The launch of ChatGPT, Open AI’s language learning model, in November 2022 has had a seismic impact on the copywriting industry. Since then, the number of LLMs released to market capable of writing blogs, social media content, poetry, and more – and at no cost to the user – has boomed, rewriting the trajectory of our wordsmithery world.
But how exactly has that left people feeling? And to what extent have organisations brought related technology into their organisations, if at all? That’s exactly where my AI research began. Alongside writer and researcher Sophie Ranson, I spoke to my network of small business owners and entrepreneurs to identify current attitudes towards AI.
Eager to find out more? Read on.
The results...
We asked survey respondents if they currently use AI platforms for copywriting. 66% said yes, while 33% said not currently but they intend to start using them.
It’s a different story for outsourcing work: none of the respondents said that they would feel ‘extremely comfortable’ when asked how they felt about AI tools being used to help complete outsourced work.
Many respondents felt that AI could not replicate creative writing to the same standard as a human, but that it has the potential as a helpful writing assistant.
I agree. While AI is a great tool for time-strapped business owners — offering prompts, structure ideas, grammar, spelling guidance, and more — I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable using AI platforms to write entire pieces of copy. While perhaps biased, I hope you can take my very own writing ‘battle’ with Claude from Anthropic as evidence.
Similarly, people’s hesitance to surrender writing entirely to AI is likely tied to their perceptions of the quality of AI work. Like me, respondents mostly felt that AI fails to create authentic, human-sounding content.
Survey respondents also believe that AI cannot produce accurate content to a high standard. Half said that AI’s accuracy was ‘okay’, and 37.5 percent said that AI is not accurate — with perceptions changing depending on the task or the platform at hand.
While 55.6% of people said they thought AI was extremely fast, respondents felt that fast AI outputs do not necessarily translate into time saved overall.
“When used, the generation can be extremely fast, so the human effort will be on reviewing and editing,” said one respondent.
And finally, put your Martin Lewis hat on. Let’s talk about money. We asked clients if they would expect to pay more, less, or the same for outsourced work that utilises AI services: 56% said they would pay ‘the same’, while 44% said ‘less’. Those in favour of paying the same all shared the same caveat: they would need to feel assured content was fact-checked.
Curious to find out more about people’s perceptions of AI & Copywriting? Download your free copy of the research document in full.