OpenAI’s ChatGPT and chatbots in general have been the talk of the town since late 2022. Unlike some of the other artificial intelligence (AI) writing bots that we’ve explored in the past, ChatGPT is a new breed of AI that pushes aside older models with its deep learning capabilities. The programme has grown so influential and powerful that even academic institutions like the Hong Kong Baptist University banned its use, and adult animated series South Park parodied the subject on how some users could easily develop an overreliance on convenience (that episode happened to be co-written by the chatbot).
Is ChatGPT really as incredible as the media has been propping up to be? If AI is now capable of writing TV shows, what’s to stop it from doing more? Could it spread to copywriting and doom our careers? Join Wordsmith and let’s find out!
What is ChatGPT?
For those who don’t know what ChatGPT is, here’s a self-description:
“ChatGPT is an AI language model based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture. It has been trained on vast amounts of text data, enabling it to generate contextually relevant, coherent, and high-quality content. Its capabilities range from simple conversational responses to more complex tasks, such as generating articles, summaries, and even creative stories.”
~ChatGPT-4
In other words, ChatGPT is able to draw from a very large bank of knowledge – from coding and cooking to architecture and astronomy. The AI can pluck out even the most obscure facts and ideas and weave them into its responses.
Although ChatGPT is publicly available online (with some limitations for free users), users in Hong Kong previously did not have access to the service without using a virtual private network (VPN). However, thanks to Quora’s Poe, we can finally join in on the hype.
After signing in, we are presented with a list of the available chatbots. For this experiment, we’ll be going with ChatGPT-4 – supposedly the most advanced chatbot available with the ability to score in the top percentile for most simulated exams and benchmark tests (the bar examination included). Since we are a free user, we can only give one prompt per day. Naturally, we gave the following prompt:
“Write an article on how ChatGPT may potentially replace copywriters in marketing”
In less than 5 minutes, ChatGPT-4 had written a complete 800-word essay on the subject.
The results were pretty scary.
Concise, clear and structured to be easily absorbed. Gone were the unnecessary repetition and the first-person narrative of its cousin AI writers. If we didn’t know any better, we might even have assumed a professional had written the material.
Is this the end of our careers?
Unlike a person, ChatGPT has no need to rest, and can crank out pages of content in record time with minimal prompt – we’d probably need an office building full of writers to keep up with how fast the AI can work! Furthermore, the AI’s work is consistent. Although ChatGPT-4 is still relatively new and is said to be prone to make occasional mistakes, its writing power is miles ahead of its predecessors. As it continues to learn (which is happening at an exponentially increasing rate with each passing day), its logic and ability to string together material gets better and better… whereas our brains of flesh and blood are only able to absorb and process so much per day.
At first glance, it certainly does seem like human copywriters and marketers are in a bit of trouble.
However, there are still limitations to an AI’s capabilities:
1. Until AIs can take on a physical form like in the film I, Robot, the bots are completely dependent on the information available online (or the reference material we make available to them) – anything that is undocumented does not exist to the AI.
· Journalism, interviews and any instances requiring physical observation or interaction with others will still require people to gather and assess the information.
2. For marketing purposes, a chatbot does not understand the tastes and preferences of audiences, nor will it know the correct way to curate content for said audiences.
· Although the AI has a near infinite number of combinations of ideas to play around with, it’ll have trouble determining which combinations are optimal for specific audiences without parameters (which require human intervention to set) – meaning there’ll need to be lots of trial and error if the AI were to operate alone. Since first impressions are everything, most companies would understandably be hesitant to let AIs take the lead.
3. As noted in the article written by ChatGPT-4, current generation AI are prone to repetition and making content that is oversaturated, which is likely due to an underdeveloped content vetting process. While people are also guilty of rehashing, most are smart enough to add some twists and personality to the reused material to make it unique from competitors. Until AIs are capable of doing so as well, we believe human writers will still have an edge.
It’s inevitable that machines will get better at what they do. Perhaps the humans of the future will have all their needs fulfilled by sentient robots (or be enslaved like in The Matrix if unfortunate enough), but until that day comes, it takes people to understand and write for other people. ChatGPT or not, copywriting and marketing is best left to human hands… for now.