AI can write a lot of words. What it can’t do is know which ones matter. Anyone with a subscription can now generate a blog post, a product description or an email campaign in seconds. The result is usually tidy, grammatically sound and almost entirely forgettable: the same polite nothing that readers have learned to scroll past. It sounds like everyone, which means it sounds like no one.
This is where a copywriter earns their place. A skilled copywriter takes AI’s raw output and turns it into something with a pulse: a clear point of view, a brand voice people recognise, a hook that makes a stranger stop and read. A copywriter knows what to cut, what to sharpen, and what the audience actually cares about, rather than what sounds plausible.
So why can’t companies just do this in-house? Usually because the people closest to the business are too close. They know the product too well to explain it simply. They lack time, training and outside perspective to spot generic copy when they see it. Knowing whether copy is good, and exactly how to make it better, is a craft that takes years to build.
AI gives you speed. A copywriter gives you the difference between content that exists and content that works. Here are seven ways a copywriter can fix AI for you
- A study by Bynder found 26% of people felt a brand is impersonal if the copy does not feel human-written, and 20% would feel that the brand is lazy.
- A Journal of Business Research study found that consumers consistently perceive AI-authored communications as less authentic, particularly when it comes to emotionally driven copy. It found that consumers believe AI-generated content is seen as less authentic than those generated by a human. As a result, consumers felt more moral disgust, leading to reduced positive word of mouth and customer loyalty.
- An Aalto university study identified current challenges in AI integration, including risks of declining content quality, overreliance on repetitive patterns, and the ethical implications of outsourcing creative work. The findings contribute to the growing understanding of AI-human collaboration in knowledge work, offering practical insights for both copywriters and organizations seeking to integrate AI into their content creation processes.
- A Harvard Business Review study found that Generative AI can make creative process faster especially in exploration (concept development, competitive analysis, audience testing preparation, and creative prototyping and iteration) and execution (resizing, versioning, localization, internal mockups, early storyboards, first-draft copy options, straightforward product demonstrations, and rapid exploration of creative territories). However, it found that human judgment should still lead when it comes to brand strategy, creative briefs grounded in new research and insights, emotional connection, cultural interpretation, final concept selection, distinctive positioning, and major brand-building campaigns.
- Further research found ChatGPT et al can write stuff. Generative AI can produce ‘articles’ that are basically re-spun mash-ups of existing material. ChatGPT is not an expert copywriter, armed with dozens of copywriting tactics, deep marketing knowledge, and a library of advertising techniques. ChatGPT can write passable content.
- A University of Sydney study found that Generative AI learns via the materials it has access to – a combination of formal texts, online content and anything uploaded into the system. This includes written documents, and videos and transcripts. However, not all of this material will suit the purposes of a business. On occasion the context will be irrelevant, the source material from another country, or the frameworks incorrect. That’s why a copywriter has to check and vet the AI copy..
- An Oxford study found that AI-generated texts were formulaic and largely followed the same moves and steps, regardless of text type or audience, whereas human-written texts were more nuanced and flexible in their adoption of genre conventions. On writing quality, human-written texts achieved the highest mean scores, followed by Gemini texts and finally ChatGPT.
If your AI content sounds like everyone else’s, let’s fix that. I’m Leon Gettler, an experienced copywriter. Call 0411 745 193 or email leon@leongettler.com.
