A year on, I review the way AI has changed what I do
Updated from 2024 article… things are moving fast!
So many conversations in the marketing and comms teams where I work are about AI and how it’s changing what we do. How best should we defend ourselves against it? How can we use it without devaluing our skillset?
18 months on from when I originally wrote this article, I have certainly felt the impact. I’ve lost some jobs and a couple of clients who are cutting costs and going it alone. But I’ve also gained a couple of clients, for whom AI tools have made it possible for them to get more value from an investment in original copy. Plus, I’ve updated my skills, enjoyed many interesting AI debates with marketers and customers… and reflected and learned a lot.
It’s clear and amply demonstrated that AI has great power and capability. It can assimilate data from many sources very rapidly to produce informative content, but it has its limitations. Industry commentary simultaneously extols the sophistication of AI marketing platforms while warning of the risks of over-reliance on AI.
In the evolving copywriting market, I have found that AI presents new opportunities and isn’t a like-for-like alternative to original work for my clients. For some tasks and inputs, it’s a great time-saver and stimulus, as long as it’s used with care and knowledge.
Here’s where the human touch continues to be vital in high-quality copy:
- Originality – AI can only create content based on existing resources. It cannot be truly creative and make the leaps of imagination and connection that characterise the most distinctive content. Original turns of phrase, metaphors and humour are difficult to synthesise effectively: good writers have an instinct for what works for a specific audience and topic and it’s hard to reduce this to rules and standard practice.
- Provenance – because AI bases its output on existing content, there are potential legal and copyright issues about (even loosely) repurposing what’s been created and owned by others. “How much similarity constitutes plagiarism?” is one question. A UK government consultation into AI copyright issues closed in February 2025 and responses are being considered – many organisations are sensitive to this and (sensibly) proceeding with caution.
- Veracity – ChatGPT articulates many things very confidently, but we still need to check their accuracy. For the past year, I have used ChatGPT to help me write programme notes for choral concerts. It’s very accurate and produces excellent facts and information about well-known composers and works. But for more modern and obscure composers and works it is unreliable. Knowing this, I check judiciously and consult knowledgeable musicians or original scores when in doubt. ChatGPT can only work with what it can find – sometimes it confuses people with similar names or even conflates sources to come up with wrong information.
If you know little about the topic, it’s risky to assume everything you’re given by AI is true. For my concert programme, the only consequence would have been my embarrassment – but in commercial copy, wrong information disseminated to clients could have a more damaging impact. There is a need to check facts, both from your own knowledge and in a more formal way. You have to be able to do this intelligently if you hope to deploy AI to improve your productivity and speed of output, or else you might as well research the whole thing yourself. - Avoiding banality – a lot of AI responses follow a very similar format (see my recent blog about spotting AI ‘tells’) so it’s easy for content to look a bit bland and repetitive if you use it a lot for similar types of post or article. Try asking ChatGPT questions about several people or subjects in a similar category – such as famous composers. You’ll see that the presentation of the information is relatively predictable. This is great for clarity, but for interest and variety, which tend to help to engage readers, it’s not so good.
- Confidentiality – if you type a question into many AI platforms, they will fold it into machine learning. Let’s say you’re working on a confidential project. If you type in something about it within a question, that snippet effectively enters the public domain. In some situations it could be searched out by competitors in a process of reverse engineering. This could put you in breach of NDAs. Large organisations are already using gated, in-house owned AI platforms to keep their intellectual property secure. That’s not affordable for everyone. Read the AI tool’s data-sharing policies carefully before you work with it on confidential information.
- Prompting – Open source AI tools are only as good as the queries and questions you enter into them. If you ask a stupid, limited or biased question, you’ll get a stupid, limited or biased answer. Prompting has become a vital skill for anyone researching or creating using AI. I recently went to an RIBA seminar about how architects can use AI to assist them with design: the ability to use verbal prompts was absolutely crucial, and quite challenging for professionals who tend to work very visually. As a writer who deals in verbal communication, hopefully I have a head start on this!
In my experience, you need to know something about a topic to be able to make use of AI to prompt, research and write about it effectively. You also need to be able to decide which information and angle will be of greatest relevance and interest to an audience you’re writing for, which influences both the query you input and the way you use the output provided. For example, AI may suggest creative-sounding campaigns, titles or messaging, but unless you know the market, you won’t know if they’ve already been done to death or overtaken. - Respect and humanity – There’s a growing suspicion about AI. Some of this is unfounded and overblown. But most people react badly to the idea of a robot “pretending” to be a person, or a brand adopting a friendly persona that turns out to be synthetic.
A banking IVR answered my call the other day in a very convincing-sounding voice. It turned out to be a bot that, frustratingly, couldn’t understand my non-standard enquiry. The frustration was compounded because I initially thought I was talking to a person, so I felt stupid as well!
I think that human involvement continues to be a differentiator in all kinds of content and engagement. Customers and audiences feel more valued and genuinely respected if humans are engaging with them directly or through crafted, creative content. This is associated with high-end experiences and genuine customer service.
Here’s where AI can be a big help with content research and prep:
Practice and experience have showed me that AI tools can be capable and time-saving helpers in writing projects. But I have to use them thoughtfully, accepting their limitations, just as I might work with an intern or junior researcher.
I have some experience of this: I sometimes ask my student son to research client blog topics online for me, to free up more time for me to craft and write instead of preparing and gathering data. He is quick, clever and eager (motivated by the Wordsmithy research hourly rate!) He always finds a lot of useful content, but he lacks experience and context.
Sometimes he misses crucial information or includes research from less credible sources, because he is convinced by professional-looking presentation of information. He sometimes cites inaccurately, because the source material has been confusingly quoted and re-quoted several times. At times, he digs up far too much content and doesn’t know how to sift it down, because he’s not fully attuned to the project requirements.
Of course, some of this is down to me. I must provide a very clear brief to make sure the content he serves up is useful. The same goes for AI prompting. I must be prepared for fact-checks and adjustments before I am confident I can make use of the research. I adopt a very similar approach to AI. In both cases, the support frees me up for other work. It can sometimes get me thinking down new avenues, particularly when I challenge or question the information and consider different perspectives as a result.
The rise of AI-powered content apps
There are many AI-powered apps on the market that generate sales and marketing copy for volume campaigns. They are more cost effective and productive than I could ever be for that level of demand and type of communication. But I’m equally sure that a skilled human marketing communications professional will be defining and overseeing these campaigns to ensure quality and impact. These kinds of context-specific AI-powered writing apps are opening doors to start-up and streamlined businesses and helping them compete with established players, giving them the capability to generate high volumes of content and present it professionally.
There are also excellent AI-powered proofing tools that make everyone’s life easier, correcting grammar and punctuation intelligently in context. Even professional writers sometimes make slips – it’s good to have a safety net. I don’t always accept auto-generated suggestions, but they sometimes make me rethink and rephrase.
My 2025 AI approach: confident collaboration
AI is changing the mix of my work and altering client demands. There are fewer lower value, repetitive copy briefs landing in my inbox. I am writing more long, original, thought leadership type copy – for blogs, papers and articles, where originality and brand voice count. Content owners are wisely using AI tools to promote and disseminate these kinds of hero assets, to maximise their value. I’m continually experimenting with ways to use AI to summarise, plan, reframe and compare content sources or to help me approach a topic differently. I’m in no doubt that I’m accountable for the quality of the prompts I give it and for critically evaluating the outputs I get back.
AI continues to become more sophisticated and capable of generating targeted content, although some recent headlines suggest that the rapid uptake means that quality and distinctiveness are getting worse, because AI databanks are beginning to feed themselves.
I believe there will always be demand for more sophisticated, original and complex content that’s individually planned, targeted and executed to engage, entertain and attract the right kind of attention and reaction. Thankfully, that’s the kind of content I’m mostly asked to write and edit. I’m keenly interested in how consumer opinion may come to influence business policy on AI: for example, if the upcoming generation of workers begins to feel that AI is undermining their career prospects, they may choose to vote with their feet and boycott brands who automate too ruthlessly.
Last year, when I first drafted this article, I asked ChatGPT if it was a threat to copywriters. This year, I asked it if the threat was greater in 2025 than in 2024. Here’s what it had to say in both cases. I’m not sure whether to be pleased or dispirited that its responses in both cases broadly reflect my own views! I can assure you at least that I completed the draft of this blog before I asked AI: what I’ve written comes from my human heart as a copywriter! I’m fairly happy to follow the advice that ChatGPT kindly dispensed: “The best move [for copywriters] is to treat AI as a tool to amplify your skills, not as just a threat.”
Photo credit: Bradley Hook via Pexels