Ponderings About The Creative Industry

Does Anyone Need Writers Anymore?

If your hiring or looking to hire a creative writer, email strategist, article writer or videographer these days, you’re likely asking yourself the same questions that plague today’s creative world. Things like “are they just going to use AI for a large part of the work?” or… “If they don’t use AI enough, are they old fashioned or inefficient?”.

Some people are now even asking themselves whether they need to hire anyone at all.

Can’t these tools do all the work, like experts claim they can?

First, to put this in the proper context, we must acknowledge that most artificial intelligence tools today are built from scraped data. They openly admit that some of their sources were paid for their works, while others were used for training under the loose concept of ‘free use’. There’s a genuine ethics debate worth having around HOW a person uses the tools, like having a company policy of NOT asking the tool “write this in the style of *celebrity name* but with my topic”.

As a creative director, I have an ethical obligation to ensure I don’t hand off someone else’s works as my own. That means that relying on a tool that is basically just a more complex version of auto-correct, predicting what words it thinks might come next based on a prompt, can lead to unintentional idea theft. The tools can be helpful for proof reading, idea generation and a whole host of other purposes, but using tools exclusively for writing isn’t wise.

Hire A Writer, or Just Use AI?

We human beings are pretty good at detecting fluff.

Funny enough, fluff is useful when it comes to a generic email reply, or when you don’t need something hard hitting or earth shattering. However, it doesn’t really connect or inspire. There’s no consistent personality behind the voice. Even simulated feelings aren’t able to understand industry context, how something might sound to another person, or why you might not want to use words that might trigger people (especially those that wouldn’t have triggered someone in 2018).

The short answer is – human writers are still valuable.

These tools all rely on pattern recognition. Disruptive content that gets eyeballs MUST do exactly the opposite! We have to break the mould and stand out. You’re trying to establish new patterns and create genuinely NEW works. Unleash new ideas into the world. It’s hard to do that with an echo chamber that’s basically learned all it knows off of older content (even yesterday’s content is old in the world of journalism).

Most creatives today are expected to use AI tools.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s great to have them summarize a meeting or a two hour talk you don’t have time to watch on YouTube. I suppose the big thing is, there’s a difference between those who use AI to do their work, and those that use it to make the work easier. One Creative Director I read the other day said “quite often, we use these tools to sift out the crappy ideas, because if ChatGPT or an AI tool can come up with it, it’s probably already been done.”

That’s pretty profound!

The Future of GREAT Content

I’m seeing so many people on Facebook complaining about the auto-generated (and unasked for) AI prompts in FB Groups. There’s also an uproar in the video game industry with people upset that dialogs of game characters were clearly AI generated, and not original works. With all the fake news and trust issues the world has with whatever they read online… and frankly, with whatever they see in images or videos, human originality and trust are in big demand.

At some point we may even see some kind of trust factor, or 3rd party authentication services crop up that verify there really are humans writing your content and filming the videos. In 1994, Bob Burg famously said “People like to do business with those they know, like and trust” and that line has been repeated by every consultant, sales professional, business coach and school professor ever since. It’s still just as relevant today as it was then. That’s why Gary Vaynerchuk doesn’t just post online about marketing. He talks about his Dad, his sports cards and garage sale adventures. People get to know him, and come to like him. You really can’t replicate that human to human experience (thank god!).

The real power of the tools of today is their ability to make our jobs easier, but not do the entire job.

There’s a lot of hype right now about mass job losses and people being replaced, and some of it is true. In large organizations there were certainly some jobs that would be fairly easy to automate. But, some of that is actually just marketing spin… and some companies are winding up hiring back people they didn’t realize they couldn’t replicate. If you want mediocre content that just re-spins what’s already been said, the newest chat bot may be all you need… but authentic, organic Non-GMO, pasture raised human content is going to require a real human!