Will AI Replace Copywriters?
AI content generation is seducing the hell out of SaaS founders. Why? Because—and I declare this openly, as someone who’s done it for a living for a long time—writing is hard.
Marketing and sales writing can be even harder because there are so many factors that go into getting it right. Those brands in your space that knock content marketing out of the park? They have writers on staff, or they pay a premium to freelance writers who specialize in your industry.
These people are experts. They know how to communicate clearly. They know their way around a value prop. They weave in SEO keywords, and they do it all in the brand voice. They know what they’re doing, and people who know what they’re doing are expensive.
Good content costs money.
So typing an outline into a form field and getting a full-blown sales page or blog post back in seconds? That sounds really nice, especially for companies with a small marketing budget.
Is it too good to be true, or can new AI content generators on the market actually replace copywriters?
Spoiler alert: you’re on a content marketing website, so OBVIOUSLY my answers are yes and then no… but the content world isn’t dismissing AI generators out of hand either.
It’s possible we might be able to coexist.
What is AI-Generated Content?
Most modern AI content generators (at least the ones that have gained popularity over the past year) use GPT-3, the most advanced language model currently on the market. Using deep learning, GPT-3 can ostensibly “generate whole paragraphs so natural they sound like a human wrote them.”
I entered some of my web copy about content marketing services into Snazzy.ai and got this new headline and description back. It sounds grammatically correct and flows well…. but what does it mean?
Artificial intelligence platforms claim that they can generate anything from taglines and ad copy to product descriptions and emails to long-form content like articles and sales pages.
In actuality, they can dish out some broad, general writing that tends to sub in synonyms and add some creative elements and different tones and voices to “remix” your inputs. Some of the best ones can serve up content based on an outline you provide for long-form content.
And the writing quality? It ranges from terrible (like “I would rather hire my 5-year-old to write this” terrible) to…okay.
I tried out a few platforms, and some of the pieces made sense from a surface-level perspective, which is a huge accomplishment for AI. They flowed more naturally than the essays some of my college students used to turn in. (Note: that’s a low bar.)
But would I use AI content, as is, in any sales or marketing efforts?
No.
Because let’s be honest: “just okay web copy that makes sense on the surface” isn’t going to cut it. It doesn’t when humans write copy, and it won’t when robots do it either.
Why Quality AI Won’t Replace Quality Writers
There is definitely a SaaS/ecommerce slant to the AI platforms on the market, which makes them even more appealing—the writing products they offer are exactly the content formats that online businesses struggle with the most.
But that doesn’t mean they have what it takes to replace quality content marketers and copywriters. Here’s why.
1. Great marketing content is based in empathy and understanding of audience and context ❤️
As marketing expert John Bonini explains, the vast majority of marketing content has one of three purposes: to inspire, to educate, or to help someone accomplish something.
And great writing that educates, inspires, or helps other humans is innately human itself.
Real talk from content marketing consultant Erin Balsa
The best writers are dedicated students of human behavior.
They observe. They empathize. They seek to understand why people act the way they do, paying attention to everything from their audience’s challenges and external influences to internal tensions, fears, and motivational drivers.
Plus all of this might vary based on where in the journey the prospect is, and there might be multiple personas at play.
It’s complicated.
These factors are essential to empathy and to write content, but I’ve not yet been able to input them into an AI content generator, let alone see them in the copy I get on the other end. AI empathy is not a thing. Further proof: A GPT-3 medical chatbot recently advised a suicidal test patient to kill himself (albeit in perfect English).
We're not there yet, folks.
“A content generator doesn’t replace the need for a writer. If anything, it strengthens the need. These tools are available to anyone. If you’re simply relying on the tool itself, rather than an editor who can use it as a starting point and then bring life and a unique narrative to your copy, then you’re on a quick road to having commodity copy on your website.
I think where a content generator can be helpful is in getting people started. I view it as another input of data—use it as a starting point and then mold it to make it fit your brand, your voice, and your context.”
— John Bonini, Growth Marketing and User Acquisition Expert
2. Great content successfully synthesizes ideas 💡
As humans, we effortlessly build knowledge from seemingly unrelated ideas. The human brain uses references, metaphors, analogies, frameworks, jargon, and more.
Any writing that lacks this complexity is sanitized and boring. Does it make logical sense? Sure. Is it going to fire any synapses by proposing a new way of thinking about the topic? No. Your audience not going to learn anything new by reading AI-generated content.*
*Slight concession here: an AI meme generator made the news last year for being hilarious, so I will give credit where credit is due. But the popularity stemmed from how random the memes were. In this sense, the generator was almost too good at synthesizing disparate ideas, transforming meme-making into an absurdist exercise.
While it’s funny, I’d argue that this isn’t particularly useful for clear marketing copy. The synthesis needs to, you know, make sense.
3. Great content uses specific examples 👉
Copy generated by AI tends to be generic. It might make sense, but that’s because it’s vague and noncommittal and full of platitudes.
An AI content generator might remix your original copy into a new order or different sentence structure, but it’s not going to come up with anything you don’t already feed it (unless it’s just blatantly ripping it off other websites, which a couple of the apps I tried did).
In order to get a content generator to create specificity, you have to feed it specificity, from statistics to demonstrative examples to expert opinion… and in that case, you’re better off just hiring a writer to create it for you or writing the damn thing yourself.
I see the best AI copywriting tools assisting, not replacing, the human copywriter. For instance, I play around with AI content brief tools, but I never accept the outline they spit out. I use it and other tools for ideas.
Our content team recently tested out a new AI copy tool. On the one hand, we all agreed the writing wasn't good. That said, we were all impressed by the sheer speed—seconds for several paragraphs. All we gave it was an outline. The biggest question is, would this copy pass a plagiarism test?
—Camille Trent, Managing Editor, MarketerHire
4. Great content is full of the complexity, sophistication, and nuance that comes with actual knowledge 🤔
When I was a content writer working across industries, I would do in-depth research on a topic, follow a content brief, interview my clients for subject matter expertise, write the article, and still receive edits here and there on the subtleties of JavaScript frameworks vs. libraries or blockchain submarine swaps.
AI copy might sound okay on the surface, but you’re not going to fool anyone with more than a fingernail’s depth of experience in your topic. 👏 There is no substitute for actual expertise 👏 and your audience knows it. A robot can’t bullshit someone about their own problems—especially if those problems require a SaaS solution.
Right now content generators are useful for generating new content ideas, saving time, and as tools for very specific purposes, but they do have their limitations. For example, computer-generated copy (like from GPT-3) isn’t as sophisticated as copy written by human beings. The copy lacks insights, evidence, and storytelling. Content generators don’t have human judgement or empathy, and they’re susceptible to bad prompts and user bias.
Even though we’re seeing content generators used in marketing…I think it will be three to five years before all the ethical issues are sorted out and we see widespread adoption.
— Anthony Sills, Content Strategist and Copywriter
The Possibilities for AI Content Generation
AI content won’t replace actual human writers… but I, for one, welcome our robot brainstorming assistants.
I think they can be used to supplement writing that already has a firm grasp of all of the fundamentals above—getting writers out of sticky spots and proposing new ways to phrase things when the blank screen is looming large. As other experts have explained, they can be helpful for idea generation.
But any claims that they can replace a quality copywriter are false, made by people who stand to profit or by people who don’t understand content (or both).
If you think AI can replace your copywriter then you’re partnering with copywriters in the wrong way. AI can be a solid tool for assisting in research and copy creation, but for your copy to convert you need a strategist. A great copywriter is a strategist first, a writer second.
— Kirsten Lamb, Freelance Conversion Copywriter
It’s tempting to think of a world in which AI technologies will be able to out-innovate us. But we’re not there yet.
If it’s worth creating content at all, it’s worth doing right—at least with a sense of purpose and audience and by truly offering helpful, useful information. If you’re doing content marketing right, there is no part in the buyer journey where other humans won’t be reading the content you publish.
You never know which piece will strike a chord with someone who finds your page. You never know which sentence will answer the question. Any line could make a website visitor remember your name six months down the road.
You could trust that single moment to the experts—to your own ability to communicate passionately about your product, or to a professional writer you’ve hired to strategize and produce content with your audience and purpose in mind.
Or you could leave it up to a robot who can turn a phrase.
It’s your decision.
Struggling to come up with consistent SaaS content? Download my free Persona Content Map for B2B SaaS, a strategic planning tool to help you generate a quarter’s worth of relevant, high-quality content topics in two hours or less.
