We thought that AI would replace copywriters. But it ruined them instead.

Last week, I spent several hours reading trial copywriting tasks from thirty contractors on Upwork.

While ChatGPT adoption is growing, writing quality is on the decline. It’s now harder to find a great copywriter than ever before.

Precisely due to the excessive use of ChatGPT. People use the same tool to speed up their work and avoid thinking. Worldwide.

We can get similar mediocre results from the US-based native paid $80/hour and somebody from the lower income country working for $10/hour.

Their texts now have the same issues.

Here’s what’s wrong with AI-generated copy:

1. Useless intros. AI-generated content is not catchy. The first paragraphs of ChatGPT articles can be removed easily without damaging the text value.
2. Poor understanding of user intent. Last week’s trial topic was “How to become a real estate agent in Florida.” All AI-written texts were pitching the idea of becoming a real estate agent. Wrong intent! The user asked “how to become,” not “why to become” one.
3. Lack of research. It takes 2 minutes to Google the trial task topic and see that all results at the top are direct-to-the-point in answering the precise search query.
4. No referrals, fake facts. For example, one of the writers mentioned being a US citizen as a requirement to get a real estate license. They weren’t able to refer to the source of this information. Because there’s no requirement like this, AI just generated it.
5. Zero stats, no numbers. Only words. Credible content relies on facts and numbers. AI-written texts experience a shortage of both. In rare cases when numbers are included, they are pre-2021 due to the model learning data limits.
6. Too long. Last, the generated text is usually too long because much water is added to the information. The experienced editor will easily cut half of the text.
7. Terrible readability. It’s just monotonous and boring from the very first sentence.
8. No soul. It lacks personality, controversy, and strong opinion—everything we value in great content.

 

ChatGPT is doing a great job of criticizing, summarizing, and ideating. Artificial intelligence works perfectly to improve grammar and punctuation and suggest synonyms, tags, and titles. It’s a fantastic co-pilot.

But don’t expect a language model to do the whole job, please.

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