I was recently connected with a Sydney marketing agency looking for blog writers. Regular, ongoing blog writing!? That’s my jam. Let’s chat stat, I thought.
Our initial discussion soon revealed it wasn’t a writing role. At least not according to them. It was editing AI blogs. “Oh, these don’t take long, and we’re offering $X per project” — $95 less than what I charge to write an original, researched, on-brand and SEO-optimised blog.
I leaned into a phrase I sometimes turn to in life.
If you don’t know, have a go.
The thing is. I knew. But I thought, let’s see what they send through to work from and how fast I can edit it to make it great, and somehow worth the rate. A personal challenge if you will.
ChatGPT was fed a Zoom discussion transcript (and prompts I didn’t see) to generate the initial content. I borrowed the structure and a few lines from it but it was a ground up write to turn it into something I was comfortable giving back to the client for review. The final product bore zero resemblance to the poor excuse for a first draft the bot shat out.
Transforming bot turds into something worth reading still takes writing know-how, effort and time, even with my years of experience. And if not especially because of my years of experience, I deserve to be paid for that, not simply how long someone thinks a job should take. That’s not how this shit works. It continually blows me away how enamoured marketing professionals are with AI writing. It’s fast, yes and we’ll never be able to write that fast. But what it produces (because it doesn’t create anything, let’s remember that) is far from exemplary. And for it to be possible for AI to become that, it requires raw, organic data from us mere mortals to amalgamate and aggregate so it doesn’t become the snake that eats its own tail. I love editing, but I want to edit other human’s work and have conversations around the how and why of the changes and continue to learn and grow from the process.
I thought AI was going to be our bitch
And in many cases, it is: grammar checkers, chatbots, schedulers, automation, transcription, and meeting assistants. With AI content producers though, it still has a long way to go—even the paid versions. I’ve tried a few and I am yet to see it come up with a phrase that pulls me into a deep resonance pause or makes me wish I had written it. Yes they’re great for people who aren’t natural writers and it does take the leg work out of idea generation and structure formulation. Brilliant when you’re on a tight timeline, but the uncomfortable starting out process is often where magic alchemizes. I can already feel my writing approach lazily shifting with using these tools and I’m being mindful of leaning into them too much.
Despite being paid for the test, I regret not trusting myself more and declining from the outset. It was informative to know there are agencies who think this is the way forward, but in mapping this road they’re fast tracking the displacement of human writers.
Writers’ Rights
I used to fight for my right to party. Beastie Boys, anyone? Now I fight for the rights of writers. Twenty-twenty-four is wild, isn’t it. Still on AI. Those rights are those of authors and writers to receive consent for the use of their work and be credited and compensated before big tech mobs use it to feed their gluttonous AI beasts. Right now, that’s not happening. You can support through the organisations like Algorithmic Justice League and Australian Authors Association who are speaking up about AI programming biases and writer’s rightful acknowledgement and compensation.
The Blogging Breakthough. An eBook with a wildly generous ROI
Speaking of blog writing. If you want to write regular ones, I’ve zhushed my e-Book The Blogging Breakthrough. It’s now a paid product because the value is incredible! I’ve beefed up the existing tips and strategies for planning, researching, structuring and writing regular blogs (yep, including using AI) PLUS inside is a bonus offer if you actually put the methods to work and it will help you immensely if you’re serious about writing regular blogs as core content. The bonus alone is worth over $120, making the $37 spend a thrifty investment.
Blogging businesses generate 2x more email traffic and 126% higher lead growth than those that don’t (Blog Tyrant)
