A collective groan can be heard around the world as copy and content writers grapple with the influx of AI-generated content – wondering if they will become as redundant as Betamax video players. Here’s our take on the situation.
The short answer is no. Don’t be worried. The more complicated answer is that you have to stay relevant as a copy and content writer, with an attitude of ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join em’.
Just as other professions have changed over the years with the introduction of new technology, so writers should adapt and allow the technology to work for them, not replace them.
What are the top AI tools for writers?
The AI writing landscape has diversified well beyond ChatGPT. Content generators like Claude, Jasper, and Copy.ai take a prompt and produce new text from a topic or brief, making them strong at filling a blank page – useful for first drafts, outlines or breaking through writer’s block. For non-fiction and long-form drafting specifically, Claude has become a favourite among authors.
Fiction writers have their own dedicated tools now. Sudowrite is built specifically for creative writing rather than business content, breaking the process into stages – brainstorming characters and plot, organising them on a canvas, then generating continuations of a few hundred words when you get stuck, along with an inline thesaurus and sense-based description prompts. It remains the category leader for creative co-writing, though the output typically needs a solid editing pass to sound authentically like you, and heavy users report burning through credits quickly. Writers managing longer projects often pair it with a tool like Novel Crafter, which combines planning tools with a personal wiki that feeds character, location and plot details back into the AI to keep a novel consistent across chapters.
For polishing rather than generating, Grammarly works best as an editing companion that refines an existing draft rather than starting from scratch. It’s well suited to a final pass before publishing. If you’re reworking or simplifying existing material, QuillBot is a reliable choice for rewriting content, particularly for content writers and researchers who frequently adapt what’s already written.
It’s worth being clear-eyed about what these tools are for. None of them replace a writer’s judgement, voice, or the anecdotes and lived detail that make writing memorable (as we cover elsewhere in this piece); they’re best used to speed up the mechanical parts of the process, so you can spend more time on the parts only you can do.
So if it’s so great, can AI take the place of copy and content writers, scriptwriters, and business writers?
For some tasks… maybe. But it still has its flaws and can’t take the place of a human mind.
AI currently can’t compete with the factual accuracy of your own research, nor the originality and creativity of your own writing. Clever writers may use it to their advantage, rather than swimming against the current, perhaps using it to write an outline, or for brainstorming ideas. The introduction of AI writing tools to the general marketplace will eliminate below-average writers who are working for $5 per 1000-word article on Fiverr. Why should a client pay a bland writer to create average content for them when they could use AI and do it themselves?
Will clients expect to charge you less now that the ‘bulk’ of your work can be written by AI?
Well, they shouldn’t. What should happen is that writers who are charging an hourly rate will be able to produce better quality articles by using ChatGPT to generate the body of their content, and then spending their billable time to fact-check and add flair to the article.
Even though AI tools gather information from numerous sources across the web, that’s not to say that the information is accurate, unbiased and not plagiarised. As importantly, it takes a skilled copy or content writer to write with their client’s brand voice or tone – this is not something that AI is yet capable of doing.
Sure, you’ll get clients that say, ‘You need to start billing me less now that AI is doing your job for you’. That’s like telling a baker to charge less because they have an electric mixer and don’t have to whisk the eggs by hand – now, they have more time for intricate icing and decorating!
There’s no time like the present to upskill, improve your writing proficiency, develop a unique writing style, and take a writing course. Or, better yet, find a niche as a writer to grow your writing career.
About the Author
Rose-Anne Turner completed the Travel Writing Course at SA Writers’ College.
Since then, she’s worked as both a freelance writer, focusing on travel and lifestyle and a staff feature writer for the Samui Holiday Magazine when living in Thailand. She’s had articles published in both online and print media, including Explore Africa, Travel Ideas, Interval International, and Portugal Living, as well as inflight magazines The Holland Herald (KLM), Sawasdee (Thai Airways), and Morning Calm (Korean Air).
Rose-Anne now lives in Portugal, and aside from freelance writing, she also co-owns a TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) training company, with branches in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, helping those with wanderlust and a love of the English language find a way to live and work abroad.
