It’s the elephant in the copywriting room. The game-changer that’s going to take our jobs. The emergence of AI platforms such as ChatGPT has felt like a sudden change to the industry that has seemed to grasp everyone rather quickly. Its abilities are clear to see, although its challenges seem to be growing as the platform becomes more explored.
The beauty of the platform is immediately apparent. Enter a brief prompt, a couple of clicks later and you have your detailed and extensive response. The kind of response that might take as little as thirty minutes or as much as half a day for someone uninformed on the topic. It’s compiled in a manner that makes the reader believe that the writer is an expert. The way ChatGPT formats the script is also one of its apparent highlights as the information is neatly sectioned and easy to read for the average reader. The obvious initial issue is usually the specificity of the detail, as the service only knows so much, so you will get results that sound great in general, but aren’t really going into the real depth of the requirements. In saying that, there is the ability to go back through and change a few things where you see necessary.
This prompt and change method is an effective way to produce content, but it’s not always a satisfying result for those paying for the work. Some businesses are even hiring writers to come through, clean up and edit their ChatGPT produced content. Businesses that hire writers to produce content are growing in their feeling of suspiciousness that most of their work is being done by AI systems, as the reduction of quality and detail is apparent.
Sean O’Dowd, a business consultant and Upwork client, recently uploaded two job posting online seeking freelancers. He received close to 300 applicants, yet he suspects that more than 200 of the proposals were created using ChapGPT and similar AI services. O’Dowd said, ‘If I wanted the basic ChatGPT-level answer, I would have just done that myself’. This appropriately summarises the state of affairs currently for businesses, in that everyone has access to the AI level stuff, yet businesses still need actual humans to produce the work. It’s the lack of detail, the lack of creativity and the lack of human voice which tends to make the product of AI services unengaging. O’Dowd almost mentioned ‘When I’m hiring somebody, I’m looking for more detail, more depth and more thinking than ChatGPT’.
With the AI services so suddenly prominent, there’s a high amount of blanket type content coming to the market all at the same time, and it’s not being warmly received by paying clients. Freelance writer Georgia Austin, who founded a content marketing agency, said ‘In the world of AI specifically, there’s a lot of crappy content that’s coming to the surface’. As somehow dealing with clients on a daily basis, Austin has felt the unhappy reaction of the market who are receiving what they deem to be ‘generic.’
As the delivery of mass content produced via artificial intelligence platforms has only been for a short period of time, search engines are needing to prioritise content to what they believe to be of the ‘best purpose.’ Google announced in February 2023, that it will prioritise top quality original content in its search results, as opposed to much repeated information. They have been dealing with AI challenges for years, always having to figure out new ways to identify and demote content they don’t see fit for a high presence.
With the power of SEO so highly valued by companies, the shortcut of using AI generated content won’t pay off for businesses. Freelance writer, Alex Fasulo, who produces content for a multitude of clients, said that ‘at the end of the day, 95% of my buyers who are buying blogs and articles from me, they’re using that for SEO on their website. They’re aware that a ChatGPT generated blog isn’t going to necessarily do them any favours with ranking on Google’.
Whereas, Steve Foura, from digital marketing agency, Digital Assist, says that platforms like ChatGPT work well to create structure for a blog that they little to nothing about the topic, reducing the hours of research for his writers so they can concentrating on writing a more detailed blog.
Then there’s the threat of possible legal issues with using AI platforms. The potential of intellectual property infringement certainly carries weight around the copywriting scene and proves to be a significant deterrent for both freelancer writers and businesses using their work. Some writers are even refusing to use AI platforms for fear of the legal consequence, which is understandable.
With the ChatGPT platform rising at an unparalleled scale, there’s worrying growth that the information the platform spits out could actually be misinformation and damaging to the millions who received it. The impact is on such a broad scale, that any misinformation could affect the thinking of large sectors of society. University of NSW AI Expert, Professor Toby Walsh said that ‘The fact it’s so available means even small harm multiplied by billions can be significant. Speaking on The Today Show, Walsh mentioned ‘The image itself is not really very dangerous, it’s the fact that millions of people can see that image and react to is that is’, in relation to the overall scope of artificial intelligence.
At Real Copy Right, at the moment, we choose not to use ChatGPT in our copywriting and blog-writing, as we like to maintain originality and consistency for our clients, while prioritising the weight of search engine optimization. If we get into fields beyond property and real estate, we might dabble with understanding the material, but not to write the finished piece, as we know that its capabilities meet general needs and lacks the emotion required to draw in an audience.
Creating the finest written content involves creativity, passion, consistency and a human eye for the finer details. It’s not possible for artificial intelligence to capture all the details and humanise the words. It could be an atmosphere, smell or sound, and it’s this detail which finds the greatest of emotional connections to readers. The authentic script is always a whole lot more compelling in search engine optimizations on internet search platforms like Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and others, plus you can sleep at night knowing that the work written is original.
References:
https://www.forbes.com.au/news/innovation/chatgpt-writing-how-ai-is-upending-the-freelance-world/
