Yes, a robot wrote the title of this article and could have even written the whole article (though we decided against it this time). But imagine a tool capable of collating all the information published online and ordering it into a well-structured text that fit the search intentions of your target audience. All in a matter of seconds. Isn’t that what all copywriters, marketing managers, and even journalists dream of?
Well, it’s already a reality and, though there are those who still advocate for traditional writing, it is becoming increasingly clear that automatic text generators are revolutionizing the industry. You’ve probably heard how artificial intelligence tools are growing in popularity among content creators. But is it all good news or are there any hidden dangers? Is artificial intelligence really a useful tool for writers or could it become a threat to the profession?
Today we’re putting Jasper.ai to the test. It’s the sector’s leading platform and promises to help marketing professionals and journalists with their content creation.
According to the website, over 50,000 users are currently using it to write content. If we take a look at the pricing plans, we’re presented with two options:
This tool works thanks to GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) technology, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to generate texts of such high quality that it’s difficult to distinguish them from those human beings have written. OpenAI is the artificial intelligence research company responsible for developing this technology and is funded by Elon Musk, among others. As the company explains, “to date, over 300 applications are using GPT-3. In the industry and production sectors, as well as education, creative industries and even the world of videogames”.
Jasper is one of these applications. There you’ll find templates for improving texts you already have, and you’ll be able to write messages for your digital marketing campaigns from scratch. It can also help you write SEO articles that improve your website’s search engine positioning, or full product pages, and will even provide you with ideas for writing a YouTube video script. You’ll have your texts ready to publish in a matter of minutes. But is that enough? Let’s try it out.
Let’s imagine we want to write an article on the increased use of artificial intelligence in copywriting. We open the platform. We create a new document. First we need to write a short summary and enter some keywords:
We press Ctrl/Command + J and Jasper starts writing:
“As marketing managers, we’re always looking for ways to improve the quality and quantity of our content. We want our copywriters to be able to produce more higher-quality content, faster. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help with both things”, it writes within three seconds.
It doesn’t take long for us to see that Jasper.ai is one of the highest-quality tools for creating texts using AI. All you have to do is tell it what you want to talk about, enter the keywords you think are essential, and use the commands that the website gives you to create the content.
We do however recommend that you always add your personal touch, polishing the text for style and reviewing its tone of voice. You’ll certainly have more to bring to it if you’re coming at it fresh, because artificial intelligence has done all the hard work for you. Jasper agrees:
“Artificial intelligence assistants are increasingly popular among content creators, especially copywriters. These tools can help automate some of the most mundane tasks associated with editing, such as research and fact-checking. AI assistants can also provide instant comments on grammar and style. As a result, many content creators are discovering that AI assistants make their life easier and allow them to focus on the more creative aspects of writing. But it’s important to bear in mind that AI assistants are still in the early stages of development. Human copywriters still can’t be replaced completely. There is also always the risk that artificial intelligence becomes advanced enough to learn how to write texts itself. For now, though, AI assistants remain a valuable tool for content creators”, reads the automatically generated content.
As Jasper itself says, it isn’t perfect yet. Every few minutes, you need to write “****”. That’s the shortcut to tell the robot to reset the constant search for words, which sometimes gets stuck in a loop and repeats entire paragraphs. The tool may be very valuable for gathering information, but the lack of human brain involvement shows how necessary it is for common sense and critical thinking to be involved in our writing. This is clear to see when using the “Paragraph generator” template, if we enter “Jasper errors” as the topic and set the keyword as “artificial intelligence assistant”:
“Jasper is an artificial intelligence tool created by the company Exceed. Jasper is designed to help businesses improve and optimize their operations. However, Jasper has had a significant impact on the labor market, reducing the demand for qualified workers in a range of industries. This is primarily due to Jasper’s ability to perform tasks that used to require humans to complete them manually. Often, Jasper can perform these tasks more efficiently and accurately than human staff, which has led to a significant reduction in workforce demand. This has had a particularly negative effect on unqualified workers, many of whom have been left unemployed”, it says. The description may fit, but Jasper was founded by a company called Underproof. While there may not be anything wrong with Jasper’s argument, the data it gathers is not always quite right, so make sure to do thorough research beforehand to check that what it writes is actually correct.
As we’ve said, tools like Jasper are very useful in certain situations.
It may be the most well-known and inexpensive, but Jasper isn’t your only option. Even The Guardian publishes articles written by this type of robot (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3). There are other tools, such as Copy.ai, which are also perfect if you want to find ideas for our articles, though you won’t generate complete texts for you. With Rytr, you can test out a free version, though it’s rather limited in terms of number of characters allowed. Writesonic, Copymatic and many others will also help you generate the content you need.
If there’s one thing a copywriter must be clear about before starting to write, it’s knowing who they’re writing to and what they want to say. Only human talent is capable of telling stories that hook the user and make them feel something.
For that, artificial intelligence tools should never take the place of copywriters. They may be ideal for gathering information, providing inspiration or improving the SEO of your texts, but leaving your entire job in their hands could dumb down the quality of your content and, in the long run, damage your reputation.
These platforms can help you with the onerous part of writing, but they’ll never be able to replace a copywriter’s creativity and experience.
We’re clear about that at Beluga. We’re passionate about technology and innovation, which of course we use as tools to do the best job possible, but as pioneers in the internationalization and translation industry, our company always puts people at the heart of what we do. Because it’s a human talent that enables technology to take us further and not the other way around. Come and see for yourself at Beluga Linguistics.