harsh, I know).
One day it might summon its inner creative copywriting beast - but that day is not now.
It has questionable research skills
This thing makes quite a lot of false statements, which is ironically one of the things it’s openly honest about (while in a chat it has a disclaimer saying “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” The reason is likely because it’s trained on data it sources from the internet, and we all know what a cesspool of fake news that place is.
Still, the fact that you can’t rely on it to be a trusty fact-sourcing steed is a shame, as it would save a lot of time researching websites for source copywriting material.
So what is it good at?
Look, it’s not going to write the next Cloudstreet or Nike campaign anytime soon. I have serious doubts it could come up with a slogan that doesn’t make me want to dry reach rainbows. Yet despite its clear creative shortcomings, it does have a bit going for it. Quite a lot actually. Okay, it’s awesome.
It makes a good brainstorming partner
Being a Perth freelance copywriter is great. I like writing in my boxers. I’m doing it right now (sorry not sorry). But it does come with its downside. A big one is that much of my time is spent holed up at the desk, alone. By myself. Just me. No one else.
Sniff.
Yes, I’m desperately lonely, but when it became clear ChatGPT was not-so-good as a copywriting co-cowriter, I looked at it with forlorn eyes and saw my perfect copywriting companion. Finally, some(thing) to bounce ideas off, and tell me my ideas are good.
Sure, it does struggle to be outright critical, but you can tell when it doesn’t love an idea judging by tone.
It helps me collect my thoughts
Sometimes when you’re in the thick of the creative process, you lose sight of the wood from trees. ChatGPT was able to evaluate my ideas and writing in the context of the client’s creative brief quite effectively.
That helped me in a few ways. First, it gave me clarity and confidence knowing I was on the right track. Secondly, it pulled me out from the depths of a creative rabbit hole to nowhere. And thirdly, it helped me write the base copy for rationales (for naming and tagline jobs) by laying out the strengths in a clear, albeit predictable, manner.
Will it take over my copywriting job?
While you certainly can’t count on it to replace high quality copywriting at this stage, the reality is that we live in a world where most writing jobs don't require significant creativity. I can imagine a lot of businesses will froth over ChatGPT’s ability to write passable content virtually instantly, saving them a lot of time and money. Blogs, social posts. Internal comms even. It’s not going to win any awards, but do they need it to?
There goes the bulk of copywriters I guess.
As for creative copywriting, I can imagine AI evolving into a useful high-level tool. In this world, freelance copywriters will become AI wranglers, using ChatGPT to do the grunt work for them. Their new skill will become directing the flow of output, like reworking generated content to hit a brand’s unique persona band idiolect.
If that happens, I think copywriters will survive, no matter how big AI grows. Like other things in life, maybe it’s not how big it is, but how you use it.