One of the things I love about media and marketing is that there’s always something changing. Whether it’s how we use platforms, the channels our audiences like most or trends in advertising, you can’t afford to get too comfortable. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt relatively comfortable in my career as a writer for a media agency — something always needs to be written, after all.

But what if there was something programmatic that could do that for you?

Aside from Grammarly — and yes, writers do use it — there hasn’t always been much in the way of software for copywriters. With the advent of artificial intelligence copywriting software, that’s starting to change.

I know, I know: asking the employed copywriter to discuss AI copywriting sounds a little unfair, but if you’re worried that this is just another hit job on AI writing, you can breathe easy. I’m interested in its capabilities, and recognise that it provides some help.

But that’s just it: some.

What can an AI copywriting tool really accomplish for your business? Hand on heart, I promise to be as unbiased as possible as we go through our AI copywriting review.

What is AI copywriting?

AI copywriting is computer-generated writing that is generated from a given set of information. These AI writing programs use language processing tools and data from an extensive set of web pages to identify patterns and replicate how humans naturally write as closely as possible. Most of the time, all you need to do is plug in a topic and a description and the machine will generate multiple pieces of writing in response. Many are so bold as to describe these AI tools as ‘unlimited copywriting’.

Depending on the tool you use, AI copywriting software can generate short pieces of text, like social media captions and meta titles, through to longer blog articles and product descriptions. Some may even allow you to customise the target audience and tone.

It’s all pretty incredible in terms of innovation. Wait… am I sweating?

Jokes aside, while there are some pretty unique positives, there are still things that AI isn’t suited to. But let’s start with the good stuff.

The benefits

Above all things, AI for copywriting is essentially a time-saving service, freeing you up to devote your attention somewhere else. Writing and editing is a long process, particularly when you’re doing it from the perspective of selling or generating brand credibility. Every word needs to be carefully selected, fitting with your tone, enticing the audience and creating some kind of result. Copywriting tools not only give you time, but free you up to embrace your creative energy in any more important direction.

AI powered copywriting draws on programmed linguistic knowledge and extensive online data to throw a lot of content at you. If you brief the tool with enough detail, it will produce in the right voice for you or your client’s brand, as well as where it will be posted.

Using an AI writing generator can save you time and creative energy by functioning as your bio generator, sentence rewriter, or hook creator.

For brands that are short on time, AI represents the opportunity to still have accurate, readable content without sacrificing time on other important tasks.

The risks

But… it’s not a perfect tactic. Firstly, given that AI writing is computer-generated, you can pretty much guarantee that anything produced already exists somewhere else in some way.

AI copywriting? More like ‘AI copies writing’, haha.

This isn’t to say that human writers don’t also draw from other pieces of writing — of course we do. But we do it by observing, by recognising great writing when we see it. And any copywriter worth their salt is committed, above almost all things, to being original.

This commitment also represents the biggest risk you run when you rely on AI writing: AI lacks the emotionality and creativity of human writing. AI copywriting tools are clear and functional, but without the creative flair of a passionate writer, AI produced writing often reads pretty stilted and overly formal. By drawing just on data, AI can’t quite create with the nuance that a human writer can, which might then lead to grammatical errors and difficult text.

Hah, take that!

Proponents of AI writing will also point to its ability to save you time with research, but the best results are achieved when you provide detailed briefs. How do you get the information for a detailed brief? You guessed it: by doing the research. And once the research is done, you’re just handing off the actual fun part — the writing.

For small businesses in particular, the humanity of your voice is what makes your prospective customers and partners think that you’re worth stopping for. We believe that marketing works best when it promotes communication between brand and audience. AI writing doesn’t really follow this — it’s built to meet your prompt. It doesn’t understand your audience the way you do, and doesn’t have a native grasp on the intricacies of speech and communication.

Is there any way to use it?

Despite many efforts to discredit AI writing software completely, it would be foolish to think that it has no use. But it would be equally foolish to rely completely on it and ignore the many benefits of having human writers. To all the execs and directors out there — especially mine — don’t start showing your writers the door, because AI won’t be able to replicate everything they do.

(And if it can, that probably just means you need better writers. Sorry.)

At its best, AI writing assistants are a supplement to your existing writing activities and team. They can be used to help generate ideas and to jumpstart your creative flow with basic ideas and prompts. If you want to use AI to create written works that will actually be published somewhere, try and limit its reach to the pieces that have low human interaction — email subject lines, meta titles and descriptions, and other highly repetitive pieces.

If your writing needs to be closely read though, or is tied directly to your products and services, it’s worth putting in the effort to do it with that human touch. Words that are devoid of emotion might provide information, but they don’t tell stories, and they don’t persuade your audience.

With so many free AI copywriting tools out there (at least to begin), it might be worth having a try. But anything that is produced by AI still needs your touch. The more you can personalise and imbue your brand’s unique voice in your writing, the better it will be when published. Blake Emal, CMO of CopyAI, notes that once you’ve used the tool “it’s expected that you should modify.”

If you don’t take that time, your readers will pick out any artificial sentence easily, and your reputation will suffer for it.

The final word, and who gets to write it.

If you’re at all like me, you’re pretty particular with your writing, and something about using an AI writing tool feels like… cheating. But once upon a time, writers probably felt like using a laptop was cheating. Or a typewriter before that, or an ink pen — all things that have gone on to become a powerful copywriter tool. It goes on and on.

Let’s face it: the world is constantly changing, and in the marketing game, that means there will only be more digital tools for copywriters. But that doesn’t mean AI takes the cake. It’s like a fresh pair of basketball shoes — they might give you a small edge, but you still need the skills to pay the bills. An AI writing assistant might lend a hand in generating small ideas and saving some time, but you still have to commit to the research and re-writing so that everything is at its best.

Sheer data might belong to our computer-generated friends, but the art of writing still belongs to us.