Why AI Content Can’t Compete with a Human Copywriter (Especially When It Comes To Branding)

Sep 22

Artificial intelligence versus human copywriter

While the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) has been touted for some time, AI arguably went mainstream this year thanks to ChatGPT. According to USB, the generative AI app boasts the fastest growing user base in history. AI, writ large, refers to algorithms that don’t merely complete particular tasks, but modify how they do so as new data comes in. Generative AI, meanwhile, is a subset in which the task at-hand (as the name suggests) is to generate content.

That may sound simple, but it’s not. The large language models that power generative AI require huge amounts of data and computing power. No wonder so many people have been eager to reap the benefits. One-third of students say they’ve used ChatGPT for their homework, more than half of business leaders have used it for content marketing, while others have generated everything from news stories to real estate descriptions using AI.

And yet, despite the promise of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, there are many ways in which they can’t compete with human copywriters. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the promises and pitfalls of AI-generated content.

What are the pros and cons of using AI?

The core appeal of ChatGPT lies in cost and time savings. Instead of having to pay a copywriter for hours of research and drafting, ChatGPT creates content almost instantly—and for free. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Harvard Business Review notes the time-saving potential of generative AI, while acknowledging that “creative prompts yield creative outputs.” But that means humans are still a key part of the process, even when generative AI is used. Additionally, many other reviews of AI-generated text point out its shortcomings.

The aforementioned news stories generated by AI required substantial corrections—some as the result of factual errors and others due to plagiarization. A recent CNN presentation, meanwhile, also highlighted inaccuracies in AI-generated text, in addition to the tendency for AI to produce repetitive and generic writing. New tools can identify whether text was written by AI, while research suggests people can also be trained to recognize AI-generated text.

Copywriting with a human touch

Content marketing may seem like a prime use case for generative AI, but in reality, AI may undermine its very mission. The point of content marketing is to tell a compelling story about your brand—a story that customers can connect with so as to build both trust and loyalty. Imagine you felt a connection with someone only to find you had really been talking to a bot. That breach of trust would be difficult to come back from. As more people learn to suss out AI-generated text, there’s a risk that relying on generative AI could hurt your brand.

Additionally, while machines are able to synthesize tremendous amounts of data, there’s a lot they don’t know: your target audience, your competitors, your brand ethos, your brand personality, how your brand messaging works in tandem with visuals, your vision for the future, and so on. These are the things that truly set your brand apart—and things that human copywriters are better-equipped to bring to the forefront.

As brand strategists, we do more than simple content creation. Instead, we devote extensive time to understanding your brand’s customers, competitors, unique core strengths, and overall narrative. This is a multi-step process involving research, questionnaires, interviews, and conversations. Without all this legwork, it would be very difficult to tell a compelling story about a brand, much less ensure coherence across all copy we write.

How to effectively use AI for copywriting

The bottom line is that relying on generative AI for content marketing may seem easy and cheap, but it’s actually a risky bet. When it comes to customer-facing copy, there’s no substitute for a human that can understand the entire customer journey and tell a smooth, compelling, heartfelt story. While AI can ingest large amounts of data, it can’t spin that data into a narrative as well as an actual person. Plus, it doesn’t understand your long-term goals or vision.

That doesn’t mean there’s no place for tools like ChatGPT in the content marketing world, though. AI can be used quite effectively for creative brainstorming and short-form copy like page descriptions and Google ads. Generative AI is definitely worth playing around with and can be a particularly useful tool for research related to your brand. But it’s presumptuous and misguided to assume generative AI can or should replace human copywriters.

Good writing and compelling narratives have an intangible quality that comes from human emotion and understanding. To connect with customers and build long-term loyalty, working with an actual copywriter who can themselves connect with your brand is key. Generative AI is an exciting new tool, but it should work in tandem with brand strategists and copywriters, as opposed to replacing them.