Because those expert copywriters online can’t all be wrong … can they?
If you know about copywriting – or indeed if you have even a passing interest in AI, online search, marketing or generating copy quickly and at the lowest price possible – you’ll have heard of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is a rather impressive AI language model and, as we all know, anything involving AI is either (i) nightmarish stuff that will destroy all human employment and render us helplessly dependent upon whatever universal basic income our overlords deign to give us in return for our votes, or (ii) a handy bit of tech that you might be able to use in some way or another. It all depends on your point of view.
Personally, I’m of the latter opinion. But if you want to know more before you decide, ZDNET have posted a nice introductory guide here.
Having spent several happy hours mucking around with both the free version of ChatGPT, which is ChatGPT 3.5, and Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which uses the more advanced and multi-modal ChatGPT-4, I have reached a preliminary conclusion.
But it’s not quite as binary as the ‘ChatGPT is coming for our jobs’ and ‘ChatGPT is utterly useless’ perspectives that seem to populate copywriters’ forums online.
What ChatGPT does well
In my view, when it comes to copywriting, ChatGPT is a very handy tool – for preliminary research, context and information gathering.
It will get handier over time, as it evolves and is ‘fed’ on more data. Currently, much is made of the fact that ChatGP 3.5 has only consumed data up to 2021, but that won’t last – having used GPT-4, I can see that the ‘it’s out of date’ argument is already becoming obsolete.
So, for copywriters, ChatGPT is useful to scope out the subject you’re looking at, identify current issues and find some helpful sources.
That said, my initial problem with ChatGPT-3.5 was the lack of references or sources. When I asked it to provide some, it basically replied ‘I’m an AI language model, don’t be daft’. However, GPT-4, as used with Bing does provide sources (although it’s up to the user to check these are credible). However, it gives brief text responses that are tailored for search.
That means GPT-4 is not going to do your copywriting for you in the way that GPT-3.5 might, but it’s substantially better at data gathering and signposting. Which matters to those of us who value accuracy, and deal with technical content.
What are the limits of ChatGPT copywriting?
I referred to ChatGPT-3.5 as capable of copywriting. That’s because it is … up to a point.
Do you want basic, non-technical copy to populate an unchallenging website or marketing materials? Also, are you comfortable tailoring the AI output and identifying errors? If so then yes, you absolutely can use ChatGPT to write copy.
I mean, it will be almost the same copy as that used by all the other people in your sector who have also used ChatGPT, but you’ll have a few extra quid in your pocket.
You won’t have any SEO, though. Unless you do that yourself and deliberately introduce it to the copy, either through informed questions to ChatGPT, or afterwards.
Alternatively, you can pay for a subscription to ChatGPT Plus, which runs GPT-4 and will presumably be updated as the model evolves. I haven’t used that version, but if the cost outweighs what you’d pay for a freelance copywriter and you can do your own SEO and you can confidently tweak ChatGPT’s output and you can tell which responses from AI are duds and which are not and you can make the robotic bits of your copy sound more human (because AI makes mistakes and has no inkling of the humanity that real humans take for granted), then it would be a perfectly sensible thing to consider.
However, there are other issues you may wish to think about.
ChatGPT is not a freelance copywriter
I’ve already acknowledged that, sometimes, ChatGPT is an option for copywriting. For example, American estate agents seem to love it, and who am I to argue with them? But I’m not sure that estate agents often set out to become thought leaders in complex environments, differentiate themselves through innovation, develop new ideas or present ground-breaking solutions to persistent problems.
Apologies if you’re an estate agent reading this, by the way. I’m sure you’re great.
For those of us who write copy for organisations that do work with complex subjects, ChatGPT has some applications as a research tool. But that really is about it, as far as I can see. The risks of error or incompleteness are too great for me to use it for anything more.
Too much AI-generated content will kill the internet
OK, mildly overstated sub-head there, but perhaps by less than you think. As if mere error was not enough, AI brings a risk of polluting the internet for years to come. That has been explained in this wonderful article in The Register, which I urge all right-minded people to read.
Think about it. All your AI ‘copywriter’ has to go on is the material that’s already online, and much of that is pretty ropey. There’s all the bile and trolling on Twitter, for a start; and the lingering output of a million content mills.
If you rely on this for your own copywriting purposes, not only are you quite literally re-hashing things that have already been said, but also you are not contributing anything to the knowledge pool. So, all the AI has to go on is yet more of the same content, which it serves up to users, who then go on to peddle inaccuracies and misinformation in a different guise.
If this carries on at sufficient scale, the internet will stagnate. It will slowly marinade in its own greed, misinformation and self-righteous complaining until it finally degenerates into its basest form, like a digital version of Dante’s Inferno. It will be useless for anyone who wants to learn or exchange original ideas, because it will be overwhelmingly composed of the same old stuff, going round and round in endless circles.
Do I need a freelance copywriter even if I don’t suffer existential angst about the state of the internet?
Yes, you do; mainly because it clearly makes good commercial and practical sense.
While AI can write basic copy, you need a human being if you really want to make an impact. More to the point, you need a human being who can weigh up the value of information, use it appropriately and draw intelligent conclusions. You also need them to write like a proper human; AI comes close, but rarely achieves that when it goes beyond the superficial (and if you’re unconvinced, just take a look at LinkedIn’s current, experimental, use of AI-generated copy).
Personally, I love AI and I really, really like ChatGPT. But is it coming for my job? Nah. It needs people like me to feed it, and frankly, I’m perfectly happy with that relationship.
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