Depending on who you believe, artificial intelligence (AI) is either going to be the next great technological breakthrough that leads to a higher quality of life for us all … or the end of civilization as we know it. Like most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.
I’m can’t offer an expert opinion on the potential ramifications of AI on our world and society. However, I am keeping a close eye on how AI is affecting the world of copywriting and content marketing as we head into a new year. But first, a quick look at how we got to where we are now with AI copywriting.
The Explosion of ChatGPT
2024 will probably go down as the year when AI copywriting went from a curious sideshow to a full-blown phenomenon. This is due mainly to the explosion of ChatGPT. Originally launched as a free service in late 2022 by OpenAI, ChatGPT grew to 100 million users in just a few months, making it the fastest growing consumer software app in history.
In early 2023, OpenAI introduced a subscription model, ChatGPT Plus, that was based on the more advanced GPT-4 model. This was soon followed up ChatGPT Pro and ChatGPT Team for businesses. Plus currently costs $20 per month, Team costs $25 per month and Pro costs $200 per month, but most of the writers I know still use the free version.
Insights from an AI Copywriting Expert
Jacob McMillan, aka The Cyborg Writer, is an expert on AI copywriting who I’ve been following for years. He started digging into it in 2020, long before most people even knew such a thing existed.
Jacob calls the AI revolution “a wildly misunderstood mixture of generation-defining technology, exaggerated claims and outright lies.” He says everything you’ve read about AI copywriting up to this point is probably wrong, starting with AI being a one-click, Holy Grail copywriting solution.
“The best AI tools are able to automate around 80 percent of writing workflows that previously had no real automation options,” Jacob says. “But that last 20 percent supplied by the human user is the difference between creating something that is legitimately profitable and something that is completely worthless.”
According to Jacob, AI writing tools are powerful because they create new writing out of a large data set of already existing writing, “which results in a regression toward the mean. Plugging AI writing tools into the human writing process frees up human writers to write better content and steer AI’s potential in support of real marketing objectives,” says Jacob.
Write Better and Faster
Jacob views AI as an efficiency tool for copywriters, instead of a threat to their existence. “If you use AI the right way, it can help you write three to four times faster,” he says. Here are Jacob’s top five ways AI can help you write better and faster:
- Improve outlines and content structure — Jacob says AI can structure content “like a good teacher by creating context and then walking readers from A to B to C in a way that makes sense and keeps them engaged. Its algorithmic approach to content is good enough to create outlines better than 90 percent of the writers I’ve worked with.”
- Summarize basic information — For example, let’s say you need to define or explain a common industry term in your blog. You’ll probably Google the term and then try to rephrase the definitions that come up, which is cumbersome and also risks plagiarizing. AI can easily do this for you and even give you several versions to choose from.
- Generate examples and analogies — These are critical to effective copywriting, but generating them can be time-consuming. “Coming up with a good example or analogy on my own can take upwards of 30 minutes,” says Jacob. “But GPT4 can create exceptional examples and analogies in seconds.”
- Write emotional language. Jacob says this is an area where GPT4 is “sneakily strong.” He elaborates: “When you ask it to ‘lean into the emotion,’ it will often go massively overboard, giving you a never-ending string of dramatic adjectives, phrases and analogies. But if you approach GPT4 as a collaboration tool, it will generate a long list of strong phrases to choose from in building your narrative.”
- Proofread and edit copy. GPT4 is a great proofreader and reasonably useful editor, says Jacob. “It’s not going to be perfect, and I’ve actually started catching typos out of ChatGPT. But I’d rather use it as my proofreader because it’s free, it’s instant and it’s around 90 percent perfect. And the last 10 percent doesn’t impact revenue.”
Where is All This Headed?
Putting on his futurist hat, Jacob predicts that AI will eventually be able to replicate a specific writer or brand voice. “Imagine having an AI-search assistant that can comb through every podcast, YouTube video or article from a specific source and answer your hyper-specific questions, similar to if you asked the source author. This is where AI is headed.”