Using AI for copywriting: a copywriter's perspective

Vicky Eldridge gives her perspective on how AI is changing the world of copywriting, how you can use it for your aesthetics business, and where to be careful

You must be living under a rock not to have heard all the hype about ChatGPT in recent months, and for good reason. It’s mind-blowing what this artificial intelligence can do.

Like all advancements in technology, we often fear the implications, especially if it encroaches on our area of work, as is the case for me, but the reality is we already use AI in abundance in our everyday life with things like Alexa, Siri, Google and even apps like Netflix, YouTube and Amazon. This is just the next level up. The genie is already out of the bottle, so we can either embrace it and adapt or fall behind.

How does ChatGPT work?

Chat GPT uses deep learning algorithms to analyse input text prompts and generate responses based on patterns in the data it has been trained on. That includes books, articles, and websites, allowing it to understand language nuances and produce high-quality responses.

It does not have a conscience (thankfully!) but can produce responses that are hard to distinguish from that of a human in many cases.

But it’s not without its limitations.

Creating engaging copy – why it matters

In today’s digital world, where attention spans are shrinking, compelling and persuasive copy has become essential for businesses to stand out from the crowd.

Writing engaging copy helps you capture attention, communicate value, generate leads, establish trust, and build long-term relationships with your target audience. It’s a powerful tool for driving business growth and success in a competitive marketplace.

But crafting compelling content that resonates with target audiences can be challenging.

This is where copywriters come in and now, potentially, advanced language models like ChatGPT.

How can you use ChatGPT or other AI to help you create content?

1. Writing social media captions

ChatGPT can help you write social media captions within minutes. All you need to do is feed it some relevant details about your post, and it will generate several captions for you to choose from. It’s quite impressive for this, but I don’t think it replaces the role of an expert social media strategist who can understand your business and needs and develop a campaign or strategy for you.

2. Research

I have found the app very useful for research in some instances but beware of accuracy. It has limited knowledge in some areas, especially when it comes to niches like aesthetics, so if you are writing about the latest trends or techniques, you are better off looking at the literature and using sources like PubMed.

3. Writing website copy

You can use AI to write copy for your website, but this is one of the areas I would be careful about because you could end up generating a site that is devoid of your own voice and personality. This isn’t my area of expertise, but, having written a few websites for the aesthetics sector before, it’s already hard to make the content different. Everyone has pages and FAQs about similar treatments, so relying too heavily on AI may prevent you standing out from the crowd

4. Generating engaging headlines or straplines for emails

Writing captivating headlines or straplines is critical to grabbing people’s attention and enticing them to continue reading your content, particularly when it comes to getting people to open emails. We get so much spam that we often delete emails immediately without opening them. ChatGPT’s language generation capabilities mean it can assist you in brainstorming ideas and suggesting headlines and email straplines. I have found it useful for this, although I have always adapted them rather than using them verbatim.

5. Refining and editing copy

Even the most skilled copywriters can overlook errors or inconsistencies in their writing. I know I have made some embarrassing typos and mistakes in my time. ChatGPT can help identify grammatical errors, suggest better word choices, and improve sentence structure. I prefer using Grammarly for this, but it’s one of the applications that it has potential uses for, and if you are not confident about your writing but are writing your own content, it could really help you here.

It can also be a handy tool for refining and re-writing copy. By inputting a few sentences or paragraphs, it can generate alternative phrasing, tone adjustments, and overall style improvements. In my view, this works best with copy that AI has not already generated because it still retains your voice, but it repurposes it very quickly, which is a huge time saver.

6. Blog writing

I hate to admit it, as this is one of the services I offer, but ChatGPT is quite good at generating blogs (on certain subjects). It’s not great on all topics, especially in a niche and ever-changing market like aesthetics, and it’s not very good on trends or anything new, but when I asked it to write me a blog about the importance of wearing sunscreen as a test, it did a decent job. You still need to spend time working on it though as the language can be a bit wooden.

7. Idea generation

Need help with ideas for a marketing campaign or want to come up with some topics for blogs? ChatGPT is good at generating ideas. I have used it to help me develop interview questions and topic ideas for a radio show I was presenting. Not everything it suggests is usable, but it can lead to some fresh ideas of your own.

Limitations and disadvantages of using AI for copywriting

So, what about the limitations? As a copywriter, of course, I am going to say this, but I really don’t believe AI currently can replace or replicate the human touch. Here are the main disadvantages from my perspective:

1. Content that lacks personality

One problem with AI is that it can lack the creativity of the human touch. While copy AI algorithms can produce high-quality content, they may not be able to capture the unique voice and perspective of a human writer. This can make the content feel lacking in personality, which can turn off some readers. I believe that the most engaging copy comes from the heart. While this is a great way of churning out or tick-boxing content, it’s not coming from you authentically, and some readers may pick up on that and not engage as a result.

Maintaining a consistent brand voice and tone across all communication channels is vital for establishing a strong brand identity, and this is where I believe it’s important to inject your voice and your personality into your copy. You don’t want it to sound robotic or generic.

In the same way, your website is your shop window, so I think using a copywriter who understands SEO is better than using AI. I don’t do much web copywriting, so I am not an expert in this, but I do wonder how ultimately, it will impact SEO due to the lack of unique or new original content as it’s pulling from content already out there. Who knows?

2. Inaccuracies

It’s not always right. If you think about how much rubbish and misinformation is out there about aesthetics, you cannot just assume everything AI churns out is correct. I have spotted inaccuracies that, because of my market knowledge, I picked up straight away. Some are obvious, some are not. So, remember, not everything it generates is factually correct. Be very careful of this.

3. Plagiarism- is it cheating?

One area I think we should be cautious about over-relying on AI is when we are submitting thought leadership or KOL articles to publications. The publication has accepted your submission based on your knowledge and expertise. If you are not writing the content yourself, then really, that’s not your knowledge and expertise.

It also can’t write (or at least I have not found a way to use it to write) more complex clinical articles. The most recent piece I ghost-wrote took me almost 20 hours, including research, interview time and writing time. The subject matter was new and innovative, and AI was of no use at all.

Conclusion

As you can see, AI has many benefits that can help businesses produce error-free content quickly and efficiently to save time and resources. However, in my view, it doesn’t replace the human touch and still needs human input to make it more reliable and engaging.

AI can do a lot of the legwork for you in some instances, but for others, you may spend more time working on it than you would if you did it yourself from scratch.

In summary, AI is an incredible and useful tool that I can only see having more exciting applications in the future. I will use it in my work when appropriate, but I am not worried I am out of a job just yet!

Have fun using it and let me know how you get on. And if you need a real-life human copywriter, get in touch at vickyeldridgecopywriting@gmail.com.