“What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity.”
― William S. Burroughs
“The market’s pretty bad for writers now. Everyone is using ChatGPT to generate texts.” If I had a dollar for every time I heard this sentence, I’d be better off after the company I worked for declared bankruptcy and didn’t pay any of its 150 employees after discarding them in a pure “you’re all expendable” fashion.
It’s a pretty degrading thing to hear. “Sorry, we’re not hiring humans anymore. A robot does the job just fine, and we don’t even have to pay for it.” That’s what people sound like when they say that they prefer using ChatGPT. And you know what? That’s OK. I understand. Cutting costs is the name of the game these days. Expenses are at an all-time high and companies strive to produce more at lesser cost and at faster rates.
Well, that’s what ChatGPT does. It’s quick on the draw and it costs nothing if you’re not using the paid version. This is the point in the article where you think probably think that I’m one of those “old man yells at crowd” writers who is against everything modern. You’re not exactly wrong either. I still use pen and paper to jot down ideas, and I purposefully bought a mechanical keyboard which looks and sounds like an old timey typewriter. I don’t use grammar correction tools either. In many ways, I’m a troglodyte. Plus, I have a morbid fear of robots taking over humanity and turning us into slaves – all the more reason why you shouldn’t let your kids watch the Terminator movies unsupervised…
So, you can imagine how I felt when everyone started yapping about ChatGPT when it was released in 2022. “I knew the Wachowskis were right!” I jokingly told a friend. Before I knew it, everyone was hooked. And it didn’t take too long to hear about content writers being let go from companies after their management decided to migrate to ChatGPT. Someone could just generate a long form article with a simple prompt, pump it full of keywords, and voila! Again, less cost, less problems, zero liabilities. AI doesn’t take bathroom breaks, it doesn’t get sick, and it doesn’t ask for salary renewals.
Good Writers Adapt
“Nah, this won’t go anywhere…” I tried convincing myself. “It’s a trend…it’ll die down.” And I soldiered on with that mindset until one day a client told us – in front of our CEO – that our marketing team could just generate texts for his business using AI because “Nobody will know.” Of course, by then, I had done my research. I knew that AI-generated content was unavoidable and I either had to roll with the punches or miss the boat. So, I pulled myself together, and took ChatGPT for a test drive. Turned out it was less scary than I thought it would be. I cordially said hello, entered a prompt, and it generated a text. It was based on the prompt, had zero grammar issues, and had complete coherence and cohesion. But…it was as bland and as “meh” as a text could be. It lacked personality and it lacked “soul.” Could you include it in a blog section nevertheless? Absolutely. “Nobody would know” indeed.
It became clear to me why a client would rather use ChatGPT instead of hiring a writer. They can just ask their SEO specialist to generate a text and optimize it with keywords before publishing it on a website or using it for linkbuilding purposes. And for a time, that was definitely the case in many smaller companies who couldn’t (or didn’t want to) afford content writers. Luckily, ours didn’t make that cut.
There’s Always a Catch
The thing with trends is that there’s always an anti-thesis to them. In the case of ChatGPT, the anti-thesis was Google detecting AI generated texts and marking them as spam. By the time this article is published on my website, I’m sure that dynamic will have changed. But back then, it became a big problem – especially from an SEO point of view. And a silver lining appeared in the form of digital marketing specialists (good ones, at least), demanding human content over AI.
As all of this was happening, I was trying to figure out other aspects of ChatGPT. To this day, I’ve never generated a full text with the damn thing. My pride as a writer will not allow me to. A robot text published under my name? Never in a thousand years. But I’d be lying if I say that I haven’t fooled around with it. As far as Narek Avedyan is concerned, ChatGPT is a search engine. Just like Google, except faster and more to the point. That’s what I use it for. I ask it to generate lists of idioms, for example, so I don’t have to visit a hundred websites to find them. I ask it for synonyms when I’m too lazy to hit the thesaurus. But hey, that’s just me. I know a lot of writers who use it actively and regularly publish articles. To each their own.
They See It Typin’, They Hatin’
Listen, I don’t hate ChatGPT. I just don’t like it. The same way I don’t like online grammar correction tools like Grammarly. When I was interviewing potential writers for my previous company, I always asked them to turn off Grammarly during their pressure tests so I could measure how well they mastered the language. 7 out of 10 times, they would make the most embarrassing mistakes – which is fine if you’re a beginner writer, but a crime if you’re applying for a senior position that includes language proficiency in the list of required qualifications (which nowadays is probably generated by ChatGPT…). There was even a case where a candidate almost clawed at me after I told her that auto-correct is turned off during the test. Sure enough, a BA graduate in English produced a kindergarten-level text which would have otherwise been perfect using correction tools.
It has long become clear to me that ChatGPT is making writers lazy. Maybe it’s great for developers or digital marketing specialists. I don’t know. But I can speak as a writer. I mean, where’s all the fun of researching your topic, checking competitor texts, and figuring out what to write that’s better than everything else? Isn’t that what we’re all here for? It’s a robot, after all. It can’t generate empathy. It can’t connect with the emotional mindset of your prospective buyers. It hasn’t watched all of the popular TV series you like and the book you’ve read; it can’t use catch-phrases and quotations. All it can do is generate texts which are about as creative as a list of ingredients behind a ketchup bottle. It can generate a raw, undercooked steak that lacks any sort of seasoning and that Gordon Ramsey would probably spit out before firing your ass from Writer’s Kitchen. See that last sentence? ChatGPT can’t generate it.
Unless…
Unless you spoon-feed it. Like I said before, running into AI is unavoidable. We all use one form or another of automation in our lives, and have been doing it for a very, very long time. So, you either find common ground or you get left behind. Should you give in and start using ChatGPT to generate all of your texts for you? Sure, if you don’t want to put in the effort. Even more so, if you want to remain a generic writer whose content doesn’t differ from anyone else’s.
But, remember that good writers adapt. I don’t think ChatGPT can replace human writers any time soon, regardless of all the “it’s learning” arguments. Nevertheless, it’s a thorn in the side of many writers (just like AI-generated artwork is for designers). So, what can we do? How can we adapt? Let’s take a “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” approach to things. Aliens didn’t dump ChatGPT on us. Humans designed it, and humans are improving it. You can also be one of those humans. It’s like Charlie’s dad in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He was fired because the tooth-paste factory automated the process he was involved it. Eventually, he got a new job at the same factory…doing what? Fixing the frigging robots when they broke down. And they broke down quite often!
The Road Ahead
Will ChatGPT replace human writers? At the end of the day, nah. Just like Google Translate couldn’t replace translators. Sure, it does the job fine and the content it delivers is OK for what it is. But companies (or rather, employers) who value quality over quantity will always pitch in to hire human writers. Because they know that if their business is to engage a human audience, then no one can do it better than humans.
Right now, times are tough for writers and designers. But if you put in the hours, the blood, the sweat, and the tears, you’ll definitely be able to land a gig as a content writer at a company which appreciates your talent. Just make sure you keep following trends and always staying on top of them – no matter how fast they are. You can now harness ChatGPT for your specific needs by training it based on specific criteria. That’s the latest thing that I know exists. And this is probably a place where writers and robots can find common ground. There is still light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s just hope that it’s not computer-generated imagery, and the tunnel isn’t part of the Truman universe…
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