Who wants to be derivative?
For a long time, I ignored all the chatter around AI. It seemed irrelevant. A lot of other writers I knew were fretting that the end was nigh, that the robots had come to replace them. For me, the threat never registered. It seemed so obvious to me that AI could never do what we do.
Isn’t AI essentially derivative? Great at synthesizing and regurgitating, but incapable of creating new ideas? My clients come to writers like me to help them do something different— to articulate a new point of view, message, and voice. The process requires strategy, research, creative thought and human intuition. If, like AI, brand writers were only paying attention to and replicating what already exists, what’s the point? Not only of our work, but of the new brands we’re paid to articulate?
Good writing starts with good thinking.
Any copywriter worth their salt does far more than just write. The product is not the words, or at least not just the words alone. The product is the thought, strategy, and analysis that goes into creating messaging that stands apart from the noise, connects with a specific audience, and expresses a brand’s personality.
I don’t expect my clients to come in with a clear idea of my process, of what it entails and why. Often, that’s why they're enlisting an expert: to lead them through something they don’t understand and can’t do on their own. It’s part of my job to educate them about what we’re doing and why.
It soon became clear that not everyone felt the same way. More and more prospect calls began to go sour— as soon as a potential client says, “Oh, that’s expensive. Especially considering we could just use AI . . .” I know I’ve lost them. They don’t understand the value of my work and it’s not worth my time and energy trying to convince them of it.
To an extent, I can empathize. This year, we’re seeing marketing budgets get slashed and brands getting scrappier— they just want stuff done. Depending on the brand and the marketing director, whether it’s done well, created to last, or engineered to convert doesn’t always seem to be a factor.
What are we trying to be free of?
A couple of months ago, my mom and brother came to visit. My mother is a librarian and an advocate against book banning. My brother is a software engineer at Google. They are both intelligent, love technology and knowledge, and value free thinking.
We got on the topic of AI. I expressed my frustration with how people are talking about AI in my industry— frustration with my peers not understanding how their value and how what they do sets them apart from robots, frustration at the clients and potential clients who believe the same. This then turned into a full blown rant against AI and technology in general. Oops.
“Ok, luddite,” said Pete. “You hate AI. So do you hate the internet?”
I paused, considering. “Actually, yes.”
His question was combative, overly simplistic, but wasn’t a pamphlet on how to downgrade my smartphone shipping to me as we spoke?
Like many people I know, I resent my codependence on technology— the way I compulsively check my phone, refresh my email, and keep scrolling even after my eyes unfocus. I wanted to reclaim my time for rest, connection, creation, real freaking life. And more so, I wanted to reclaim my mind.
I continually consider pre-21st century novelists and how they wrote masterpieces by typewriter or hand, without even a copy and paste function at their disposal— something woefully unthinkable to me. It feels like some part of my human capacity, perhaps where ingenuity and resilience overlap, might forever be inaccessible to me, stunted because of the way technology has crippled me, is enmeshed in my life and has forever impacted how I know how to think.
While AI has its place (it’s a handy thesaurus and meal planner, for instance), it is far too easy to use it to outsource working and to outsource thinking. When you google something these days, the first thing that pops up is an AI-generated summary of your searched topic. This is helpful if you’re looking up how long you should cook rice. This is dangerous if you’re researching anything of nuance or importance. It’s far, far too easy to take that summary and run, in lieu of doing your actual research and critical analysis. Next thing you know, we aren’t thinking, aren’t forming our own opinions— we’re regurgitating summaries of summaries of summaries back and forth to each other and calling it conversation.
No wonder students are finding themselves incapable of reading and comprehending entire books. No wonder apps are cropping up that will reply to your texts on your behalf— outsourcing communication, and, therefore, connection. Can you imagine two people using these autoresponders with each other, just two robots texting each other pointlessly? Did anybody think this through?
I want to know I have the stamina, the wherewithal, and the gumption to take in information, process it, form my own opinions, and articulate my argument compellingly. AI and rapid fire access to the internet at any moment makes it so easy to opt-out of this— to opt out of thinking, writing, understanding, reading, comprehending.
“I think I’m ready for a dark age.”
For the ones who love the work.
I watched Dead Poet’s Society for the first time recently. Though the movie was released in 1989 and set in the late 1950s, I was struck by its main theme and how resonant it felt for my working and personal life in 2024 and beyond:
“I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself,”
says Keating, the subversive literature teacher, to Nolan, the quasi-fascist headmaster.
And that if we don’t, the stakes are high:
“[This] is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls.”
This poem, I believe, sums up the core of my fear and my passion on this topic:
“For the Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper”
Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.
— Joseph Fasano
In work and in life, I’m daring to do the work and love the work.
This means daring to be bored, daring to be stumped, daring to brave the blank page and write and scrap it and do it all again. Daring to ask for help and hire experts to do what they do best when I need it. Daring to read and process and form opinions and then change my mind.
I’m thankful to have AI and the internet and my phone by my side in sparing doses, as tools and not crutches. I’m thankful for the creative partners and clients who want to do something new and real and creative, not just going through the motions and adding to the noise.
I invite you to join me.
