Much has changed in the 30 years Paula Scott has been a communications consultant. Here she considers whether AI bots can really replace copywriting and design teams.
Assuming it hasn’t eliminated all humanity by the time you read this, it’s likely that you are exploring how AI might help you reduce your marketing budgets. Omnipresent AI giants like Claude, Chat GPT and Copilot are infiltrating our news, search engines and laptops, and these bots are smart. They can knock out a 500-word blog in seconds and produce an illustration almost as soon as you finished typing in the brief. The ‘AI vs Humans’ debate is a lively one and marketers are currently wrestling with how best to employ this technology.
As you review your plans for 2027 you (or your CFO) may have wondered if you still need humans to write your copy and design your publications. Time to consider the pros and cons.
Readers are sceptical
Research into reader attitudes highlights a widespread psychological resistance to machine made copy. Consumers are learning to spot the predictable, over-optimised cadence of AI writing and it triggers scepticism, lowers perceived authenticity, and damages trust.
Nothing new
If you want your message to cut through the clamour, you’ll need a creative approach. Machine-learning provides copy and design solutions based on material already in the public domain. If you want something fresh and original you will have to look past artificial intelligence.
Perfection backlash
Because generative artificial intelligence produces super smooth graphics, symmetry and formulaic copy, perfection is increasingly perceived as cheap and generic. A widespread cultural backlash against AI’s polished perfection means consumers are beginning to embrace imperfection as a trust signal.
Is your audience worth it?
In the current environment where AI generated content is becoming the norm, your brand will have to work harder than ever to connect with human stakeholders. To convince your audience to pay attention, they need to feel respected, unlikely if you are relying on a machine to address them on your behalf.
While smooth, anodyne copy may appeal to your C-Suite, as a marketer you know that it will take more than this to engage your specific audience. A copywriter can bring a distinctive style and tone to your content, delivering the creative language and human emotion required to communicate the heart and soul of your message.
Consumer surveys (Gartner) reveal that more than two thirds of users frequently question whether content is real; if an image feels too manufactured or perfect, people disengage. Designers are finding a way to fight back against the machines, moving away from minimal, super-sanitised graphics towards design with a human touch including hand drawn elements, irregular textures and misaligned typography.
This is not to say that AI isn’t useful. Of course it is. But the trend towards AI-generated content may have already peaked. Audiences are human emotional beings who, at time of going to press, are still smarter than the average AI bot. So let’s keep AI in its rightful place, doing the boring stuff like online research, scoping out power point presentations and finding the perfect location for your staff Christmas party. When it comes to creativity and originality, us humans, we’ve still got this.