Boracic Park: The writing’s on the wall for copywriters

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

I’ve seen this quote, delivered by the bloody brilliant Jeff Goldblum playing Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, quite a lot recently. Mainly by people struggling, like I am, in similar battery powered jeeps that are breaking down right outside the velociraptor enclosure of life. 

You see, I once earned a living as a copywriter. Rephrase that. I’m still scraping a living as a copywriter but the writing’s on the wall for my career, not on the page or screen where I’d prefer it to be.

Used to be that not everyone could write to a pro standard. And that’s fair enough. Not everyone can play sports to a pro standard, or teach or trade or design. Us humans have our own skills and many rely on the uniqueness of those skills to make a living.

But that’s all under a T-Rex sized threat, and not just for copy dinosaurs like me.

Now, on top of the cost of living crisis which hopefully will be short term, comes a long term threat that could eventually lead to copywriter extinction, even for young, digital native pups.

AI is now spewing out copy like there’s no tomorrow. And it’s making the concept of there being no tomorrow for copywriters increasingly likely. OK, so the copy the bots regurgitate isn’t great and is far from original. But it’s good enough for many and is bound to get better. And the words are coming out of the ether at such a velociraptor-like speed, no typing fingers can hope to survive.

Some clients who once paid humans handsomely to craft copy are no doubt already thinking, hold on, I can get serviceable copy from a machine for a fraction of the cost. It might be bland, predictable churn stolen from what human writers were creating back pre-2022, but it will do.

Of course, there will be clients who still respect and value the uniqueness a human copywriter can bring to a brief. But will the inevitable march of progress soon see most if not all bow to the inevitable pressures on their bottom line? 

It’s a prospect that, to be frank, is putting pressure on my bottom in a squeaky bum type way.

The picture looks equally bleak for the designers, artworkers, illustrators and retouchers who populate the same media world as us copywriters. Machines are performing tasks in a fraction of the time. 

And let’s not pretend that AI is only out to steal menial, admin tasks that nobody wants to do. Designing, writing, lawyering, they’re all skilled jobs that people spend years studying and perfecting. All, and more, are under threat.

This article offers no solutions, by the way. Because other than a blanket ban on AI, are there any? The cat’s out of the bag. The genie’s out of the bottle. The toys are out of the pram in this book. The monster has escaped its pen while the ink in mine remains under-used. As a copywriter, I feel like that lawyer sitting on the crapper in Jurassic Park, trousers round ankles waiting to get swallowed up by an uncaring T-Rex, hell-bent on taking out all rivals to its plans for world domination.

The ‘scientists’, developers, whoever they are who didn’t stop to think of the impact their oh so clever creations would have on the world doubtless couldn’t give a shit. A shit the size of the pile that poorly triceratops dumps in that 1993 film I’ve been referencing throughout this. They’ll be in their bedrooms or basements preoccupied with making AI even smarter and cleverer, so that more creatives, accountants, lawyers, call centre workers and other humans with mouths to feed, children to inspire and rising mortgages to pay can get a taste of the bitterness that pervades when the skills they’ve developed over the years are usurped by faceless machines created by techies who surely could be putting their skills to a better, more positive use.

It's no spoiler to say that Jurassic Park doesn’t end well. Before the credits roll, on their way to the chopper they’ll use to flee an island that’s now controlled by out of control dinosaurs, Dr Alan Grant tells park creator John Hammond that he’s decided not to endorse the concept. Hammond has the decency to agree. It’s highly unlikely that the creators of the anti-humanity AI tech that’s specifically designed to take people’s jobs will be as remorseful, despite the damage and destruction what they’ve unleashed on the world is already doing to people’s lives. 

#CopywritersUnite 

This article was first published in 2023.