No machine can ever replicate human creativity. They’ll never be able to write like us, because no amount of wiring or algorithms could ever hope to match that unique human touch.
But, you know, they also might.
As the march of AI continues to gather pace, it’s only logical that people in all sorts of industries are nervously looking over their shoulder. After all, the World Economic Forum estimates that 85 million jobs will be displaced by AI by 2025.
But to see if the world of copywriting is seriously under threat from robots, we decided to check out two of the leading AI copywriting tools for ourselves: Jasper and nichesss. Here’s what we found out.
UPDATE: Since we first published this blog, a little tool called ChatGPT entered the market. Dunno if you've heard of it? Anyway, we felt like that merited a post of its own, so here's what we reckon ChatGPT means for copywriting.
Nichesss AI copywriting review
Both nichesss and Jasper have a lot, lot, LOT of different writing tools, so for a fair comparison we’re going to stick with four tools that both of them have: Blog Post Intro Generator, Short Ads Description, Listicle Items and Content Improver. Here’s how they shaped up in nichesss.
Pricing
Nichesss is currently running a deal for $59 for lifetime access to the tool. They say it’s a limited time deal, and that it’s normally $1,188 per year, but we don’t quite believe that.
Otherwise, their Starter Plan costs $19 per month. You get 200 credits for this, although it’s not entirely clear how much content that equates to. Elsewhere, the Intermediate Plan costs $39 per month, and the Pro Plan costs $99 per month.
Blog Post Intro Generator
We started by trying out their Blog Post Intro generator. For the sake of consistency, we asked it to generate a few intros for this very blog post (Will AI replace copywriters?). To do that, all you have to do is input the title of the blog into nichesss (really hate that name).
Here’s the first intro it came up with.
There has been much debate in recent years about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workforce. Some believe that AI will eventually replace many human jobs, including copywriters. While it is true that AI can create texts that are indistinguishable from those written by humans, there are several reasons why copywriters will continue to be in demand in the future.
In general this is pretty good, to be fair. It took a very simple blog post title and managed to extrapolate it into a legible, cohesive intro to the post, which also manages to generate a little bit of intrigue. If we were really stumped for an idea for an intro and this appeared, we wouldn’t necessarily use it - but we wouldn’t be against using it either. However, it does fall down on a few points.
Firstly, that first sentence does nothing to grab us whatsoever. It’s one of those generic-sounding ones that we’ve warned you time and time again to stay away from. It doesn’t generate intrigue or persuade the reader to read on. But to be fair, we’re nitpicking. It’s not bad at all, but we’re not exactly assembling the Luddites either.
Our other gripe is with the phrase ‘it is true that AI can create texts that are indistinguishable from those written by humans.’ That seems a bit of a stretch to us. It’s quite a claim to make in the intro to a blog post like this, and for us it kind of stretches the credibility of the writer a little too much.
Let’s have a look at the next blog post intro that nichesss spat out.
The Copywriter is an important cog in the advertising world. They are the ones who come up with the snappy headlines and clever turns of phrase that help sell products. But could their job soon be replaced by artificial intelligence?
Many experts believe that AI will eventually be able to do the work of a copywriter, and perhaps even do it better. After all, AI can process vast amounts of data and come up with creative solutions that a human copywriter could never hope to match.
So, is the writing on the wall for copywriters? Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure, AI is starting to make its mark in the world of advertising.
Again, this intro has the issue of using pretty massive claims right from the off: ‘many experts believe that AI will eventually be able to do the work of a copywriter.’ Wikipedia would be screaming CITATION NEEDED at the sight of that. Sentences that generate debate and intrigue are OK, but not to the point where the credibility of the writer is stretched.
And again, the first sentence is a very generic, could-have-been-written-by-anyone kinda line. And we don’t know why ‘copywriter’ has been capitalised. That apart, it’s another coherent, legible piece of copy that certainly doesn’t stick out as being terrible. And do you know what? It’s actually better than the work produced by a lot of ‘copywriters’ out there. Apart from us, obviously, ‘cause we’re great.
Short Post Ad
Next, we had a go at nichesss’ Short Post Ad generator. You stick in your company details, and it spits out short 10-20 word ads. Here are the four ads it came up with for Big Bang Copy:
Copy is the key to successful marketing. Let us help you get it right.
We help businesses find their voice. Follow us for tips on copywriting, content marketing, and more.
We write copy that sells. Check out our case studies to see the results we've achieved for our clients.
Get your website copy written by the pros. Big Bang Copy is here to help.
It’s weird. We actually thought these ads would come out better than the blog post intros, given their brevity. But they’re actually worse. They’re incredibly generic and, for us anyway, do nothing to persuade people to take action. I mean, ‘Copy is the key to successful marketing’ is a downright shit line of copy (ironically).
I guess the thing you have to remember here is that these are probably more suited to being used as inspiration, or maybe as a base to develop your copy. Just copying and pasting these ads from nichesss to Google Ads would be a colossal waste of time, but adding that little human touch of creativity might just be the key to getting the most out of nicheesss.
Listicle Items
The next tool we had a go at was their listicle item generator. For this one you just have to input the blog title, which nichesss then uses to generate a bunch of potential listicle items for your blog post. The results were…mixed. As in, the first result was literally just ‘Will AI replace copywriters’ written 15 times in a row. Must be a glitch in the Matrix. The other results were a little more normal:
OK, again, we think there’s something to go at here. Some don’t make grammatical sense (The future of copywriting is it human?), some are weirdly vague (The rise of the machines) and some are repetitive (the last three). But there are some points to expand upon. It’s a good starting point with a little bit of editing.
Yeah. The less said about this the better. Next.
Hmmm. Again, a few things to think about and maybe expand upon, but it’s quite sparse and certainly doesn’t work as a standalone list. If you combine it with the rest of nichesss’ suggestions then you could probably scramble together a listicle out of this.
Overall, there’s just about enough here to get a list of logical items you could use to write your post. Some suggestions make little to no sense, others are downright insane, but there’s enough here to use as a starting point.
Content Improver
Aha! Now this is where things are going to get fun. You’re telling us, actual professional, people-pay-us copywriters, that you’re going to improve our content? Well, let’s give this a go.
For the Content Improver we decided to use a section from the About Us section of our website. It’s not too long (there’s a 300 character limit for the tool) and we think it’s already pretty well-written already - if we say so ourselves. Here’s the original:
We've never been exposed to so much written content. From the minute we check our social media feed in the morning to browsing the web at night, we're surrounded by copywriting almost every second of every day. And to be honest, most of it isn’t very good.
And here are the three suggestions that the Content Improver came up with:
We are constantly surrounded by written content, from the moment we check our social media feeds in the morning to browsing the web at night. And while this abundance of copywriting can be overwhelming, most of it is not up to par. There are millions of companies out there
It seems that we are constantly bombarded with written content these days. Whether we are checking our social media first thing in the morning or browsing the web before bed, it seems that there is always some form of copywriting present. Unfortunately, much of this writing is subpar. With millions of companies vying for attention, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd with quality content.
It seems that we are constantly bombarded with written content, whether we are checking our social media feeds or browsing the internet. And, to be honest, a lot of it is not very well written. There are millions of companies out there
I mean, the tool essentially used a few synonyms and made it much wordier than before. We weren’t expecting miracles, but this did absolutely nothing to improve the existing content. And two of the results just ended mid-sentence.
We’re not sure there’s much you can get out of this one at all. It actively made the content worse, didn’t come up with any new ideas and basically stuffed it with synonyms and fluff. Not for us.
Jasper AI copywriting review
The results for nichesss were certainly mixed, but probably better than we were expecting. So how do they compare to Jasper? Let’s take a look at those four same writing tools, plus the price of a Jasper subscription.
Pricing
The Starter Plan costs $49 per month or $490 annually. In this plan you get access to 50+ of Jasper’s base templates, and a total of 60,000 words that Jasper can generate each month. It’s more for generating short-form content such as emails and landing pages.
The Boss Plan costs $59 per month or $590 annually. In this you get everything in the Starter Plan plus more templates, a ‘Google Docs style editor’ and a few other features. Curiously, Jasper is limited to 50,000 words in this plan - that’s 10,000 fewer than the Starter Plan. To get more you’ll have to spend more - 100,000 words comes to $99 per month or $990 annually.
Blog Post Intro Generator
Let’s start with the Blog Post Intro Generator. We put in the same details as we did into nichesss, asking Jasper to generate an intro for this very post. Here are the two intros it came up with.
As AI technology continues to evolve, some people are asking the question: will AI eventually replace copywriters? While it's still too early to say for sure, there are a number of factors that could lead to this outcome. In this blog post, we'll take a closer look at both the pros and cons of AI-driven copywriting, and explore some possible implications for the future of the industry. Stay tuned!
As AI becomes more sophisticated, there is a growing fear that it will eventually replace human workers, including copywriters. But is this really something to worry about? Learn why AI might actually help copywriters do their jobs better – and how you can make sure your business stays ahead of the curve.
Well, they’re legible. And they’re grammatically correct. But they run into similar issues as nichesss, in that they’re so obviously written by a bot. They’re generic enough so that you could substitute a few words and it would be about a different topic entirely. An engaging, eye-catching intro is absolutely vital for any half-decent blog post, and these AI-generated ones simply won’t cut it.
The intros generated by nichesss weren’t brilliant, but they were probably better than these. They were less generic and less obviously from a set template. There may have been a couple of grammatical mistakes in the nichesss intros, but they’re easily correctable. Overall they were much more engaging than these efforts. Again, though, we would never use these tools to write our own intros if this is what they come up with.
Short Ads Description
The next tool was Short Ads Description. If you remember, we weren’t best pleased with the ads that nichesss spat out, so let’s see if Jasper can do any better. Here are the four AI-generated ads it made for Big Bang Copy.
We write copy that grabs attention and converts.
Need copy that packs a punch? Look no further than Big Bang Copy.
Big Bang Copy: Writing That Wins
Win more business with eye-catching, effective copy.
We weren’t impressed with nichesss, and we’re even less impressed with Jasper. These ads struggle to say anything at all. They’re too short to make any kind of impression on you, and too generic to catch your eye.
We mentioned that the nichesss ads could probably be used better as a source of inspiration for your own ads. You could use them as a template to improve on. But I don’t think we can say the same here. These ads are so generic, so flavourless, so lacking in anything, that they really don’t serve any purpose whatsoever. Even with an extreme case of writer’s block, we reckon you could do better than this.
Listicle Items
Nichesss had some pretty mixed results for this tool, ranging from the actually-quite-good to literally generating the same word 15 times in a row. Let’s see how Jasper compares.
1. Job Losses
One of the main concerns around AI is that it will lead to job losses. This is especially true in sectors where machines can easily replicate the work that human beings do. For example, there are now software programs that can write simple articles and copy for websites. While these programs are not yet able to produce high-quality content, it is only a matter of time before they improve. This could lead to copywriters losing their jobs to machines.
2. Increased Efficiency
Another concern around AI is that it will make businesses more efficient. This could lead to copywriters being given less work to do as businesses will be able to get the same amount of work done with fewer people. This could lead to job losses for copywriters as businesses look to cut costs.
3. Quality of Work
A third concern around AI is that it will decrease the quality of work. This is because machines are not yet able to produce high-quality content on their own. They often make mistakes and produce work that is not up to the same standard as a human being. This could lead to businesses losing customers as they will not be happy with the quality of the work that they are receiving.
4. Lack of creativity
A fourth concern around AI is that it will lack creativity. This is because machines are not yet able to understand or replicate human emotions. This means that they are not able to come up with new ideas or think outside the box in the way that humans can. This could lead to businesses losing out on new opportunities as they will not have anyone who can come up with creative solutions to problems.
5. Ethical concerns
A fifth concern around AI is that it raises ethical concerns. For example, if a machine is given a task to write an advert for a product, it may use personal data from people who have previously bought the product in order to target them specifically. This could be seen as unethical as it would be using people's personal data without their consent
The first and most obvious difference is that whereas nichesss just generates a bunch of listicle items, Jasper goes ahead and writes that subsection too. In this case, Jasper probably does a better job. Nichesss had some decent ideas in there, but the listicle items here all make sense, they’re all logical and they’re all fairly well-written.
It wouldn’t take much tweaking to turn this into a fully-fledged blog post, and it would save you a shitload of time in the process. This is quite impressive, but once again we have to say that it is absolutely not better than a human copywriter. You also have the obvious issue of someone else in the world inputting the same details into Jasper for the same topic, and thus creating a near-identical post. That would lead to plagiarism and being penalised by Google - and AI-generated copy is something they’re cracking down on.
In general though; pretteh, pretteh, pretteh, pretteh good.
Content Improver
The last tool we looked at was Jasper’s version of the content improver. If you remember, we weren’t too impressed with nichesss’ efforts here. It’s fair to say that we’re even less impressed with Jasper. To recap, we used the copy from the About Us section of our website as the starting point for Jasper to ‘improve’ on.
Never have inverted commas been so necessary.
With so much content to consume, it's not surprising that most people have become frustrated with the state of copywriting. From social media feeds and blogs alike there is a overwhelming amount mediocre or poor quality words being written for them which only serve as an example by comparison - what kind person would want their world view influenced this way? We've never been exposed tp such Advanced Copy
Sorry, what? Although the rest of the content generated by Jasper at least made sense, this is littered with spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and what looks like typos. We had no idea an AI copywriting tool could make a typo. We don’t even know what it’s trying to say here.
Some of it is so bad it’s actually quite funny, at least. Like that second to last sentence: ‘what kind person would want their world view influenced this way?’ Just brilliant. Brilliantly shit. Let’s (hastily) move on.
Copywriting has become a major part in our lives. We're constantly surrounded by it and yet many times, the content is not very good or interesting at all!
That’s it. That’s the content. It just trimmed a 350-character post into two sentences that barely make any sense, and again make a couple of basic grammatical errors. We entered this with an open mind, but when it churns out copy like this it’s hard not to be critical. This is just a total waste of time.
Jasper vs nichesss
Look - we’re copywriters, so we’re naturally going to be against the idea of a bot taking our livelihoods away from us in the next few years. But we approached this with an open mind and - quite honestly - the results were maybe better than expected.
Most of the content generated by Jasper made grammatical sense, and most of it was fairly well-written. It certainly seemed less buggy than nichesss, which sometimes produced some totally bizarre results.
The blog posts intros were OK enough, and there weren’t any glaring errors in there. But as for an intro which is really going to catch anyone’s eye and convince them to read on? Nah, not for us.
The short post ads that Jasper generated were pretty dreadful, and couldn’t even be used as inspiration or anything. They were just generic ads that would be a total waste of your money if you used them in an ad campaign.
The listicle item generator on Jasper was easily the most impressive tool on the app. It took a tiny bit of information and created five relevant topics of discussion, with a neat summary of each.
Finally, the content improver tool on Jasper. Oh, Jasper. This was just terrible in every way. Neither result made any sense at all, and when we tried it on different bits of copy ourselves it was just as bad. Your content would have to be pretty fucking terrible for this to actually improve it.
The results on nichesss were certainly mixed, but it all depends on how you use the tool.
We found that the blog post intros were actually pretty well-written, making logical sense and normally adding some intrigue for the reader. Whilst we wouldn’t use them for our work, they could certainly be used as a base to work from.
The same goes for the listicle posts. All we did was input a blog title, and it generated a list of content ideas that were relevant to the piece. Some made literally no sense, but nothing’s perfect. Again, it seemed like a good way to generate new ideas if nothing else.
The ads it generated were really generic and didn’t even provide us with any inspiration to write better ads. They could have been written by anyone or - dare we say it - a bot.
Finally, we found the content improver to be a total waste of time. We assume that’s because our copy is already so brilliant that it couldn’t possibly be improved on *sarcasm*.
So, will AI replace copywriters?
In summary: no, AI isn’t going to replace copywriters just yet. Even the best bits of copy that the writing tools generated were OK at best. It’s maybe better than a lot of the work that so-called ‘copywriters’ produce, but we’re not worried about being replaced just yet - because we’re good at what we do.
However, these AI copywriting tools clearly have their uses. They’re good for generating content ideas and giving you some writing inspiration. If you used one of these tools as a base, and added your human touch to it, you could end up with some fairly decent results.
Although we might start to work closer with AI in the near future, it doesn’t look like it’ll be replacing human copywriters any time soon. We live to fight another day.
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