Artificial Intelligence versus Human Copywriters

ai vs humans

The disadvantage of our new robot authors is not loss of employment or the realization that creativity is not creative. It is the awful things it says about us.

It eventually occurred. The advertising copy written by artificial intelligence performed better than that written by professional copywriters. Similar to the day when chess master Garry Kasparov was defeated by a machine. We were all disappointed and astonished that it hadn't occurred sooner.

The moment for copywriters occurred during a trial run of an artificial intelligence writing software for JPMorgan Chase last month. They compared human-written and computer-generated ad lines to see which generated the most clicks.

The AI headlines performed two to five times better than the human copywriters. JPMorgan signed a five-year agreement with Persado because the results were so conclusive. According to the corporations, the purpose of the agreement is not to replace copywriters, but rather to make the work of copywriters 'more potent.' Thus, AI editors rather than AI writers. Literal robot masters

First, it is debatable whether this is true writing, but even if it is, the AI headlines were hardly groundbreaking. The success of the copy may have been determined through human authors and A/B testing. Interestingly, the AI versions were in general...cheesier and in at least one example dishonest. However, this is what makes them more effective. The media has already learnt that clickbait headlines trump precision, honesty, and wit. They function because humans stink. And the majority of copywriters, even the most cynical and soulless among us, still recoil from being overly corny and misleading. AI lacks such remorse. You instructed me to obtain clicks, Dave, and this is what homo sapiens click.

Don't get me wrong. I am not sentimental regarding copies. I believe that ultimately AI will excel at writing not only advertisements but also novels, scripts, and legislation. This does not upset me (there are far more gloomy aspects of being a writer, so get in line, robots). But what happens when AI is catering to our darkest instincts, as it will certainly do if it is trained to write advertising text to 'get clicks' or a book that 'people would buy'?

Authors of science fiction have been writing about this precise phenomena for years, that the creation of artificial intelligence will ultimately reveal our darkest qualities. Like Westworld. Or anything written by Asimov. Brief Circuit II Moreover, it has already occurred somewhere in the present. As when Microsoft debuted their AI chatbot on Twitter so that it might learn and develop as it conversed with others. It became racist and misogynistic.

Granted, this may be an exaggerated conclusion based on AI appending 'It's true' to the subject line of an email. Moreover, most copywriters would gladly delegate this kind of work anyway. However, the ramifications are undeniably...cheesy and perhaps deceiving. Regarding the test, Kristin Lemkau, CMO of JPMorgan, is quoted as saying the following. She wrote in an internal memo, presumably to prevent all of her copywriters from jumping out of their office windows, 'Machine learning is the road to more humanity in marketing.

I...cannot even decipher that. She should have had an AI compose the document.