Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe?
Artificial intelligence, better known as AI, has become a hot topic of conversation among global digital marketers. It’s encompassing the world around us in more practical ways than we might think. From self-driving cars to virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri or Amazon Alexa, artificial intelligence is establishing itself as the “helping hand” for everyday life.
For our intents and purposes, however, AI is also something to consider in the social media space. It’s arguably a time-saving resource, but can AI completely replace copywriters? In theory, yes. It can put just about any writer out of a job, because, at its core, generative AI technically has the ability to produce written content—and to do so at lightning speed. Businesses could even save thousands of dollars by taking their writers off the payroll and replacing them with ChatGPT. It’s a scary thought, and also an enticing one when you need to crank out reams of copy…
To Use or Not to Use AI
Henry Williams of The Guardian reported on his experiences with ChatGPT, a popular and free-to-use chatbot. “The result was impressive,” he says. “Sure, the tone was inhuman and the structure as sophisticated as a college essay, but the key points, the grammar and the syntax were all spot on.” So, what was missing? It all boils down to that human touch: that chiefly human ability to write copy that sounds, well, human. For some, it may take trial and error to establish an eagle’s eye for AI-generated writing, but it’s fairly intuitive. Like AI-generated images, you just know when something’s not right.
We recommend using AI selectively. Leave the high-stake projects that require more brain power to your living, breathing wordsmiths, and the smaller, quick-turnaround ones to artificial intelligence (of course, having said wordsmiths read through everything first). Don’t forget that it will take a bit of recasting to fine-tune whatever your generative AI tool produces—making it not 100% ready for you to hit Publish.
A major downfall to AI is the lack of quality over quantity, but there are some benefits. It can present an untapped opportunity to easily overcome writer’s block; generative AI is a great jumping-off point for when you keep drawing blanks, helping you craft that well-written email blast or social post in no time.
MeyCo tip: Don’t use AI-generated content word for word. It can certainly supplement your creative juices, but you still want to maintain that authentic, human tone to your brand. And fact-checking is still a must, especially when talking about medical aesthetic treatments and devices!
Our in-house copywriters know all too well the struggle of coming up with fresh, new content for brands and products that they know like the back of their hand. It’s easy enough to regurgitate information and pain points to get the job done, but AI can help you discover new ways to spice things up and put a new spin on your typical copywriting style.
We spoke to MeyCo Marketing copywriter Rebecca Gallegos and asked for her experiences with using AI for our client marketing. It’s important to note that this isn’t an age-old tool like the dictionary. She, along with our entire copywriting department, is still working on “perfecting the process” of using AI to her advantage… if it even can be.
Rebecca does need to do a little back and forth with the ChatGPT chatbot in order to get the exact verbiage she’s looking for. Her approach is to “have a general outline or theme along with key points to put into the AI.” She tells us that “putting in as much information as possible has given me better results, but it doesn’t always work the way I want it to.” Even with hints (Don’t use too many emojis, keep it to 300 words) Rebecca says that “there are definitely times where I do all this and it still doesn’t give me anything I can use.”
When copywriting for niche subjects like medical aesthetics, AI will most likely have more trouble producing quality content that still falls under any FDA or brand guidelines. It does offer some help to get started, and useful copy here and there, but humans are here to stay. And like Rebecca claims, “AI is still definitely a work in progress.”
So use it selectively, and wisely.
