Can AI Handle My Job?

The growth of artificial intelligence has been raising important questions, including a potentially scary one to a young copywriter: can I be replaced by AI?

AI is doing some incredible things, after all, including making art. It can be difficult to determine the difference between art a human crafted and what artificial intelligence made. However, there’s one aspect that tends to stick out like a sore thumb: hands.

I recently saw a YouTube short by @answerinprogress, explaining that “hands are really complex” with “small but important details.” The video comes to the conclusion that AI can “mimic the aesthetic of a hand [but] has no understanding of what a hand physically is.” The full short can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0YdncCkGQUg.

Visual art, of course, isn’t the only AI production that’s popping up and making headlines. AI chatbots have been all over the internet. They’re able to reply to questions or requests with complete, and sometimes thorough, answers. AI is capable of writing blogs and other content, too. As a copywriter, this begs that scary question.

If AI is becoming so intelligent, and it’s moving into the world of marketing, are writers even needed anymore?

My short answer is “yes.” Yes, human writers are absolutely needed. Chatbots and AI write pieces that seem to be missing… something.

This is where ideas from @answerinprogress come to the forefront. AI mimics the aesthetic of human speech but has no understanding of who we, as individual beings with complicated thoughts and feelings, work. Just as seeing a contorted hand with a sixth finger would tip you off to art being created artificially, an AI-written piece of work just feels a bit off.

AI can’t feel the way a person feels. Humans “are really complex,” and speech has many “small but important details,” as @answerinprogress notes. Artificial Intelligence can’t fully understand these things and can’t create the kind of content that evokes strong emotions the way people do. Well, AI might lead to some laughter and smiles with those disfigured hands.

AI likely has a role in developing content. It’s a good idea generation tool, can assist with an outline, and can help people workshop the best way to phrase something. But on its own, AI writing is pretty easy to recognize.

We should strive to put meaning into our writing and have true emotion transfer to the page. We’re not AI. Let’s have our writing reflect that.