My take on the future of AI for copywriting? It’s not gonna be the writing at all…
I’ve been playing with ChatGPT and other AI tools for the past 8 months or so (which honestly makes me late to the party), and my copywriting life has never been the same since.
It was the reason I was able to work on 5/6 projects at the same time delivering higher quality copy – as a solopreneur.
But I haven’t used it to write a single word for me.
ChatGPT still sucks at that. Ask it to write “punchy”, or god forbid, “persuasive” copy, and all you get is scammy 90s infomercial copy.
It can write pretty good blog posts though.
And I think the main reason for that is because LLMs are great at providing information and making us happy with that. In fact they have an unlimited capacity to provide us with content. But it’s not content that truly resonates with humans on such a deep level that moves us to buy.
It’s informational. And that’s what we should be looking for.
No, what I think AI is already great at is at helping us understand humans.
That’s right, a robot can help us figure out what goes on in our messy, meaty heads.
Think about it, ChatGPT is built on an almost infinite number of sources ranging from books to websites, including billions of words and a multitude of perspectives. This allows it to:
- Provide insights into a wide array of human behaviors, preferences, and communication styles. Its dataset allows it to identify patterns and nuances in human interaction that might not be evident even to experienced professionals.
- Cover our entire cultural spectrum. ChatGPT has been exposed to multiple languages and cultural contexts, giving us access to understanding and communicating with a literally any audience.
- Help us mitigate our biases. While AI systems can inherit biases from their training data, they can also identify and mitigate these biases more systematically than humans, especially when trained and monitored appropriately.
- Keep up with trends and innovations. We can use AI to go way beyond traditional data analysis: from predicting trends, to understanding complex customer sentiments, and personalizing user experiences. No more tedious Google searches.
- Be fast and efficient at all of it. AI can process and analyze data much faster than humans..
To be clear, you still have to find your way through the maze if you want to get the true gold out of it. And you need to follow the never ending daily updates.
For example, did you know ChatGPT might soon have a memory of its own?
Pretty crazy.
In short, I believe that the best way to use AI for copywriting will be to use it to help us empathize with the people we serve. By understanding them as humans, not as numbers on our email list. But by helping us dig deep into what drives them to look for a solution, into what keeps them awake at night, into how they see themselves in the future, and into the struggles they are running away from.
For the first time ever in history, we have access to a global, interactive human knowledge database.
For a freaking $20 per month.
Once you start seeing it from this perspective, you also start opening up to its true potential for marketing, sales and copywriting.
This is a big theme I’m working on and we’ll dive more into soon.
I call it AI Empathy Engineering:
Forget prompt engineering.
A prompt is not a moat.
Rather than wasting time figuring out the perfect prompt, start thinking of how you can better understand and even share your audience’s feelings.
How can you better empathize with them?
AI can help.
More on that soon.
P.S. Does this sound interesting? Reply with a “Hell yes”.
📚 3 things to get better at copywriting
1. Pursuit of some space between expectations and reality
I love this quote from the new Morgan Housel’s book “Same as ever”:
“Everyone, everywhere, doing almost any task, is just in pursuit of some space between expectations and reality.”
It’s a great reminder that the best thing you can do to make persuasion easier, is just to shorten the gap between what your customers expect and what the reality of your solution is. A lot of times, setting and managing expectations is far easier that working on their outcome with your solution.
2. Service vs Hospitality
Another book I just finished, is “Setting the table” by restaurateur Danny Meyer. His philosophy on hospitality and leadership is incredibly insightful. In particular I love his distinction between service and hospitality:
“Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. Service is a monologue—we decide how we want to do things and set our own standards for service. Hospitality, on the other hand, is a dialogue. To be on a guest’s side requires listening to that person with every sense, and following up with a thoughtful, gracious, appropriate response. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top.”
Speaking of empathizing with your customers, this is excellent advice.
3. Do you have the guts to say it?
✅ Don’t miss it
- Following Ethan Mollick’s prompt, I’ve built a Tutor GPT. You can use it to learn pretty much anything. Just start a conversation with it. I plan on sharing more GPTs in the next emails so if you have any specific request, just let me know!
🤔 Thought of the week
At some point there’s going to be a disconnect between the pursuit of Winning, and giving energy to everything else around you. Others will say “You’re a million miles away.” You’ll think to yourself: Only a million? And then you’ll realize: You’re exactly where you need to be.
– Tim Grover, Winning
Some stages in life require complete focus and commitment. Embracing it is part of the process and something else you need to master on the path to your goal.
