By Chelsea Saffran, Senior Creative Copywriter

When I set out to write this blog post on the ethics of using AI in marketing, I feared I had walked into a trap as a professional copywriter. The prospect of advocating for a tool that seemingly posed a threat to my professional craft was disconcerting. However, did I really want to be the traditionalist decrying a technology that’s here to stay? Surely that piece would not age well.

So, with a sense of reluctant curiosity, I added ChatGPT to my bookmarks bar. What I found from my encounter with this AI chatbot was a shift in perspective. The question I quickly identified was not whether marketers should embrace AI, but rather how to adapt to this new reality. 

First, I was genuinely curious to test the tool’s capabilities, challenging it to produce a piece of writing that meets my standards for a client-ready product. Through this thorough exploration, I can confidently say that I align with fellow writers who assert that AI is a tool, not a replacement.

AI chatbots like ChatGPT seem to excel at generating functional if not benign copy, but they fall short of any innovation or novelty. So, while one could question the ethics of a marketer lifting text straight from the chatbot, a more relevant question might be around the efficacy of doing so.

This copywriter says it perfectly on LinkedIn, albeit with a dash of snark: “If some companies are comfortable going to market with a generic, utilitarian message, they’re welcome to give it a shot. But in the battle for competitive differentiation, my money is on the businesses that put human insight, creativity and persuasion to work in their copy.”

With my professional anxieties assuaged, I began expanding my prompts to see how else an AI chatbot might be leveraged as a marketing and writing tool. And that’s when I unexpectedly fell in love.

Before the pandemic when I worked in an office, I could turn to a colleague and ask something like, “Hey, does ‘crucial’ or ‘critical’ work better in this sentence?” More often than not I asked with a preference in mind, but it was affirming to confer with a trusted teammate.

I’ve tried replicating this practice online, but wind up sifting through early-internet writing forums, with endless opinions, blocks of ads, and meandering discussions that simply arrive at: “It depends on the context…”

By contrast, let me share ChatGPT’s concise, definitive response to that same question:

ChatGPT

In many contexts, "crucial" and "critical" are used interchangeably because they both convey a sense of importance and necessity. However, there can be subtle differences in certain contexts:

• "Crucial" often emphasizes the significance of something, highlighting its essential nature or pivotal role.
   
• "Critical" tends to emphasize the necessity and urgency of something, often indicating that a situation requires careful attention or immediate action.
   

In your specific sentence, either "crucial" or "critical" can be used interchangeably without a significant change in meaning. Therefore, you could say, "...allowing your team to focus on other critical tasks" or "allowing your team to focus on other crucial tasks."

While ChatGPT may lack the finesse to produce nuanced copy independently, it can empower human users to be more effective writers. I came away from that experiment more confident in my word choice (I went with “crucial”) and excited by the future utility of my new digital coworker.

As I continue to navigate the evolving role of AI in my profession, I can regard ChatGPT not as a threat, but as a reliable ally. This new extension of my writer’s toolkit heralds an evolving symbiosis between human creativity and AI functionality, and adaptability is key to maintaining the balance.

MKP communications inc. is a New-York based marketing communications agency specializing in merger/change communications for the financial services industry.