My stance on AI
On my website I have made it clear that I won't be using AI to generate any copy that I write. I thought it was worth explaining my perspective so that you can understand the reasons for my objection. I believe it's important to do this rather than complaining about AI like an old man yelling at a cloud.
So without further AI-do (HAHAHA! Do you really think AI could write a sentence LIKE THAT?), here's why I don't use AI.
- Because it's not unique. Nothing generated by AI will ever be truly original. The whole point of copywriting is to make your business unique and set it apart from the crowd. But once you ask AI to generate some copy, you lose that competitive advantage. Your blog/article/website will suddenly sound bland, generic and full of the telltale signs of AI: familiar sentence constructions, overuse of certain words, overuse of certain types of punctuation. And that's never going to attract new readers, sell more products or drive more subscribers.
- Because it would produce more AI slop. A recent report estimated that over 40% of the content on LinkedIn is AI-generated. The authors of the report reckon that figure could be at the lower end. Using AI to generate your copy is only going to generate more worthless AI slop that nobody reads apart from AI bots (who then feed it back into their algorithms). We don't need more slop.
- Because it's not as good as my copy. Look, if I thought AI could write better than me then I wouldn't (and shouldn't) be doing this. But I don't, so I don't see why I would use a tool to generate text that is worse than my own.
- Because you quickly start to rely on it. Once you start relying on AI tools to do your work, you become less creative, less productive and less intelligent. You start to rely on AI rather than coming up with your own original ideas, sentences or text structures. I think that's a dangerous slope to start sliding down.
- Because anyone can use AI. If somebody is paying me to write copy for them, using AI to generate would almost be offensive. You're being paid to write copy that's better than the client could produce. If you're just using AI to generate it, why wouldn't the client do the same? Why should you be paid for that?
- Because the technology isn't good enough yet. But maybe the biggest reason why I don't use AI is because it just isn't good enough yet. I don't think it can generate text that's any better than I can write. It still makes mistakes. It still sounds unnatural. So why on earth would I use it in my text? Maybe some day it'll be churning out text that could win the Booker Prize. Until then, I'm not bothering with it.
So, my stance on AI
- I will never use AI to generate any text that goes in the final version.
- I will never use AI to ideate, brainstorm or sketch out structures.
- I will never use AI to fact-check my own work or that of others.
Will I ever use AI for anything? To be honest, it's very unlikely. I use it in a personal capacity, but at the moment it's simply not good enough to use for my work. It makes too many errors, is far too unreliable and the copy it generates is completely lifeless.
Maybe that will change at some point. Until then, I won't be using AI to generate any of my copy.
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