Why are people using AI to create copy?

Demi Aspey: Yeah, I’m curious to I wasn’t 100% aware. I’d heard things about the Canva A.I. and I do use Canva as well for design things. It’s great that they’re offering some help. But I think you touched upon it there with the facts of, well, why are people using it? And I think a lot of the times, if people are wanting it to replicate what they can actually say or the value they can offer, what’s the purpose behind that? Is it to speed up time? Is it to save time? Is it to save money? Why are they using it? Or is it because they don’t really know what they actually want to say? If someone’s posting on LinkedIn, like saying, Oh, you know, these aren’t my genuine thoughts or AI has done it, then what’s the purpose behind that? Are you trying to build a community, trying to build engagement? What are you trying to do? Because there’s always a goal beyond the copy and if you’re using the AI to create it, well, how far between yourself and the copy, is it genuinely what you’re wanting to say and will you be able to respond afterwards from that? And do you understand what’s actually being created? With so many questions around it, which I just feel like it depends what people are ultimately trying to achieve. These tools are useful, they can be helpful, especially for people who perhaps don’t feel overly confident with the writing process. I think they can be a bit of a leg up onto that, I don’t know. I’m curious.

Martin Henley: Okay, I’m curious as well. I’m really glad I asked you because you’ve answered that like a really strong copywriter with lots of questions. Exactly what is going on?hat I think is going on is I think it’s laziness. Well, I think there’s two things going on. The first thing is that these platforms have convinced the world that they need to be in the business of producing content or producing copy. This is what a friend of mine calls the 21st century social media swindle that they’ve turned us all into copywriters, content producers, without really paying us very much, any of us very much money. So that’s the first thing that’s going on. Then the second thing that’s going on is clearly no one’s got the time, or the energy for that, or the skill for that. So then I think it’s laziness where they’re like, okay, well I can put a few sentences into this tool and it’s going to give me the 600 words I need for a blog post or a social media post or something else. But what I really feel about that is that the world really doesn’t need more copy at this point. I think we’ve got enough copy. What we really need is good copy. We could really do with having some much better copy tn is available and I’m not sure if this is the way it’s going to get produced. Like you say what relation does it bear to the writer even?

Demi Aspey: It’s also it’s quality over quantity, isn’t it? And I think the what social media entices us all to believe is that we all have thoughts and opinions and they’re all valid and we all have to talk about things all of the time when actually if you don’t have anything good to say, or anything new to say or anything to offer, don’t say it. There’s value in in being minimal. I think a lot of the time people are feeling pressure, especially if they’re a business leader, or owner, or they have a brand to be throwing out content constantly to keep up with the Joneses, as it were, like keep up with everybody else. People are turning to stuff like AI tools or quick tools that create this content just to be putting it out. Then they’re not actually thinking behind, well, what’s the purpose of me putting it out? I was doing quite a lot of content on LinkedIn. That’s how I’ve helped build up my own business. Everything has been written by myself would make sense, my copy right? But over the past few weeks I’ve been so busy with things that I kind of thought, Oh, well, you know, I need to produce content, I need to keep it going out.

Demi Aspey: And I thought, Well, what’s the purpose behind that? That’s only going to make me really, really stressed at the moment. I don’t really need I’ve got enough clients. I don’t really need to be doing this. But in my head I had this idea that, well, everybody in my industry is posting every single day, so I have to keep posting every single day. Well, I don’t have anything good to offer right now or any value to offer to my community or audience or anything so I’m just not going to. hat took a lot for me to make that choice. and I’m a copywriter and I work in marketing, but I think a lot of people don’t think that way. They go, No, I must keep putting it out, no matter if that thought process has stopped and there is nothing good to say. So they’ll use a tool like this just to keep churning out the content, even though there’s absolutely no value in it. Actually, I think it’s the opposite. I think we need to, like you say, pull back a little bit and just produce really good quality content over just rubbish.

Martin Henley: Yeah, 100% believe that because somebody else that I spoke to spoke about this being the fraud of the broadcast industry that everybody needs to know about you all of the time. Which isn’t necessarily true. What you really need to be doing is is making sure that the people who might get value from the thing that you offer and actually give you money to do it, know about you when they need to know about you. That’s the difference.

Martin Henley: This AI thing. I think the only justification for it really is if you use it like you use it to get like a base and then it might enable you to go deeper into a subject. If you say, okay, here’s my topic, effectively it might be a research tool if it goes out and finds like lots of interesting, useful references. Other than that, I think it’s an abomination. I really am worried about the Terminators like you.

Demi Aspey: It’s not a good research tool and I can say that as research Ph.D. A lot of times it’s pulling things from the Internet, but you don’t know where it’s pulling that information. I tried it out, just for my own peace of mind, because you want to know, like, What does this thing offer? Is it amazing? a lot of times it’s pulling information from wherever it can find it, but it’s not facts. It’s just looking for those keywords and looking for something relevant that answers a question. Often you’re going to have to go and then double-check anyway to make sure it’s accurate, in which case you could have just done that yourself and written something accurately and at least know it’s thoroughly researched. If you’re working in business, especially the technical side of stuff you just end up doubling your workload using it. If you are the person in the business, however, who’s maybe like two or three people in the business and you want to have some marketing efforts and the funds aren’t there, it can help you get those words on the page. As a research tool like you, I think it’s an abomination. I don’t think it works. It probably surpass us and will make us eat our words in time, as all these things do, but right now I think it’s a bit of a trapping tool and I think people need to be really, really cautious of it.

Martin Henley: Good. And I’m glad I spoke to someone who’s studying a research PhD about that because that is exactly the right answer. Martin Henley: I did a bit of a master’s in digital marketing. This was a few years ago, but I was shocked at how bad the Internet is as a research tool. Really when you are researching something real, not a holiday in Ibiza, when you’re researching something real, like a principle or a philosophy beyond page two, it all gets kind of irrelevant is what I found.

Demi Aspey: As with everything, I think the problem with the Internet is, as we see in the media, there’s so much misinformation on the Internet. If you can’t source check correctly and you take something for face value, a lot of the times you’re going to find actually that’s not that’s the correct information. Like, you know, my my university is a bit like if you can use some online sources, but if it’s not a journal or a book or some like proper academic reference from like a reputable source, it’s like veto the Internet because you just can’t. And I think a lot of people can’t determine things, which is why so many people just believe anything they see today and go, Oh, that’s a fact. I believe it. Now it’s research with a different skill and I find it really hard and I’m at the level I’m at. And yeah, there’s lots of information out there deciding what’s actually correct or useful.

Martin Henley: Yes. And I’ll tell you, the way I feel about it is like artificial intelligence is like artificial grass. It ain’t grass and it ain’t intelligence, you know? I mean, like intelligence is not what computers are good at is data. So they can they can store, they can analyse, they can present data. But what that’s not intelligence. Intelligence is data, plus experience, plus emotion, plus empathy, plus connection, plus all of these things. I worry about the terminators because we’re getting to a point where if the computer says no, you have absolutely no recourse, there is no human to be found who can actually support you.

Demi Aspey: What happens when we rely too heavily on computers as much we do now? You don’t spell anything. Even my spelling has got. I’m a writer, my spelling has got bad because I rely so heavily on the computer to autocorrect me. I use tools like Grammarly and things like that which will assist me, but over time our skills as human beings are going to weaken. In that respect, what happens to our creativity, what happens to our actual applied skills if we are relying on something like AI to do it all for us? Because if that then doesn’t work, or we get to a point where we are losing our ability to actually create these things ourselves by being too heavily reliant. One of the things, I’ll answer later about how to be sort of better at copywriting, for instance, is to actually do it. If you don’t do it, you rely on something else, you can’t you can’t ever get better at it. I think humans, we like to feel that sense of accomplishment and achievement of learning skills and getting better at something. If we rely too much technology for everything where does our motivation come from? Where do we feel satisfied in the work we do? That’s just a personal input. But I just feel it’s we’re going to lose so much from being so heavily reliant on technology and all these tools seemingly are making our lives easier but making us dumber at the same time.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?