Who’s opinion should you listen to?
Always a tough question. Right now there are plenty of conflicting views when it comes to the future impact of AI on the careers of writers and copywriters.
At one extreme, there are those who claim AI is just hype, a passing fad, and that it will never replace human writers.
At the other extreme, some copywriters are worried their jobs will be completely obliterated by AI within the next few years.
The truth, as it almost always the case, lies somewhere in between.
And it isn’t just writers who are feeling uncertain right now. Client companies are going through the same discussions and struggles internally. Should they welcome AI or fear it? Should they let some writers go, or not?
In my mind, there’s no question that AI will drive some huge changes for us all.
In the words of Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn:
“The future is stranger and sooner than you think.”
He said this during a Commencement Speech he gave at Bologna Business School. The topic of his talk? AI.
But he didn’t say it against a backdrop of doom and gloom. While aware of the harm that can come with AI, his focus was on how we can harness this technology for the betterment of us all.
What steps should you take to protect your own future?
Writers, copywriters, artists, and photographers find themselves at the forefront of this debate.
ChatGPT is all about writing, and tools like Midjourney are disrupting the lives of artists everywhere.
I can’t speak for artists, but for writers I can see a way forward.
AI tools are extraordinarily powerful. I use GPT-4 almost every day for brainstorming, research and project outlines. Even for first drafts, sometimes.
I don’t shy away from AI. I’m trying to embrace it, and use it to my advantage.
At the same time, I’m not blind to the fact that as the technology improves, it has the potential to mess with my own career and income.
So… I also focus on the one area where AI is weak… emotion.
Tools like ChatGPT can read about humans feeling emotions, but they can’t feel them first-hand.
This is a huge differentiating factor. It’s the one area where humans are super-strong, and AI is incredibly weak.
Futureproof your career as a writer by weaving Emotional Intelligence into your copy.
Step one is simply to infuse your writing with more emotion. Copywriters have been doing this for decades. We know that our prospects respond well to emotion.
Step two is to formalize that process by applying the principles of Emotional Intelligence to your copy.
When you take that second step, you are creating copy that is beyond what AI can achieve. You’re differentiating yourself. You’re separating yourself from the crowd. And you’re giving your clients and prospects a solid reason to choose you over AI.
This is the thrust and promise of my new course, Futureproof Copywriting.
It will give you the skills to protect and grow your income for years to come.
You can find out more about the Futureproof Copywriting course here…
Nick:
All good points. But as we converse, the marriage of super-computing with AI is already planning for its future progeny: emotional intelligence.
Still in its infancy, EI has yet to become convincing. But all information programmed into machines is human-based, and supercomputing is getting better every day. I honestly don’t believe it will be much longer before the rudiments of human emotion will be incorporated into chatbots.
For the time being, it is my opinion that copywriters are relatively safe. However, I am convinced that those writers who don’t become well-versed in the uses and applications of AI will shortly become obsolete. I have taken a number of in-depth courses on AI prompt engineering (the effective use of words to command the best results from chatbots). Ultimately, I think that there may be a far more lucrative career in acting as an AI Prompt Engineer for marketing companies than doing stand-alone writing.
Only time will tell. But one thing is absolutely certain: marketing has changed irrevocably. And if writers don’t change with it, they may well become obsolete.
All my best,
Tom, I agree with you. With the right prompts, GPT-4 can already mimic human emotions to a certain degree. For some copywriting tasks, that is enough. But I think it will be some time, if ever, before these tools can really grasp the nuances of human emotion, for the simple reason they can’t feel emotion first-hand. They can’t smile or cry, suffer or fall in love. It’s within those nuances that we can protect our futures as human writers and copywriters.