Death sentence or new chapter?

In the world of content creation, there’s a battle royale going on about the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) content generators versus human copywriters.

In the blue corner, proponents of AI like Surfer, Jasper, Rytr, Writesonic and GetGenie all extol its ability to craft content quickly, cheaply and with fewer errors. In the red corner, human copywriters argue that AI lacks creativity, nuance, and the ability to write with style and to forge an emotional connection.

ROUND ONE. LET’S HEAR THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE ADVANTAGES OF HUMAN WRITERS

Consummately Creative 
Copy written by living breathing copywriters is a cocktail of a million things that you just can’t bottle or build into an algorithm (yet!).   What’s more, AI can’t (yet) be trusted to reliably write about more complex, nuanced issues like culture, ethics.

Emotionally Connected
While AI copy is generally grammatically correct and well-constructed, it somehow lacks a genuine emotional connection. Human writers have the ability to empathise with their target audience, instinctively understanding which emotional triggers to employ.

Pitch Perfect
Human writers have the ability to adapt their tone and style to suit an audience or subject matter, but AI content tends to be functional, straight and often a tad too formulaic.

SO THAT’S 3-0 TO THE HUMANS. ON TO ROUND 2. WHERE MIGHT THE ADVANTAGES LIE FOR AI?  

Save Time & Money 
It takes time and money to hire and train good copywriters and content writers. AI-written content can be created at the drop of the hat, at a fraction of the cost.

Tackle Complex Topics Simply
AI can almost instantly produce copy about relatively complex topics that it would take considerable time to explain to a human writer.

Churn Out Consistent Copy
AI copywriting is generally reliably consistent in tone, style, punctuation, spelling and capitalisation. Human writers naturally approach different topics in different ways depending on things like their mood, the quality of the brief or level of knowledge.

Ever So SEO-Friendly
AI copy is SEO-friendly from day one. But human writers may not be SEO trained, or fully up to speed on SEO best practice.

Totally Translation-Friendly
If you need to create copy in a variety of different languages AI copy generating tools can do this much more quickly and simply and by avoiding localised terms and phrases is handily translation-ready.

A Handy Tool, Not An Existential Threat 
Clearly, few would argue with the idea that the very best in copywriting and content is still being created by humans. Nevertheless, we believe AI content creation tools have a role to play.

The need to constantly create fresh content can be repetitive and labour intensive for writing teams. AI content generators can help to speed up the output of straightforward descriptions, instructions, terms and conditions and even certain types of email.

It’s also a shortcut to help avoid writer’s block and hit the ground running. Better still, most of the tools provide SEO optimisation hints to help you improve your writing.

And yes, this article was partly written by AI. And then a real copywriter brought it to life. Can you see the join?