AI makes mistakes. Meet the real people who can put them right.

There’s life in this old dog just yet.

Rumours about the death of the copywriter have been greatly exaggerated (at least for the time being).

It’s been two and a half years now since OpenAI released ChatGPT-3.5, leading to a worldwide surge of interest in artificial intelligence around the world. Suddenly, the use of AI had been democratised: you don’t need specialist skills or an IT degree to generate written or visual content any more - just the ability to put the right prompts into the model in the right way.

At the time, experienced copywriters like me seemed to become an endangered species, more or less overnight. After all, why would anyone pay to get a human to write something, when an AI model could do it for nothing (and quite possibly much faster as well)?

However, as Elton John once sang, I’m still standing - and so are countless other copywriters like me. And there are two big reasons why.

The first is human…

I’m talking about the creative flair that people like me can build into content; the element of emotion and subjectivity that drives engagement. 

I can think of a good example of this from a few years ago, when I had a job writing web copy for a toy and collectable store. One of the pages was promoting all the big Lego sets they had in stock: think things like the Death Star from Star Wars and all the other high-end kits which are for proper enthusiasts (which can cover a wide range of demographics, but are most commonly adult men).

The heading I suggested for the page was: 

“Lego: probably the best thing to come out of Denmark (apart from Brigitte Nielsen).”

Think about the thought process that went into that. It requires:

• Knowing that adult men will recognise Brigitte Nielsen (especially if they watched Rocky IV, which if they’re the target age for the store in question, they probably did)

• Understanding the use of ‘probably’ as a subtle reference to Carlsberg’s famous advertising strapline

• Using a heading completely based around humour that would (hopefully) appeal to a specific demographic rather than any fact

Can AI create content at that level of subtlety? If it can, I’ve yet to come across it - feel free to prove me wrong!

…but the second is AI’s problem

But beyond that, the second reason is the fact that - at least from an editorial and content standpoint - AI isn’t all it has cracked up to be so far.

How many times over the last couple of years have you opened a newspaper or logged onto a news website, only to find a story about how AI has generated misleading or false information?

CIO has its own Hall of Shame, that barely scratches the surface of high-profile AI fuck-ups that have had major ramifications. Some of the gems include:

• Grok accusing NBA basketballer Klay Thompson of throwing bricks through people’s windows, possibly due to misunderstanding the basketball phrase “throwing bricks”

• Lawyers who used ChatGPT as part of their research for a court case, and ended up presenting false names, citations and quotes

• Air Canada’s virtual assistant giving incorrect refund information to a customer who had suffered a bereavement

The ramifications of issues such as these can be catastrophic for any business: reputationally, legally and financially. In the court case example, the lawyers involved admitted that they hadn’t confirmed the sources of the material generated by ChatGPT, and were fined by the judge as a result. In the Air Canada case, the passenger successfully took them to a tribunal claiming negligence, and received damages from the airline.

So what does all this mean for the humble copywriter?

It means that, in a world where AI content is all around us every day, we still have a valuable role to play in shaping that content into copy that is both engaging and accurate.

We’re the people that can check that all the facts and statistics generated are legitimate and correct.

We’re the people who can present the content in such a way as to garner the most interest from highly specific target audiences and demographics.

We’re the people who can ensure you - and/or your business - don’t get fined, sued or splashed all over the media for publishing defamatory statements or misinformation.

And that’s where the role of copywriters like me is gradually changing. There will always be a place for content that’s by people, for people. Thought leadership is a good example: AI may be able to generate that type of content, but who is ever going to care about AI’s opinion?

But in situations where AI can get the job done better, copywriters can act as the go-between, making the content better, more relevant, more engaging, and - crucially - 100% accurate.

Like I said: there’s life in this old dog yet. What’s changed is the ball in the field that I’m chasing.

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