The AI revolution has not gone unnoticed in the writing world. As a part-time copywriter, my colleagues have been occupied with all news surrounding AI since the first release of ChatGPT. One of the biggest concerns some writers have is if AI is capable of replacing copywriters.
A good copywriter writes texts that adjust to right tone of voice, branding, and format requirements of an organization to uplift their marketing. I recently came across a LinkedIn post where the creator claimed AI was capable of writing social copy coherent with a brand’s tone of voice and indistinguishable to human copywriters. The post was about an Instagram ad of Coolblue. Now, if you are aware of Coolblue’s brand, you will know that they are an authentic Dutch company that is transparent with a witty sense of humor throughout all their marketing and customer services.
Can you guess which copy below for the barbecue was written by a copywriter and which one was created by AI? (English translation with an attempt to leave the word jokes in below).
Note: take a moment to decide before scrolling further.
Top: Order today, tomorrow a “burg”eois party #turnon #boneparty
Bottom: egg-tually indispensable for BBQ heroes. #eggceptional #grillgreen
Congrats if you guessed the bottom copy was created by AI! You were able to differentiate the robot from the human. In my opinion however, it really could have gone either way. Both copies are short, action-driven and include clever wordplay that fits the brand.
So how was this creator able to alter the prompt in ChatGPT to fit Coolblue’s tone of voice?
- Give a few examples to chatGPT and mention it needs to write in this tone of voice
- Write a prompt that describes the needs for the copy.
- Give input for the format you need to create.
Based on my experience as a copywriter, there are also more and more organizations that are creating a custom AI-tool built on OpenAI’s source to quickly create copy and keywords that fits their brand. In this process, copywriters and data scientists are often onboarded to make this tool successful and data secured. Do these tools eliminate the copywriter in the organization? Absolutely not. It actually helps copywriters to focus more on the creative processes in their work instead of doing repetitive keyword checks (e.g., for SEO) that is considered a boring part of their work. AI works as an assistant to organizations and can take over some of the tasks, but there is definitely still room for human writers in the workplace.
