The Game Has Shifted for Copywriting

Paul Roetzer is our guest on the 335th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Paul is the host of The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Show and Founder & CEO of the Marketing AI Institute. He shares how AI can be used as a tool to increase efficiency and help grow your business. Here’s what you’ll find out: The impact AI is having on children and future generations. Is AI stealing imagination? The 3 questions you need to ask yourself as a creative using AI. Can we avoid using AI? The effects of AI-generated content and the natural human need. Low-cost and free access tools to start experimenting with AI. The areas copywriters should focus on and how they can leverage them. Should you shift your title? How to become a more efficient writer. Finding trusted voices to learn from to become more confident in AI. What AI cannot take away from copywriters. How to rid yourself of the fear that come with the never-ending updates, changes, and shifts in copywriting. Why you need to be willing to put out imperfect work. What can be streamlined with your team using AI? How does ChatGPT really work? How Paul uses AI in his business to maximize productivity without extra work. AI and fears – what does it mean for the future? Responsible principles and ethics while using AI for business and marketing. Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website AI Writer's Summit Connect with Paul on LinkedIn The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Full Transcript: Kira Hug:  When it comes to AI, it's hard not to wonder, as a creative person, if we're losing something or if we're unlocking a whole new level of creativity. In today's podcast episode, we cover the three questions we need to ask ourselves as creatives, and we dive deep into the world of AI and its applications in the business world. Our guest, Paul Roetzer, host of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Show and founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, shares his insights on how AI can be used as a tool to increase efficiency and solve business problems. Paul shares how his business uses AI for podcast transcription, summaries, blog post creation, and social media content. And naturally, it's impossible not to talk about the importance of responsible AI and how it affects our future and society. We also dive into how we can get excited about AI as creatives and accept it as part of our businesses and our lives. And yes, that intro was written in collaboration with ChatGPT because we've got to walk our talk and start experimenting with these tools. Now, let's get started. Rob Marsh:  Okay, so this part of the podcast is not written by ChatGPT. It's just me talking about the Copywriter Think Tank, that's our mastermind for copywriters and other marketers who want to do more in their business. You've heard us talk about this before. If you've been thinking about joining a mastermind and in particular, the Think Tank, now is the best time to do it because we have a retreat coming up in the first part of June. We also are planning a retreat overseas in London coming in September. Members have free access to both of those, plus a whole slew of other things that we do, including one-on-one coaching from Kira and myself on how to accomplish bigger things in your business, whether that's stepping out on stage, creating a new product, building a podcast or video channel, or maybe you're building an agency, a product company, even if you just want to become the best-known copywriter in your niche. Those are the kinds of things that we do in the Copywriter Think Tank. To find out more, visit copywriterthinktank.com, watch the short video, and then fill out the application so we can just chat and find out if the Think Tank is right for you. Okay, let's kick off our interview with Paul. Kira Hug:  All right, so Paul, I think this is a great place to start, just individual conversations the two of us have had with our kids. My son, he just turned eight. When I mentioned to him that a lot of copywriters I know are concerned about chatbots taking over their jobs and that's why I wanted to start this podcast, he immediately got teary-eyed and said, "What's going to happen if they don't have a purpose?" and followed immediately by, "Does this mean I can't be a writer?" which was really moving because I didn't even know he wanted to be a writer, so I was like, "That's a win." I mean, there was a tear, so I was like, "I was not prepared for this. I don't really know how to talk about this with him." I heard you had a similar story with your nine-year-old or a child of a similar age. Paul Roetzer:  Yeah, my daughter was ten at the time. I actually have a nine-year-old son, he wants to be a video game developer, which is a whole nother story about AI, but my daughter wants to be an artist like her mom because my wife was a painting major and she's an artist now. And so, in the summer of 2022 when I got access to DALL-E, the image generation tool, I actually debated whether or not to show it to her because I anticipated her reaction to be like the reaction your son had. And so, I decided I was going to show it to her and explain it. She knows AI. She understands how it works probably better than most business executives. I sat her down     and said, "I want to show you this new AI for artists." She just gave me that eye roll like, "I don't really want to see this." I said, "I think it's really important that you understand what it's capable of, and so I just want to show you one time." She said, "Fine." I said, "Just give me something you would want to create," and she said, "A fat fluffy unicorn dancing on rainbows." And DALL-E in eight seconds, generated six illustrations of unicorns on rainbows. She looked at me and walked out of the room and didn't want to talk about it. And so for a month or so, we did not talk about it. And then, I was building the presentation for my Marketing AI Conference keynote that was going to be in August of last year, and she came out and sat on the back patio with me. I said, "Can we talk about what you felt when I showed you that? I'd like to talk about AI and creativity in my keynote." She said, "That's fine." And I said, "Okay, well, what did you feel?" She said, "I don't like AI like you do." I said, "I don't like that it can do art like you and mommy. I don't like that it can write like me. I'm just trying to figure it out so I can help other people in their careers understand what it means and figure out what to do." She said, "Okay." So then that night we're laying in bed and she said, "You know what I don't like about that AI thing is that it's stealing people's imaginations. It's going online and it's learning from people's photos and drawings and paintings, and it's stealing their imagination. I don't ever want my artwork online because my imagination is what makes me me, and I don't want it taken from me." So yeah, that was my tears in the eye moment. You're like, "My goodness, that is a profound thing to think about." I think it's important as we go into this conversation for people to realize I am not an AI researcher, traditionally from a technology standpoint. I'm not a machine learning engineer. I'm a storyteller by trade. I came out of journalism school, and my family is full of artists and want-to-be developers, and so it's a real impact on my future and my family's future, and I'm trying to just figure it out and help other people figure it out. Kira Hug:  What would you say to her or someone like her who feels a similar way in regards to our imagination and how we can still have this imagination and how we can think about it in a new way? Paul Roetzer:  Where I landed was a couple of things. I wrote a post not too long after that, or right before that I guess, that said, "There's three main questions we have to answer in our careers, and creatives in particular: what will be lost? What will be gained? And when? So if I'm an artist or if I'm a writer, I'm going to lose something. The AI is going to do parts of what I did before. But I may unlock whole new realms of creativity, whole new realms of the ability to produce things maybe I couldn't even do before. When is it going to happen is the real key." I basically accepted that AI was coming for every knowledge and creative worker. All we had to do now was accept this and figure out what it meant and what could become possible with it. And so that led to us basically saying, "AI isn't going to replace us as writers, but writers who adopt AI will replace writers who don't." And so I think it's just our guidance and where I've landed overall is pretending like this technology isn't here and isn't affecting us is not the right path. I understand why there's fear, and I understand why in some cases there's anger and denial. I have friends that are like this, I get it, but it's not going to do you any good. What we're seeing today is the very, very early versions of what this is going to be capable of doing, and so it's really important that people just embrace the fact that this is where we are and it's where we're going to be going, and we need to figure out ways to enhance what we're capable of doing as creative professionals with it rather than trying to resist it, it's not going to work. Kira Hug:  What did your acceptance process look like? Did you just get it quickly and shift, or was it a gradual process for you over time? Paul Roetzer:  I mean, I've been studying AI for 12 years, so I would say it's probably been gradual for me, and I would also say it's probably ongoing.