Ah, one of the biggest content marketing questions for the past couple of years. It’s only being asked more and more as we move further into the age of AI excitement, and for those who aren’t marketing professionals, it’s a pretty tempting query.
It’s become a bit of a spectacle fight: copywriter vs AI. A copywriter’s innate creativity? Uppercut. AI’s unrivalled speed? Right hook. A copywriter’s emotional intelligence? Jab and cross. The long list of punches thrown by both sides goes on, making it difficult for some to choose which is the better side to back for their copy, blog posts, and other written content.
Fortunately, you’ve got us to help! We’re not going to be biased and ignore AI’s benefits in this article. Instead, we’ll look at both sides fairly, so you can make your own decision.
The pros of using AI for copywriting
Let’s have a look at AI copywriting benefits.
Speed
The biggest boon of AI copywriting tools is their speed. AI can cook up website copy in under a minute, and a long blog post in even less, making it incredibly efficient in terms of time. This speed also means it can produce multiple versions of the same piece for audience testing in no time at all.
Cost-effective
AI is cheap! Sometimes, it’s even free. A salaried copywriter or freelancer costs a lot more than an affordable monthly subscription tool or a free large language model, putting AI tools pretty high on the list of those looking for cost-effectiveness over quality.
The cons of using AI
What could go wrong when using AI for copywriting?
Generic
Once you’ve read a couple of AI blog posts on a certain topic, you’ve read them all. AI can only use what it can find, which typically means rewriting existing content and data. While each post may be different, you’ll find a thread that ties them all together in a way that feels repetitive. Humans are capable of unique ideas and fresh, spontaneous takes, whereas AI simply regurgitates what already exists on the internet.
No real emotion
Likely one of the biggest disadvantages of AI is its lack of soul. Because the AI writing tool is not a person with a mind full of memories and experiences, it has no emotional depth. It doesn’t understand human emotion, can’t draw from past struggles or victories, and therefore cannot produce something with context influenced by emotion. There’s no authenticity, no trust, and no empathy to make the reader feel like they’re really being spoken to and connected with.
Lack of cultural understanding
A very concerning flaw of AI content tools is their deep cultural misunderstanding. There is a data bias in AI, as most of its scraped data is from English and Western perspectives. This means the biases and values from these perspectives are normalised and outputted, which aren’t always positive. This leads to misrepresentation, stereotyping, and sometimes offensive material. Before it can be relied on not to produce biased and inappropriate content, it needs far more diverse and inclusive training in its development.
Hallucinations
AI strives to give you exactly what you want, even if that means making things up along the way. These mistakes are called ‘hallucinations’ because of how entirely fabricated they are. AI will confidently invent facts, recount situations that never happened, and pull false statistics out of thin air.
Did you hear about the New York lawyer who used ChatGPT to identify legal cases for his argument? The AI made up a list of cases, which the lawyer then cited and, when questioned, doubled down on with the AI’s false confirmation. When it was discovered that the cases were false, the lawyer and his firm were sanctioned and became a viral laughingstock.
Plagiarism risks
Because AI can only use what already exists online, the chances of it copying content that’s already out there are very high. Not only does this make your content look lazy, but it also puts you at great risk of getting penalised by search engines such as Google. Duplicate content is a big no-no in SEO, and your site may suffer dropped rankings, leading to lower visibility and traffic.
Still needs human touch
Because of hallucinations and plagiarism risks, copy produced by AI requires a human editor. You cannot add AI work straight onto your website without checking it first. You need a real person to check for made-up facts, repetitive language, awkward flow and tone, and all the other cons that come with AI content.
The pros of using a copywriter for copywriting
What kind of benefits can a real human copywriter bring to your content?
Emotional intelligence
We humans are an emotional lot, which is very helpful when it comes to writing. Empathy and understanding allow us to put ourselves in the shoes of others, creating greater opportunities for connection through content. Emotional intelligence enables us to speak to the reader as a human being, rather than a faceless customer or vague demographic. This emotive tone is what builds community, which is vital to the success of any brand or business.
It’s also worth mentioning that a great deal of people actively seek brands that speak with emotional depth. So many of us are sick of ‘AI slop’, as it’s been dubbed, and want to be reached out to by real people. Brands with their own personality are becoming more important than ever, and they often earn true customer and reader loyalty from those who value genuine content over hastily produced text.
Genuine audience understanding
In line with emotional intelligence, people understand people. No matter how hard AI tries to learn and mimic, it will never be capable of true human empathy. Content marketers take the time to learn their brand’s audience, what they want and how they feel, to produce content that truly connects with their readers. Good copywriting is creating content that feels like you’re being directly spoken to and listened to, which only a human who knows their audience base and community can do.
Nuance
AI can’t do nuance. Copywriters can. Human understanding, empathy, emotion, and authenticity give us the power to explore nuance in our work. We can evoke feelings to enhance connection, know when sarcasm and humour have their place, use subtlety and layered language in our words, and thread a genuine and unique perspective through writing that machines cannot do naturally.
Original
Human copywriters produce original work. While AI can only reuse and rewrite what already exists in data, copywriters can be entirely original. From unique takes and perspectives to cultural nuance and strategic insight, humans have the power of original thought.
Ongoing editing
A copywriter can continuously edit their work as they go, while AI needs to be prompted to revisit sections again and again if you’re not happy with the work. The ability to simply stop, study, and reassess is part of what makes copywriters so good at producing thorough work, and why their copy speaks of true authenticity and quality.
The cons of using a copywriter
All good things come with a few hiccups.
Slower than AI
There’s no getting around it, humans are slower than AI. Much slower. A person simply cannot produce a 1,000-word blog post in 30 seconds like AI can! We humans just aren’t built that way, as sad as that is, and will never be able to match the production speed of tools like ChatGPT and Gemini.
More expensive than AI
Paying for a copywriter, whether they’re in-house or freelance, is more expensive than subscription or free AI tools. If you’re looking for the cheapest option, then AI can be very tempting. However, it’s important to remember that human copywriters cost more because they offer more. See the list of pros above for why that is.
Writer’s block
Unlike artificial intelligence, humans have off days. It’s a fact of life that not every day can be your best. We’ve all experienced a work shift where things seemed a little more difficult than usual. Writer’s block for copywriters is real, and if the creativity isn’t flowing, then it can’t be forced. These days are a great opportunity to get through admin or move on to something else for a brain reset, but there’s no denying that it is frustrating when there’s work to be done.
What side are you on?
A con to AI that we didn’t mention before, but would like to touch on quickly here, is how it devalues human work. Copywriters practice and train to be experts at their craft, dedicating themselves to being the true, authentic voice of a business. They work with care, passion, and empathy to reach readers and help build a community, contributing to the growth and success of the brand. Using AI to write copy may help save some time and money, but in the long run, you’ll be offering up content without soul, and your customers, current and potential, will notice.
So, who’s winning the fight for you and your business? We’ve given you the pros and cons for each side, and now it’s up to you.
As a marketing agency with an in-house copywriter, we certainly know who we’re putting our bets behind. We believe in the power of emotionally intelligent, reader-focused copy and the positive impact it can have on an SEO strategy and your business’s growth and success at large. We certainly won’t deny that AI can be an excellent tool, but its benefits lie in the support it can offer a copywriter! But we’ll get into those details in a future post.
Ready to offer your audiences the real deal? We do blog posts, site copy, and so much more. Reach out to the Ginger Pickle team on 01603 339048 or hello@gingerpicklemarketing.com and let’s have a chat.