Writing For Money In The Age Of Skynet

Coping With The Intern When They’re A Bot

So there I was, reading on a French Polynesian beach when she caught my eye. A French woman in her fifties, kneeling in the aquamarine waters just off shore, a cigarette in her right hand, a dog under her left arm, a vague air of cynical resignation about her as if she were contemplating Life’s Final Tryst, the inevitable embrace of cold, merciless, faithful death. 

Clearly, she was a copywriter contemplating the latest workplace trend—AI content generation.

And the funny thing is, I knew exactly how she felt.

As someone who has grown strangely attached to paying the mortgage on time, I’ve been watching the development of AI content generation with great interest—and a hint of alarm.

I’m currently in contract as a temp technical writer for a wonderful credit union, but that contract is up at the end of the year, and then what? There are job postings out there, but who knows how the market will turn?

Will businesses still need copywriters?

I think the answer is “Yes,” but it’s a conditional yes. A yes with an asterisk. A yes possibly not considered canon by Disney.

And so I sit with the Poodle of Economic Anxiety under one arm as the seductively warm waters of the South Pacific of Technological Innovation creep steadily higher and higher around me, bringing me face to face with the Driftwood of Not Knowing the Future of Copywriting as a Career. I don’t smoke, so I’m spared the Cigarette of Latent Technophobia.

Overcooked metaphors aside, I don’t think it’s time yet to give up writing and take up, oh, I don’t know, coopering*, but I do think there’s a chance we’ll see a permanent sea-change in how some businesses staff for copywriting purposes, or at least in the job descriptions. Why?

• Digital marketing has shifted the skill sets most coveted by organizations from traditional writing and editing requirements to a mastery of SEO and data analytics. 
• Messaging needs to be briefer, more targeted, more rooted in data.
• Typos in social media posts? Even if noticed, those might be perceived as a more human voice.
• What copywriting is needed can be contracted to outside agencies. Or generated by AI. 

And you know what? I can understand those reasons. I don’t necessarily like them, but I understand. It doesn’t necessarily mean an end to copywriting as a human endeavor: 

• Professional organizations will always need copywriters who can edit and fact check.
• Because that AI-generated copy? It’s not flawless.**
• Someone will need to understand what prompts to feed to their AI of choice. 
• Outsourced copy, whether harvested digitally or from a third-party agency, will still need to be fine-tuned to match an organization’s voice.
• You can use AI-generated copy as a starting point and skip the “s****y first draft” stage, freeing you to elevate your work in other areas.

Maybe organizations will decide it’s economical to shake out the org chart like an old dusty rug, eliminate full-time positions and bring in writers on an as-needed basis, like trading for a star pitcher for the playoffs.

It could be we’ll see a surge of contract writer positions for projects of limited duration. If you can quickly discern and emulate an organization’s voice, this could prove a great opportunity.

And the stability of a full-time position with any at-will employee has always been something of an illusion anyway.

So, writers, don’t give up—get better. Do everything you can to sharpen your skills, because when you are needed, you’ll need the confidence of Luke Skywalker striding into Jabba’s Palace in Return of the Jedi. Just not with the all-black look, as that might seem a bit much.

Tips to keep you sane while contract writing

• Buy The Associated Press Stylebook. It looks good on your bookshelf. Authoritative. Serious. You can open to a random page and learn critical information, such as the fact (for real) that the AP has rules for writing about Santa Claus—apparently, if you call him “Claus,” that’s “Naughty.” I’m presuming trained AP paramilitary-editors will rappel through your skylight with automatic red markers. 

• Other acceptable purchases include the Chicago Manual of Style or Elements of Style (the cool kids buy all three). Because commas are always confusing, so arm yourself with books. Books equal paper, paper is used for receipts, so when you have style guides, you’re bringing the receipts.

• Invest in training. You might consider springing for the premium LinkedIn membership. While pricy, it gives you access to a library of courses on everything from SEO and Digital Marketing to Project Management Skills and Mastering Excel. If nothing else, it gives you something to do while you’re job hunting. And new skills give you flexibility on the job market, or the chance to say, “Yes, I can do that,” if your boss needs something done but chatGPT is on coffee break.

• Study AI. I mean it. Get acquainted with Bard, with ChatGPT. Test them out (not a bad response, but “Dearest Husband”? Feels like Ken Burns should narrate that letter with a violin in the background). There’s no denying the potential utility of AI, as long as you know how to wield it. Just remember to fact check the content – and fill in the generic blanks, like the recipient’s name. (And for those of you invested in the drama, I’m not sure I would go with this response, at least not with the “Dear Wife” part. It might not play well.)

• Learn to accept that you might not get the luxury of staying in one job for 20 years. And that’s okay. Business needs change. Times change. Organizations retrench. New managers, new structures. It’s not personal. It’s just the system. And by the same token, you can feel free to be always looking for the next adventure.

So yeah, nothing to worry about here. At least not yet. By the time AI is truly ready to put all copywriters out to pasture, you can save up enough money to retire to Tahiti. I recommend the Tahitian Vanilla cake shakes. 

*Why coopering? Because we’ll always need barrels. If we ever reach a point as a society where we can’t count on barrels, well, it’s safe to say we’ll have much bigger problems to worry about.

**You would think, with the time saved by having chatGPT write their entire legal brief, those lawyers could have bothered checking whether the AI had just plain made up the court cases and quotes central to their argument. As it is, with such a sloppy handling of the truth, the best they can now hope for, career-wise, is election to political office.