Why I don’t use ChatGPT, and why you should care

In which we carry over a rant from LinkedIn because it's just as relevant here

May 20, 2024

Not a popular position these days, is it?

Oh, I know: it’s efficient, it saves time, and it’s the way of the future. Perhaps. But I have my doubts.

I’m told that as a B2B content writer I need to get on board with this inevitable change in my industry. Definitely not.

Sorry, not sorry. I won’t.

I won’t outsource my craft to an algorithm, no matter how sophisticated or advanced.

I won’t put any amount of time or energy into prompting an AI algorithm to spit out subpar content that must be fact checked and tweaked to an extent that approaches deep research and developmental editing.

Doing content that way can take longer than writing it from scratch. It’s soul killing. And it muddies the waters.

It outsources thinking and understanding.

You might think generative AI is a shortcut to efficiency, productivity and a-maz-ing results. It’s not. It’s a shortcut to mediocrity, to irrelevant, boring and generic content that no one cares about.

What you want – what you should want, anyway – is meaningful content based on solid, factual sources and, most importantly, a very human understanding of the problem and people.

It helps to include other human things, like humour, story, rhythm and rhyme. And a delightful cultural reference or two.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Or surprising sparks of context sprinkled with subtle wordplay.

These are the things that make your readers go hmmmm.

Oh! But you can instruct ChatGPT to use your website’s content and spit out its mediocre content in your brand’s voice!

Yes. Yes, it can do that. And it’ll generate content that sounds just like your brand – but worse.

It’ll sound like your brand hungover and regretting it, the hollow, cold porcelain echoes of a voice curled up to a sweating toilet bowl and mildewed tiles.

It’ll sound like Monday morning dread and wishing you had run off with the badass leather-clad biker in high school rather than get into this line of work. Anything, anything other than this.

Zed’s dead, baby, Zed’s dead.

It’ll be vague and empty meaningless fluff, and the algorithm may or may not (no one can say for sure) swear – cross its heart and hope to die – to the absolute factual certainty of its abso-facto-lutely certain errors of fact.

Stick a needle in my eye.

It will [delve] into a [critical] [abstract concept]. Or [dive] into the [trite attribute] of [vague benefit] and [deliver] a [broad, undefined result].

It will mine and comb the thesaurus for verbose and colourfully grandiose alternative word choices and oddly out-of-place fun expressions that will disastrously make every exclamation, statement and claim awkward and twice as long as necessary, imploring you to gaze deeper into its narcissistic pool in your search for a prince charming content frog, where you will inevitably drown in the shallow depths of its false enthusiasm and calls to action.

You’ll be reaching for the flush handle and trying not to retch.

And you know what? So will your clients.

(Unless you’re in a charming old European building, in which case you will be tempted by a pull cord with a lovely brass knob dangling at the end, and will briefly consider the possibility of hanging yourself with it. At least you’d have a lovely view.)

You cannot fake connection.

Time devoted to research and writing is time dedicated to understanding your business, your clients, and their problems. In the creative hands of an authentic human (me!), that deep knowledge is transformed into meaningful connection with your human team and your human clients.

There's no room here for artificial anything.

I write to build connection and relationships.

After all, I am a sentient, intelligent, living being keen to invest myself in worthy pursuits. As are you, and your clients. Humans, all of us.

I write so that you can communicate with real people who will be excited about your products and services, who will care about how you treat them, and who will want to come back for more.

You’ll want to nurture those one-to-one relationships in a personal and human way – and I can help you do that.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in, reach out.