AI isn't coming for your creative words
I’ve seen loads of big copywriters slagging off AI. “It’s shit, it sucks, it can’t be truly creative – fuck AI!”
And sure, there’s some truth in that. Right now, ChatGPT (probably) isn’t going to conjure up those amazing one-liners that stick in society’s collective memory for generations. But in all likelihood – and let’s be honest here – neither are you.
The vast majority of what the most writers I know do, isn’t about crafting that perfect headline. It’s web pages, blogs, product descriptions, email newsletters, “we’re excited to announce” posts, microcopy, so-called ‘marketing collateral’ and the ever-present ever-dull press releases.
Clients want words. They want all the words all the time. They want to fire those words into as many eyeholes as they can. And it’s our job to write those words. Now, look, I try to make all of those words good. I try to make ‘em real good and I always fight the good fight. But there’s only so much creativity you can eek on command to be put through mangle of committee approval. When the clients want vanilla, sometimes you just have to give ‘em vanilla.
🔍 Related: My client suggested using an AI writer bot
The result is usually ‘words that’ll do’. Words that get the job done. Lots of clients want just that: jobs done, boxes ticked, KPIs met.
You know what’s great at words that’ll do? AI. Give it some decent prompts, a bit of a style guide and loads of context and I’d say it’s actually pretty decent. Yeah, it needs a copyedit, a little sprinkle of personality, but it’ll bloody well do.
I think a lot of the raging against AI’s supposed threat to creativity, is really raging against an idealised version of what we do. We see ourselves as Creatives, not the creators of words that’ll do. So there’s a need to elevate the perception of what we do to something untouchable by AI, because the stark reality that much of our day-to-day work could absolutely be done by a robot, is depressing as fuck. It’s scary. It’s threatening.
By shouting at AI, calling it out for being shit and unimaginative, we protect ourselves and what we do for work. We need people to come and worship at the Shrine of Creativity because the mysticism and magic around ‘being creative’ is actually what keeps most of us employed.
“Work your magic”, “Do your thing” and “Can you just make it pop?” are only flung our way because people see the creativity we possess as something inaccessible to them. And yes, from time to time we absolutely get the chance to be truly creative, but for a lot of copywriters, the bulk of what we do isn’t that. Instead we write words that’ll do.
But we keep that bit quiet.
And by shitting on AI, undermining its value and enshrining our creativity, we make damn sure the gulf between what people think we do and what we actually do, is sufficiently wide.
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