Don’t use AI as an Easy Button. Use it to get better at what you find hard.

People get excited by how AI models like ChatGPT make it easy to create copy and content at scale.

As a writer you can create way more content when using AI. And yes, it’s a lot easier. No more writer’s block. AI can help you come up with new ideas for content, suggest headlines, and even write a finished draft for you.

And instead of a new post or article taking you two or three hours, or more, you can get it done in 5 to 10 minutes. How awesome is that?

Well, it IS awesome.

But…

Is this your BEST use of AI?

After all, you’re perfectly capable of writing on your own.

I know… it’s tempting to use AI as an Easy Button when it comes to writing. Particularly when you’re struggling a bit, or have tight deadlines.

But writing is something you already do well. That’s why you’re here.

So don’t outsource your core strengths to create output that will never be quite as good.

Instead…

Use AI to get better at the work you find hardest.

You’re better at writing than AI models.

But there are some things AI can do a whole lot better than you.

For example, models like GPT-4 know pretty much everything there is to know. They’ve been trained on all the knowledge published online, almost every book and paper ever written, and so on.

This means you can use AI as the ultimate research partner. You’ll have all the information you need at your fingertips, almost instantly.

AI models are also incredibly good at summarising long documents. You can copy and paste tens of thousands of words into the context window and ask for a 500-word summary.

They are insanely good at analysis too. You can paste hundreds of customer interviews into the context window and ask any one of these models to conduct a sentiment analysis for you. They’ll spit out a result for you in just a few seconds.

These are just a few areas where AI outperforms human abilities. By a huge margin.

This is how you use AI to do better work. Use the extraordinary capabilities of these models to dig deep into your subject matter, and thereby improve the depth and quality of your own writing.

Then add in one more layer focused on something else you do best… emotion.

AI models recognise human emotion. They have read the scripts of Love Story, and Romeo and Juliet.

But they haven’t experienced emotion firsthand. They’re never fallen in love, laughed, or felt sad.

As humans we feel and can express emotions deeply, even at their most nuanced.

Again, don’t outsource your strengths to AI.

If you rely in AI to add emotion to your writing, you’ll end up with writing that fails to engage, and falls short of moving your audience to take action.

Bottom line…

As writers we should practice our craft daily. It’s what we do. And to do our best work, we need to listen to our audience, and feel empathy for their hopes, needs and fears. We need that emotional layer.

Don’t outsource these core skills… the writing part and the empathy part.

Instead, use AI to improve your writing by doing the heavy lifting on areas we don’t do as well… like research, analysis, outlining, and more.

Don’t be tempted by the Easy Button.

Put in the hard work on the areas you do best.

And yes, this topic lies at the core of my course, Futureproof Copywriting. It’s all about combining the strength of AI with human power of Emotional Intelligence.