Does the advent of sophisticated AI systems mean the end of creative writing?
AI tools are quickly becoming the talk of the town.
For example, art, which has long been a uniquely human endeavor, something that combines emotion, skill, and creativity, can now be created with a few prompts and even fewer seconds.
This has created a wave of support with many people taking advantage of this cutting-edge tech. Yet, most artists find it extremely problematic, raising issues of copyright laws, not getting paid their dues, and machines replacing humans that have invested vast amounts of time, money, and effort honing their crafts.
Does this also extend to all the many other avenues where AI is firmly planting its miracle-tech boots, namely, creative writing?
With the arrival of wonderbot Chat GPT, many writers, myself included, can’t help but wonder if their use case is all but vanquished.
It’s unlikely that ChatGPT or any other AI language model will completely replace creative copywriters in the near future.
While AI models like ChatGPT can generate text that is grammatically correct and semantically meaningful, they lack the human creativity and emotional intelligence that is often required to write compelling, engaging copy.
Additionally, creative copywriting often involves strategic thinking, a deep understanding of target audiences, and the ability to tell a story that connects with people on an emotional level. These are skills that are currently beyond the reach of AI technology.
That being said, AI language models can certainly augment the work of creative copywriters by providing them with a tool to quickly generate ideas, make suggestions, and generate text that can serve as a starting point for further refinement.
However, for the foreseeable future, it seems likely that creative copywriting will continue to be a human-driven profession.
Were the previous two paragraphs convincing? To me at least, they illustrated my thoughts in quite a remarkable way. They were Chat GPT’s answer to my question prompt “Will Chat GPT ever completely replace creative copywriters?”
With my several explorative missions to uncover the limits (if any) of this AI tool, I found something that was glaring: while it can provide great narratives, and even give insights that I may have missed, I could never get it to give me anything substantive from a creative perspective.
It could not surprise me with a creative plot twist, or a never-before thought of concept or idea, as, at least from what I noticed, its strength lay in coalescing already existing thoughts and twists from a massive corpus of text and ideas.
Therein lies the true value, power, and influence of a good writer: bringing together insights, the audience, the best approach, the creative twist and oomph, connecting things that have never truly been connected and expressed in whatever novel way they have envisioned, and truly making an impact on every single person that lays eyes on their words.
That is a place that I don’t believe AI can ever reach. That place takes a heart. It takes a soul. It takes being human.
And if you are a machine that creates an artifice of humanity by basing your entire strength on already existing human creations and creativity, that is all you will ever be: a smart tool, never a human.
By Ziad Kurdi, Copy Lead, You Experience Beirut
