First, the brutal truth (in case the headline didn't make you wince): AI will take some writing jobs.
To be clear, I'm not talking about literature, but copy and content.
It simply will.
It already has.
Businesses that don’t care or can’t afford writing by humans (how strange, to even state that) will divest in real writers in favor of AI.
And, businesses that never considered investing in human writers now have free access to base-level writing services.
From the wider business perspective, while this doesn’t exactly level the playing field, it certainly moves it.
Meaning, every entrepreneur, business and organization can now choose to call on this base-level writing service.
Which seems..... fine?
However:
What this actually means is that everybody now sounds painfully like everybody else.
Without strategic and consistent input from the people already doing strategy-informed creative work, positioning and differentiation will suffer.
This essentially leaves us all exactly where we started.
But now we're competing in more-crowded markets (more crowded with crap, but still), which makes positioning and differentiation even more paramount, which...
Well.
It's a cycle, you see.
What has not changed is this:
Talent rises.
Human talent has the wisdom of knowing what AI can not produce. Human talent can leverage AI as a tool without terrified arms flailing in front of terrified faces, all terrified about being gobbled up.
Besides, these changing conditions will only make humans crave real, human connection—the heart of writing, really—even more.
This, I'd put money on:
That the hunger for real human connection grows at a parallel curve to this moving playing field.
Meaning, largely, the kids are gonna be aight.
Meaning, also, it’s time to get really clear on:
- what makes me unique?
- what can I contribute that nobody else can?
- what can't I outsource to AI?
- what shouldn't I outsource?
- and the most existential of all existential questions: who am I and what is my purpose?
(...perhaps that last one is just me).
Anyway, no answers now, just questions, which is firmly the only place for us to be as we navigate this fog and glimpse a new frontier, together.
