Yesterday, the waning gibbous moon in Leo opposed Saturn in Aquarius. That’s the only way I can explain the fact that a half dozen marketers all independently and yet simultaneously decided to send emails with their thoughts about AI and what it means for copywriters.
But in spite of the AI barrage yesterday, the most interesting thing I’ve read about AI for copywriters came not from a marketer, but a guy named Sam Kriss.
Last week, Kriss published a long article, putting ChatGPT into a surprising historical context, and making the claim that AI writing is getting worse rather than better.
Worse, because earlier versions of GPT were weird, sometimes useless, but sometimes new and wonderful.
Meanwhile, the most recent version of GPT has simply gotten very good at approximating the current state of writing on the Internet, which is bad and getting worse — clickbait and fluff, optimized for skimming, for nodding along, for other AI like search engines and front-page algorithms. Kriss makes a prediction:
If you write the keyword-laden babble for Emily’s Scrummy Kitchen, or monetised blog posts angling for answerboxes, or bludgeon-headed political takes that go viral every weekday, or flatly competent student essays, or little inspirational poems in lowercase, or absolutely anything to do with cryptocurrency — if your writing can be done by a machine because it is already machinelike — then ChatGPT will take your job. If you do screenplays for Netflix, it may have already done so.
At this point, the standard email marketing formula calls for saying something hopeful, about how there’s still time to up your skills and build the right relationship with your audience, so you can insulate yourself from the coming AI purges.
But I won’t follow the standard formula. In part, because I’d just be helping the AI obsolete me sooner.
In part, because rather than hopeful, I feel mostly curious. I feel we’re on the verge of a big moment, not just for copywriters, but as a society. I’m curious what what that moment will look like, and what’s waiting on the other end of it.
And now, even though I probably haven’t done a good job preparing you for it emotionally, I’m still going to tempt you with an offer. That’s one part of the standard email marketing formula I’m not willing to forgo.
So here goes:
Maybe you yourself are curious why exactly I found the Sam Kriss article so interesting, and why I decided to share a quote from it with you.
Really, I told you above. But maybe you want it spelled out a little more clearly, or maybe you want some more examples.
If you do, or if you want to write things that get shared on your behalf, by actual humans, then the secret is here, in Chapter 8: