If you're worried about how AI will affect your job, the world of copywriters may offer a glimpse of the future.

If you’re worried about how AI will affect your job, the world of copywriters may offer a glimpse of the future.

Writer Benjamin Miller – not his real name – was thriving in early 2023. He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. “It was really engaging work,” Miller says, a chance to flex his creativity and collaborate with experts on a variety of subjects. But one day, Miller’s manager told him about a new project. “They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs,” he says. (Miller signed a non-disclosure agreement, and asked the BBC to withhold his and the company’s name.)

A month later, the business introduced an automated system. Miller’s manager would plug a headline for an article into an online form, an AI model would generate an outline based on that title, and Miller would get an alert on his computer. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, his writers would create articles around those outlines, and Miller would do a final edit before the stories were published. Miller only had a few months to adapt before he got news of a second layer of automation. Going forward, ChatGPT would write the articles in their entirety, and most of his team was fired. The few people remaining were left with an even less creative task: editing ChatGPT’s subpar text to make it sound more human.

By 2024, the company laid off the rest of Miller’s team, and he was alone. “All of a sudden I was just doing everyone’s job,” Miller says. Every day, he’d open the AI-written documents to fix the robot’s formulaic mistakes, churning out the work that used to employ dozens of people.

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    203·
    6 months ago

    Welcome to the new Industrial Revolution, where one person can do the work of many. Sure, mass produced goodscontent aren’t as good as handmade artisanal products writing, but there’s a huge market for it.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
        44·
        6 months ago

        A huge market means there’s lots of demand for the products. That doesn’t have to translate to lots of jobs for the people producing that product.

        • sunzu@kbin.run
          92·
          6 months ago

          Is there demand tho? Once people catch shit is AI they seem to lose interest.

          Can’t do much of resist anymore because shit sounds like bots half the time. Can’t even tell if it is bots tbh but can’t shake that feeling either. Lost all interest.

          • FaceDeer@fedia.io
            42·
            6 months ago

            You don’t think there’s demand for news articles? The comment I’m responding to said there isn’t a huge market. That’s all I’m arguing against here, that there is a huge market. Whether AI can fulfill it a separate issue, one that we’ll see play out.

            • sunzu@kbin.run
              41·
              6 months ago

              I don’t think people want to read air articles but I could be wrong tbh

              Time will tell how general population reacts to it.

              • Usernameblankface@lemmy.worldEnglish
                31·
                6 months ago

                If they have an emotional reaction to the headline, (positive or negative) they click. Clicks make money.

                Whether they click to read the fluff or click to share the headline doesn’t matter, a click is a click.

          • variants@possumpat.ioEnglish
            21·
            6 months ago

            The demand may not be by the end user but by businesses that need to fill stuff with filler text. Say you’re working for an automotive company and have to pull off a big email campaign you can use generative ai to help you type up a couple dozen emails, sure they’ll be crappy but you finished your work by the deadline so spending the company money for a service like that seems worth it

            • sunzu@kbin.run
              2·
              6 months ago

              If most peoples jobs really are this mindless, then i don’t know what to say…

              We got generation of educated people writing sloppy emails nobody need to be correct?

              • variants@possumpat.ioEnglish
                11·
                6 months ago

                It’s not that they shouldn’t be correct it’s that people are expected to do the job of multiple people with limited budgets so they contract their work out to services or don’t take the time to double check stuff.

                When I worked with the marketing people ot was a team of 3 that had to cover the US mexico and Canada, so they would have people on retainer to make things like art or text for a lot of the stuff, but I can see how they could use a service that used ai for those things

                Look at what happened with Wacom, so I just see this kind of cost cutting is appealing to businesses that want to cut costs at the expense of quality

                https://community.wacom.com/en-us/ai-art-marketing-response/

                Again I’m not saying it’s good but there is demand for this stuff as shitty as it is

      • kandoh@reddthat.comEnglish
        61·
        6 months ago

        Absolutely, I maintained a bunch of small business websites in the 2010s and they all had blogs attached to them, they paid people to write generic articles about nutrition or whatever just so they’d get the SEO boost out of it from Google.

        No one was reading these articles. No one cares about these articles. But posting them was very important for Google to rank you higher then your competitors.

          • sunzu@kbin.run
            2·
            6 months ago

            Yeah that’s what i am kinda shooing for. a lot of these jobs related to big tech ad eco system, it is very hard for me to care… but i also know they are coming for everyone too lol

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2·
              6 months ago

              a lot of these jobs related to big tech ad eco system

              That’s military logic in some sense. That ecosystem makes many people dependent on it. The “I use it like everyone else, but I hate it and I’ll stop if it crashes” argument is wrong. The whole mass of that ecosystem is comprised of such people.

              but i also know they are coming for everyone too lol

              It’s an old story. Most of this thing’s optimization potential lies in a few niche areas. It can’t be put where you need precision or reliability. It can’t be put where a statistical guess about human decision is insufficient. And it can’t be put where you need a human because of, sorry, smiles and nice bodies being required.

              It won’t be like the industrial revolution, because that optimized real production, very solid basic necessary jobs. This is optimizing billboard ads and newspaper boys, and people who make things we already try not to pay attention to.

              It may make some other workplaces a bit more efficient. And I agree that oligopoly, every piece of base (territory and natural resources) being already owned and technological progress, combined, lead to a bleak future.

          • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            6 months ago

            Some people dig the holes some people fill them. Everyone greatful for the job.

            If search engine fix the bullshit signifers the fake would dry up.

      • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        It’s more like publishers etc. are believing they can just produce more and more, while not realizing the market of such things are already oversaturated.