AI Didn’t Put Copywriters Out of Work – It Made Us Stronger

Just two years ago the writing was on the wall for…well, writing. The seemingly unstoppable rise of GenAI threatened to put us copywriters out of a job once and for all. We were like weavers in the 18th Century. But where they were broken on the backs of power looms and steam engines, our oblivion was to be sealed by LLMs and neural networks.

Only, of course, that’s not what happened. Unknown to us fear-laden copywriters back then, but all too apparent now, is that, unedited, AI-generated copy is far from perfect. Without a real, living and breathing writer to evaluate its outputs, AI more often than not reads as soulless and empty. A bunch of hackneyed phrases and odd sentence structures stitched together with neither insight nor empathy. 

How did AI ruin the internet?

And we’ve all seen what’s happened since. Drawn by the siren call of cheap copy and reduced costs, marketers went all-in on the algorithms. The internet, once a thriving and varied ecosystem, now plays host to generic, beige copy and AI slop.

We should have seen it coming. GenAI works by using an LLM to predict the most statistically average next word in a sentence. Average words lead to average sentences, which then leads to average copy. And with every business doing the same thing, the internet has become a sea of sameness.

How is AI changing things for human writers?

Which brings me back to the fate of writers. That which did not kill us, made us stronger. Desperate for skilled writers that can bring some character back to their copy, brands have started to offer big salaries for talented pros. The kicker: the companies offering the biggest deals are the same ones that started the whole ride in the first place. 

That’s right, if you’ve got the grammatical chops, you could land a role as Anthropic’s Standards Editor for $295,000. Not enough? Then why not drop by Open AI’s offices – it recently posted a nearly $400,000 a year role for a content strategist. Or if you really want to make the big bucks, then swing by Netflix. The right candidate can command a $775,000 salary as its Product & Technology Communications Director. 

What has GenAI taught us about good writing?

That AI businesses don’t trust AI to write and edit their copy should send a clear message to all marketing and comms professionals at all levels. Really AI has done us a favor. It showed us what mediocre copy looks like and created a Black Mirror-esq nightmare world where nearly all corporate writing is average. 

Lesson learned, it’s time to move on. Marketing leaders should once again view good copy as an investment worth making. Meanwhile, junior practitioners should hone their skills away from the lure of the LLMs so that they can learn for themselves how to craft – and therefore how to recognize – good copy. AI can stay, of course, but its use must be regulated with vigor and vigilance and restricted to functions like research and brainstorming. 

“Marketing leaders should once again view good copy as an investment worth making.”

Mike Plessis

We’ve seen what happens when humans are taken out of the writing equation. Many of your competitors are still doing it, falsely believing that AI copy is good enough. That means there’s a great opportunity for you to do something different and better. It’s another no-brainer.