A.C.E

It’s a question that has been rattling around the internet ever since November 2022. Can an AI writing tool replace a copywriter?

And if so, should it?

Well, as a full-time freelance copywriter myself and someone who has experience reviewing over 300 AI copywriting tools, I felt it was important to share my expertise on this subject.

So fasten in, because the answer is far from black and white.

Short on time? Here are the key takeaways

• AI writing tools, when used correctly, can enhance copywriting by automating repetitive tasks, speeding up content creation, and aiding in overcoming writer’s block.
• While AI tools excel in efficiency and can generate a substantial volume of content, they struggle with maintaining consistency in quality, managing complex technical topics, and capturing unique brand voices.
• Human copywriters remain irreplaceable for strategic content planning, culturally sensitive communication, and crafting engaging long-form content… for now.

How I Conducted This Research

But before we dive in, I just wanted to give you a little background into how I conducted research for this article. In a world where transparency can be a little murky, I think it’s important to highlight where this information has come from.

If you’re a consistent reader of this blog, you can ignore this bit!

After spending over a decade in marketing, including three years as a full-time copywriter, and having written detailed reviews on over 300 AI writing tools, I felt it was necessary to use that in-depth, unique research to discuss what they can – and can’t – do.

It can be tempting to take one side or the other when it comes to AI content, either wanting to replace every writer with it or pretending it doesn’t exist, but I personally believe that there is a sweet spot in the middle, which I will discuss here.

All of the information here comes from 100% first-hand experience, and the tools referenced here are from my own use and not other people’s opinions.

The Rise of AI Copywriting Tools

AI copywriting tools are a relatively new concept, and yet it feels like they have been around for many years already.

Howevr, due to the infancy of the industry in the general public, many businesses have clamoured to try and become the go-to AI content generation platform, with many focusing on specific USP’s such as AI for SEO, email marketing, or social media posts.

Ultimately, though, they are all using a variation of the same Open AI source code, which is why you often find that they create very similar content despite amends in your prompts.

Popular AI Writing Tools

When it comes to selecting the most popular AI writing tools, there are a couple of categories to consider. After all, there are generic AI writing tools such as ChatGPT, but then there are tools that focus on specific niches, even some that focus on fiction writing or grant applications, not to mention AI content detectors.

From my experience, while there is certainly some benefit to the templates on offer in some paid AI writing platforms, you can often get most of what you need from a free tool such as ChatGPT, Claude AI, or Google Bard.

The templates on offer at AI writing tools don’t tend to change much more than a detailed prompt in one of these tools would, but for those who are less experienced or confident in their AI prompting, they can be beneficial.

I am also a huge advocate of Originality.ai, namely because it is by far the most accurate AI content detection software available. Seriously, it is light years ahead of some of the competition, such as GPTZero or Content-At-Scale.

And, as I will touch on later in this article, there are certainly times when AI content can come in handy. So, having a tool like Originality.ai that ensures your content is not flagged as too heavily influenced is a great way to stop you from leaning on the resource too heavily.

Advantages of AI Writing Tools for Copywriters

With all in mind, let’s start by taking a look at some of the benefits that AI writing tools can bring to copywriters in their current state. As mentioned, I believe that a sweet spot can be found whereby copywriters can leverage these tools without replacing their skills with an AI writing program.

Speed and efficiency

When it comes to producing results fast, AI writing tools work at lightening speed. Evidently, natural language processing can happen in a matter of seconds, whereas writing copy takes a little longer.

That makes AI writing tools excellent for laying the foundations of any content that needs to be created for your target audience. While you shouldn’t be using it for writing product descriptions as they won’t resonate with your target audience, but they can greatly speed up your competitor and keyword research, as well as crafting handy outlines.

Overcoming writer’s block

There are days where writing feels like second nature. Where your fingers just won’t stop tapping on your keyboard, pulling parralells from nowhere, adding synonyms you didn’t know you had in your locker, and crafting great content like there’s no tomorrow.

And then there are other days where you stare at a blank page, without a clue how to get started.

That’s where AI-powered copywriting tools can help. No, not to replace your writing, but instead to help you get the ball rolling and ensure you aren’t wasting too much time.

Automating repetitive tasks

Crawling through search engines for keywords to write about and content outlines to mirror for search engine optimisation can be incredibly monotonous.

After all, many copywrtiters got into the business because of the creativity involved, so if there’s a tool that can do some of the automated heavy lifting for us, we should take advantage!

Tools like SurferSEO are excellent for pulling all the keywords you need to add to an article, how many headers there should be, and many other factors that take a ton of time to collate manually.

Limitations of AI Writing Tools

Now, if you’re reading all that and thinking, ‘holy fiddlesticks, copywriting is dead’, then you clearly ignored the rest of the article to this point, but your views are understandable.

Whether you’re a worried copywriter, reading this article while clasping your quill and ink blotter as your life depended on it, or a small business owner desperate to cut costs in a cost-of-living crisis, it’s important to also consider the many limitations that AI writing tools have in their current state.

Lack of creativity and emotion

Now, as we have mentioned, generating written content with AI software is significantly quicker than the work of a human copywriter.

But that certainly doesn’t mean it is better.

Imagine every brand in your industry suddenly generated all the content they created. For starters, all of the content would sound exactly the same, with long, bland, uninspired paragraphs.

Secondly, AI tools can only write from what is already online. After all, they get all of their information from web pages that are already live, and are currently unable to form their own opinions or take the conversations forward.

That means anything you do create will lack any unique perspective, which will greatly frustrate your audience and harm your chances of ranking highly on search engines (more on that later).

Inaccurate information

It’s well-documented that AI tools have a tendency to produce inaccurate information. It isn’t so much that they provide incorrect answers; it’s more that citations tend to be made up out of thin air, which can quickly damage your brand’s reputation if your audience were ever to notice.

Difficulty capturing your brand voice

As I have already touched on, when you generate content, it can be tricky to ensure it is written in your brand’s tone of voice. Sure, there are tools you can use and prompts you can tweak to get the output a little closer, but currently, none of the 300+ tools I have reviewed have been able to generate content that matches that of a well-crafted brand.

If I’m honest, if you are able to seamlessly integrate 100% AI-written content into your brand and website, it says more about the lack of brand voice you have than it does about the quality of the artificial intelligence program you used.

As mentioned, AI pulls its information from what is already out there, so it understandably often provides content that is safe, bland, and uninspired.

Limited SEO impact

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for many brands, fully AI generated content often has limited impact when it comes to search engine optimization.

Back in November 2023, Google brought out a brand new algorithm update, essentially changing it’s E-E-A-T rules to allow AI content.

For those who briefly scanned the changes, they read this as the green light to go ahead and get rid of all their writers and start generating content en masse.

I myself suffered the loss of two clients for this very reason last year!

But for the more astute out there, they also noticed some other essential changes to the E-E-A-T rules. Google is now putting more emphasis on content that adds value than ever before.

And one thing that fully AI generated content doesn’t do is provide value, because it is unable to take the conversation forward, it can only pull from what has already been said.

You have to rememeber that Google has an obligation to it’s users to provide them with the best possible user-experience (albiet it has been getting worse).

Therefore, knowing that they couldn’t stop AI content from flooding the internet, they made a major update in an attempt to bring human-written content to the top of the rankings and promote high-quality content.

Google can detect AI content, and any “search engine marketing expert” that tells you they can use AI-generated content to get to the top of Google is telling porkies.

Not to mention the potential issues that can arise if AI starts learning from AI!

Oh, and those two clients who went down that route early last year? Let’s just say we are back working together!

Copywriters and AI Tools Working in Harmony?

But let’s go back to my statement from earlier in this article. Instead of only focusing on AI as a replacer or something that should be completely ignored, what if it was seen as a tool for a copywriter’s arsenal?

instead of being afraid of using AI or tarnishing your relationship with your audience by replacing human writers with it, why not get the best bits without the bad bits?

Collaboration

When you stop looking at AI writing platforms as tools to write copy and instead look at them as sounding boards and brainstorming assistants, suddenly, the potential of these tools grows significantly, and they can help take your content marketing to the next level.

AI writing tools like ChatGPT are brilliant for coming up with articles to write about, approaches for social media strategies, and so much more.

Let’s work through an example.

Let’s say I am keen to start a new eCommerce business focusing on sustainably made beanies. The focus is on the local market in Edinburgh, Scotland, but I am struggling to come up with a good name for it.

Let’s do some brainstorming with ChatGPT using this prompt:

“Hello, robot overlord! I am interested in creating a new business focusing on sustainably made beanies. The focus is on the local market in Edinburgh, Scotland, but I am struggling to come up with a good name for it. Can you please give me ten business name ideas that would suit an 18-34-year-old demographic in that area, and that is no longer than three words?”

Is the robot overlord comment necessary? Probably not, but it’s always nice to have some credit in the bank.

Here’s what I got back:

A couple of stinkers in there, but also a few interesting ones. Let’s narrow it down a bit.

“Thanks! Could you give me five more that replicate the style of #2 and #4?”

And just like that, HighlandHats is born. A quick check regarding the domain…

We’re in business!

From here, you can continue to use tools like ChatGPT, Ahrefs, SurferSEO, and more to unearth topics to discuss in your company blog, understand your target market in more detail, and create the perfect content marketing strategy.

Essentially, you can use these machine-learning tools to do a lot of the legwork for you, giving you the time and space to craft excellent copy for your content strategy.

Skill development

Not only are AI writing tools great for collaboration, but they’re also excellent for upskilling yourself in everything and anything, even AI itself! (Let’s make ‘aiception’ a thing).

For example, I actually learned the basics of indexing this website through ChatGPT. I originally tried to do this via YouTube videos and articles, but I often got lost in the jargon! Writing comes naturally to me, but the technical side of SEO and the SEO tools involved in that side of things often confuse me at first!

So, instead, I took to ChatGPT with this simple prompt:

“Please explain in simple, basic terms how to get your website indexed on Google. Ideally, please provide a detailed step-by-step guide.

Instantly, I had a step-by-step guide that I could use to index the A.C.E website and ensure more people were able to access the content I had written.

You can even use this tool to help you learn more about how to become a better copywriter, although I found that advice to be a little bland and generic.

Leveraging AI for research and analytics

Finally, AI tools can be excellent for research and analytics. Tools like ChaGPT scrape the top pages on every subject (legally or illegally, I’ll let you decide!), so it’s understandable that it is, therefore, a foundation of wealth on many subjects.

While it certainly isn’t where I would be getting my statistics from, it can be a great way to learn more about a subject, allowing you to use that information to go gather more reliable sources.

So, Can AI Replace Copywriters, and If So, Should It?

With all that said, can an AI writing tool replace a copywriter?

Well, in broader terms, no, not just yet.

But when it comes to the more basic writing tasks or elements of the writing process, then AI writing tools can certainly bring plenty of benefits.

However, it would be naive to think that this will be the case forever, and it makes sense to believe that as artificial intelligence programs continue to grow and get better, so too will the AI content generators.

That is why it is so important to continue reading content like this and becoming an AI expert to prepare yourself for the future.

Will they ever get to a point where copywriting services are no longer required?

That is yet to be seen.

Should they ever be allowed to replace the written word?

That is a question for another day.

Have You Got a Minute?

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I hope you enjoyed this article! If you liked it and can afford to buy me a coffee, that would go a long way to allowing me to continue creating more high-value articles like this!

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Frequently Asked Questions About AI Copywriting Tools

Can copywriters be replaced by AI?

For the most part, copywriters are still necessary for creating content that properly resonates with your audience and provides value, which is crucial for SEO rankings. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used as part of the writing process.

Why should I not use AI for copywriting?

AI-generated content can certainly be used as part of the content creation process, but if you just use an AI content generator and publish work without any human creativity, your audience (and the SEO Gods) will quickly start ignoring your content as it lacks unique insights and value.

Will AI writing tools replace human writers?

The honest answer (and this is coming from a full-time copywriter), is who knows? For now, a human writer offers unique skills that artificial intelligence cannot replicate, but if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the future is certainly unknown.

What are the advantages of AI writing tools for copywriters?

For content writers, AI’s ability to help brainstorm content for social media posts and other forms of content can save a significant amount of time. And while artificial intelligence isn’t ready to replace human copywriters just yet, it is ready to help along the way.