There’s a common joke among writers: “It’s easier to start over than to copyedit.”
Nobody laughs at the joke. They mostly just nod their heads, as if to say, “It’s funny cause it’s true.” Copyediting poor writing is a little like trying to clean a hoarded house without removing the hoard beforehand.
The interesting bit about that joke is that it came about in response to human writing, and not even necessarily poor writing. But it applies to AI-generated copy as well.
As a team of writers, proofreaders, editors, copywriters, and copyeditors who’ve seen the good, the bad, and the dreadful across nearly every industry, organization size, and type of content imaginable, we feel compelled to reveal a few downsides.
The Downsides of AI-Generated Text
We understand the impetus for using AI-generated copy. It’s fast; it’s cheap; it’s easy. It doesn’t talk back.
But these aren’t hypothetical downsides. They’re not reactive, “We’re afraid for our jobs” types. They’re not projected insecurity (i.e., “A machine can write better than moi? Better blow it to pieces.”). These are downsides we’ve already encountered, many times.
For example, consider a proposal one of our beloved clients recently submitted. We are intimately familiar with their voice, their products, their style guide, their content types, and their business model. It was immediately clear that the copy was AI-generated. It was also clear that to move it from what ranged between awkward and nonsensical to succinct and logical, we couldn’t just proofread it. We had to copyedit it…heavily.
Upon review, we made an estimated 5 times as many necessary edits as normal for jobs of the same length from this client. Oof.