I’m a Copywriter who doesn’t use AI (and I’m not the only one)

A couple of years ago I drew a line in the sand.

Everyone, or at least it felt like everyone, was banging on about using AI for Copywriting. The general gist was that if you didn’t, you’d get left behind. “It will make you faster.” “It will do all the hard work for you.” “It will tuck you in at night and bring you a lovely cup of cocoa.”

I wasn’t having any of it.

I’d been writing copy for the best part of four decades and no filthy, planet gobbling machine was going to take that away from me.

I ignored the collective prattle and went public. ‘I do not, and will not, use AI to think, write or edit for me.’

I put it on my about page for all to see. Publish and be damned.

Sometimes you have to follow your gut, no matter the consequences.

Then earlier this year I went a step further and signed up to Mine Not Machine – ‘The certification that proves your copy is human’. In fact, I was the first signatory.

At the time of writing, there are only five of us brave souls on the Mine Not Machine website. Probably (total guess) less than half a half a percent of UK Copywriters.

Are we the last few soldiers dug in, 100 yard stares, defending the flag, battered, snotty and dishevelled?

Judging by the amount of AI cack that tries to burrow its way into my life every day, it certainly seems so.

Calling all Copywriters who don’t use AI

But I have faith.

So I did a little shoutout on LinkedIn and it went something like this:

You’re a Copywriter and you wouldn’t touch an AI assistant with a barge pole.

Sound like you?

If so, I want to celebrate you and your wicked wordy ways.

Drop me a DM, or plop a comment below. Tell me what kind of copywriting you do and how long you’ve been doing it. Tell me why you’ve rejected the use of AI in your writing and why. Have you dabbled and not been convinced about the results? Have you been tempted? Have you been pressurised by the ‘don’t get left behind’ crowd?

What’s put you off?

Tell me how your ‘no’ AI’ stance has affected your job, income, mental state…

Get it off your chest, cos I’ll be putting all the juicy bits into my next blog post.

Tell me if you want to remain anonymous. Tell me if you want a link back to your website.
You have the power.

Love you. x x x ✊

And, by golly, a head popped up from a nearby trench, then another and another…

Copywriters, journalists, strategists, authors – actual humans who write from their experiences, with their minds, hearts and souls. Grab a bucket of your favourite hot beverage and a packet of biscuits, because here’s what they had to say – and it’s a lot:

Camp 1: Non-AI copywriting (never used it, never will)

‘Gut truth is that I grew up creative and everything about AI copy and creation seems lazy, crap and pointless. Throw in the promise of the Apocalypse, breweries running out of beer, and The Jumped-up & Delusional demanding planet-wide fealty, and the whole ‘inevitable’, ‘Luddite-crushing’ scheme becomes even more of a NO for me. I realise this means plenty of people won’t want to work with me, but such is The Sorting Hat.’
Steven W.

–

‘I’ve been copywriting for many years. Writing scripts and novels for even longer. I hate AI with a passion. Never use it and never will. We are here to create not prompt.’
Sean Luckett

–

‘I wouldn’t want to cut out the messy thinking bit. Tinkering with thoughts, weighing up the structure of a piece of writing, it’s all part of the process of problem solving through language.
It can be exasperating at times, but that’s the joy of the challenge.’
Leigh James

–

‘I have a strong no-AI stance. It has impacted my mental state in that I get really down about the state of the world. Losing clients to AI SUCKS! But I think some people are seeing the light. I want to keep fighting to protect creatives and our ability to write.’
Kiri Nowak-Smith

–

‘AI is reliant on theft. Of IP, data, livelihoods. It is already contributing to widespread economic hardship in Australia (where I live), and it is already being used in misleading, unethical ways.
There is a growing sense of outrage in the community – about the lack of transparency, choice, regulation or guardrails. AI appears to be just another form of oppression of the many by a profiteering few.
I’m a copywriter and I believe our fundraising sector exists – primarily – to facilitate good. So I don’t and won’t use AI. It’s an evil scam.’
Mary Anne Plummer MFIA

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‘I sit back and watch the companies use generated AI, not knowing that their clients are beginning to push back against it. It all has the same sad rhythm and the grouping of three! And, of course, the embarrassing mistakes that they feed to customers. I began my journalism career with a landline, a pen and a notebook. No internet, no social media etc. Just that list of three!’
Gillian McDade-Hastings

–

‘I don’t use AI and that’s made no difference to my business – unless you count the fact that I’ve had my best year ever, 30% up on last year.
The way I see it, I don’t have a problem that needs fixing so I don’t need a new tool. I also hate kitchen gadgets like bread-makers and air-fryers, they clog up the kitchen and end up at the dump. Not necessary!
I try to work with as simple tools as possible. That includes my brain, some notebooks and real-time conversations with other people. I don’t want to remove the hard work. The hard work is important, and often it’s the enjoyable bit too. I’m struggling to see the benefits, and am very clear on a ton of negatives.’
Emily Penny

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‘I write all kinds of copy, but mostly I write teaching and learning resources for children and teachers. I wouldn’t touch AI – how would my materials have any credibility or claim any understanding of how children learn and what teachers need to teach if I did? And as a lecturer I saw first-hand what an AI-produced essay looked like – it’s just words, signifying nothing (apologies to Macbeth).’
Lucy Marcovitch

–

‘The joy of writing is in the wrestling, the cutting, the reframing and the – hopefully! – final sense of ‘Ahh. That’s the one.’ I don’t want to lose my ability to wrangle and tease out gold from a jumble of words. I’d like to keep strengthening my wordplay muscles!
And I really reject the slide towards – ‘well we might as well embrace it because it’s happening.’ It feels like a small power to push back on tech that is being positioned as the defacto destination for so many of us in creative industries.’
Hannah Vincent

–

‘Because I worked too hard to get where I am to give it away,
Because as a fundraising copywriter I need to write real human stories.
Because the fact that it is not easy is the whole point of writing.
Don’t use it, never have and never will.’
Anne George

–

‘So many reasons!
1) AI copy isn’t good, and it is getting worse as the platforms ‘learn’ more from increasing amounts of content slop being put out into the world.
2) Writing is thinking. Brands need to form opinions and viewpoints, and have a personality. That comes from people’s hearts and minds, and is so often drawn out in conversation between a copywriter/brand consultant and the business – thinking together. AI is not capable of doing this.
3) My own environmental impact as a working brain is far smaller than AI.
4) I enjoy writing, it’s why I do the job I do. Why would I outsource the parts of the job I love, and be left with what? Invoicing and emails (snore…)
5) I have dabbled with AI to see if it can analyse data to find a story, to see if it can take a messaging and brand voice toolkit and create first drafts of copy, given a brief and a selection of ideas. I have learned how to set up projects, contexts, and to prompt well. And I can report confidently that the hours invested in this experiment were nothing but a deeply frustrating experience, that led to stories full of data errors, abstract and poorly written copy, and a dystopian feeling of absolute insanity that I do not wish to repeat!’
Katherine Kowalski

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‘I’m a copywriter who began my own solo business back in January offering strategy and writing help to local businesses here in Cincinnati.
I believe writing is a uniquely human experience. Some things can’t be synthetic, and writing is one of them. AI is perfectly capable of writing things like rental applications, but the second you use it for something that requires resonance, it fails 100% of the time.
I find it hard not to become discouraged at the overwhelming lack of discernment in what makes quality writing from business owners and decision makers.
All the same, I think this whole crazy experience will heighten the status quo and at that point, strong human writing will be more valued than ever.’
Cody Pelle

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‘I’m literally just starting out with copywriting, haven’t even gotten my first paid gig yet, but I truly want to build this skill and with AI I cannot do that. I won’t learn anything if something else does the work for me.’
Jolanda Zweers

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‘I’ve been spending the last couple of months refining my writing, working on a portfolio, and I’m still working on the basics. Every time I see an ad for an AI trainer or I’m almost finished with my 10th application of the day and I see “our AI program will see if you’re a good fit, but all hiring decisions will be made by a human team” it makes me want to cry.
Sometimes it’s easy to understand why people use AI instead of doing the work, but it just pushes me harder, because ultimately it may not be perfect or getting me paid yet, but it’s mine.’
Katelynn Stariha

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‘I have been working in marketing for more than two decades, starting in customer magazines, followed by direct mail and digital campaigns, product marketing, then setting up my own remote marketing and consultancy business. Throughout that time, words and the power of communication have been the driving force behind my love of marketing… more so than any other element. My pet peeves in modern communications are reliance on AI and the use of clickbait and sensationalism… so much that I co-founded an online lifestyle magazine with a fellow like-minded writer where we actively state that the content is written with authenticity at its heart… no clickbait, no AI.’
Donna Williams

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‘I have rejected the use of AI for any content creation and I stand firm!
To be a good writer, you need to read, to be able to research, to think and to imagine. Churning out 1000 words is not the same skill and will not deliver the same output. Same for graphic design.
I’m a mum of a teenager and I volunteer with a youth organisation. I have serious concerns about the career prospects for these brilliant young people when AI is wiping out entry-level positions everywhere I look. “Don’t get left behind” – nah, I’m happy here, thanks!’
Victoria Gregson

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‘I’m super new to copywriting but even before that I have refused to touch it. Not only does it steal artists work, but it pollutes water systems through its definitely ‘closed loop system’ that puts biocides into whatever water waste that comes out of it.’
Sophie Wills

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‘Not even slightly tempted. Been writing over 20 years because I enjoy writing – the entire process. I don’t even want AI to do my SEO keyword research as that research helps me get to know my clients and their competitors, so what good would outsourcing it really do?
I don’t want a machine to make writing quicker/easier. I’m not convinced it will either, as I’ll just have to edit the heck out of it to make it sound more human.
I just spent almost a year with no work as all my retainer clients thought the grass was greener with the robots. I’ve pivoted to align myself with clients and industries that appreciate and value heart-led copy written using real human experiences. I think there’s hope at the end of the tunnel.’
Katy Lasseter

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‘I’ve been a copywriter for nearly 20 years and love what I do. The sense of satisfaction you get from working through the process and delivering something original and perfectly targeted is everything. I do a lot of strategy and sales copy and the real magic is created because of a deep understanding of human emotions and behaviours.’
Kamilah McDonald

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‘I’ve also never used AI for my work. To use it for the actual ‘writing’ part would make me feel inauthentic in calling myself a writer.
I get it for research or perhaps idea generation, but even then, you’re basically just harvesting a crop that’s made up of everyone else’s ideas.’
Bradley Gerrard

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‘*Adjusts tinfoil hat*
It’s how it’s been marketed and initially pitched. It’s who owns the technology and who it impacts and why. The people who own Anthropic, Claude, etc. have a raging hate boner for workers. They pitched this tech to investors as a way to reduce and eliminate labour. 
That’s the entire point of it. That is why and how it was conceived in such iniquity.
All this talk about how it’s a “productivity hack” and will “cure cancer” and “solve the climate crisis” is all smoke and mirrors. Lies, confusion, snake oil, and deliberate obfuscation of the truth of the matter – to take your job, and really everyone’s job, so the tech oligarchs can go live in a utopian bunker. 
LLMs are the physical embodiment of lies, damned lies, and corruption all the way from the top down. 
Oh and it can’t write for s*** anyway. That’s a big reason I don’t use it for writing.’
(Copywriter for ten-ish years. Fiction author first. Oligarch-hater always.)
Antoinette Walton

Camp 2: Have dabbled/been forced to use it, not convinced

‘I wouldn’t use AI to write my content any more than I’d expect McDonalds to serve me a Rustlers burger. People hire me to do a job, there’s no point in them hiring me to do something they could do for free using ChatGPT or Gemini. They’re paying for MY talent and 40 years of writing experience, MY voice, MY ability to include awkward SEO keywords without destroying the grammar of a sentence.

And yes, I have experimented with AI as a research, writing and editing tool. It’s unreliable for research – it hallucinates ‘facts’ that aren’t just wrong, but never existed in the first place. It uses the most wooden, cliched phrases and sentence structures. It erases the natural warmth of human-written content. Every time I have shared content with someone after any AI involvement *without telling them I used AI* they have told me it’s not up to my usual standard.

(To be clear, I’ve never used it in paid client work – I’m talking about experimental content I’ve produced purely as a test.) Besides all of that, I believe copyrighted content has been scraped without permission to train the vast majority of gen-AI LLMs. It freely infringes the ‘moral rights’ under UK copyright law, such as the right to be identified as the author of my published works, and to not be misattributed as the author of things I didn’t write. (Gemini once told me that I wrote The Tell-Tale Heart, which is by Edgar Allan Poe…)

So for client value, content quality and ethical concerns, it’s a no from me. As a glorified search engine, I may use it and then manually check every URL for the actual first-party source material, but that’s my limit. All actual creative work and all content I produce for paying customers is written from scratch by me.’
Bob Bardsley

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‘AI rejecter here 🙋‍♀️
I’ve literally just gone freelance, but have worked in marketing and copywriting for around 12 years.
Honestly, I’ve barely even touched AI. For some reason it just feels wrong… It’s never come close to how I want to write things, and tbh it feels like I’m cheating my clients. They’re paying me for my weird brain and my weird words, and that’s what I want to give them.
Perhaps there’s a space for AI in research, but I also love doing that and it helps me get in the zone to write the piece, so I’m loathe to hand this over to AI either! Plus, quite often AI spurts out a right load of s*** 🤣’
Holly Woodville

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‘I’ve been on a rollercoaster with AI this year. When ChatGPT was all the rage a few years ago I was adamant I’d never use it and couldn’t see the point.
Then my employers started pushing Copilot and other AI models to make us work more efficiently, so I started dabbling with how AI could help in just the day to day admin of work.

When I went freelance, earlier this year, my new laptop came with a shiny Copilot all ready to go. So I started chatting to ‘Copi’, at first just to replace the “hey can I just bounce an idea off you” chat, while I was starting to find my feet doing client work independently.

Gradually it became a way to sense-check assumptions about the organisations I was writing for (I’m an IC specialist), then to double-check the nitty-gritty details of pensions law, and then I started gently inviting it into the actual ‘thinking’ stuff.

At first I was very firm: ‘just help me figure out the structure for this. just give me bullet points. don’t write the copy, that’s my job’. But…

I was working on a massive project for a major corporate client, and a lot of it was quite dry – the goal was to put it into a more engaging and fun TOV, but there was so. damn. much. And eventually, I’d start asking Copi to help come up with the structure for a page, and then I’d ask it to ‘show me a first draft’ that I’d then ‘develop’.

For some of the more nondescript content, it was fine. Bland, a bit meh, did what it needed to. So a few times I just copy and pasted those drafts pretty much straight in.

But as I was looking at the copy it just felt ‘flat’. Communicating to employees about their benefits isn’t just a case of telling them what’s available and how they access it. It’s about the human need underneath that, the messy weird stuff that AI can’t really do because it doesn’t know what ‘worry’ feels like, it just knows the word ‘worry’.

And I realised I felt really lazy. I was outsourcing the most important – and fun – part of my work, the slow thinking that makes the end result better. And I was turning to AI for more and more, and rather than saving me time, I was spending so long chatting to ‘Copi’ that I was losing massive chunks of my day.

So a couple of months ago I just stopped. No more “hey can you help me plan out my day?” No more “help me map out the structure for this page.” And definitely no “just… show me a first draft.”

(Although I did use Gemini to write a cold outreach LinkedIn message to someone the other day because marketing myself makes me want to put my toenails in a blender. But the messages I made myself write were immediately much better so I also regret that message too…)’
Clare Mohan Lord

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‘I just can’t do it.
I was quite naive last year, and did use it once or twice, until I got the bollocking of a life time from a now ex friend.
But the bollocking was needed. The severe damage to the environment, the amount of jobs it has taken from too many people, especially creatives.
Plus, it’s just stealing ideas from people’s work that already exists?
Why plagiarise when you can use the thing that’s LITERALLY MADE TO MAKE YOU THINK OF THINGS!’
Harriet Massey

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‘I do a lot of long-form copy and when I had to work with a LOT of AI in copy, I found it mind-numbingly dull, arranging words into sentences that leave me wondering, “What IS that? Ew.” It’s exhausting to fix it and I just feel like there’s constant cognitive dissonance trying to work with AI-generated content. It’s a drain on my joy in writing, my creative thinking, and my ability to make my own connections between ideas. I’m freelancing atm and will only take projects/roles that allow me the freedom to decide how and what I will and will not use AI for.’
Heideli Loubser

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‘So my professional background when it comes to writing is a mix of brand and content copywriting, media and public relations, and narrative design.

I don’t hold an anti-AI stance, but it’s a very cynical and exhausted one.

I’ve dabbled across most of the major models – mostly GPT, Claude, Mistral, and Gemini. I find their capabilities for the most part genuinely impressive in terms of how they’re replacing search functions and how quickly they can parse data, but I find their ‘creative’ output lacking.

I’ve given things a go and done all sorts of different ‘hacks’ to have tools mimic your style, and it’s never on point. The tools always recursively return to this strange inhuman voice that’s like reading a facsimile of my own work. You then spend so much time trying to ‘fix’ it you may as well have just written the thing in the first place.

As a research tool, or a whiteboard to try and keep you thinking, I think they could have value. Actually producing the final output, it’s just crap and uninteresting. I saw this happen wholesale in one of my last public sector postings where in a short space of time almost every comms person stopped sounding human and started sounding like Copilot. People got lazier and now it was using AI to draft something to then send it to someone else who would check it with AI.

What I find exhausting is that AI gets treated as this monolithic thing. In truth, most people don’t really care about using AI for utilitarian stuff like managing your calendar or managing your Notion workspace.

But when it comes to creative work, there’s this dissonance where people who are ardently pro-AI are all too eager to tell creatives their days are up and infer their work has no value (removing the gatekeeping of creativity is a particularly hated statement), but at the same time they’re desperate to use AI to receive inclusion into and acceptance from the disciplines they deride. Their output then is beyond criticism because we should marvel that AI did it, not assess it on its own merits.

But it’s becoming harder to not be enthusiastic about AI. Job ads that having nothing to do with AI include it as necessary skills and recruiters are encouraging you to play up and include all the tools on your CV because employers are buying into the hype. So you feel the pressure that you have to bullshit up how hyped you are about these tools and then wanting to hit your head into a wall.

I did have an interview for a contract that I didn’t get where the discussion pivoted away from previous work examples around strategy to focus on how I used or would use AI to deliver the same kind of work. The truth is that I don’t need to use it because I’m good at my job. But I have a suspicion that because I didn’t say that I was excited to have my Grok Bot liaise with Claude to manage my GPT outputs linked to my Townie that I was seen as a luddite.’
James Calverley

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‘I’ve dabbled. Not because I would ever consider writing with it, but in a ‘know your enemy’ kind of way. I wanted to try it out, see what it was capable of, and blog about the results I got.

I wasn’t impressed, so I’ve been vehemently against it from the start and I’ve definitely lost work as a result. Mostly ridiculous projects I had to turn down because they were either unworkable or would have been disastrous for the websites involved.

Now I’m starting to see a change. People are coming to me because of my anti-AI stance. Some because they want things done properly and they don’t want to sound like everyone else. Some because they’re noticing AI slop everywhere and they don’t want to be associated with it.’
Jenny Lucas

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‘Worked as a senior content writer for an agency for 2.5 years. Never used AI at all before (in my previous 8+ freelance career). I’m not that interested in tech stuff, generally and am definitely NOT a ‘first adopter.’

Was encourage by my employers to use Claude and given training. Found to be:
Frustrating – it doesn’t do what you ask, even with specific prompts
Infuriating – it makes up research that doesn’t exist and asks, ‘sorry, did you want verifiable sources?’ (I kid you not, that’s a direct quote.)
Time-consuming – I’m quicker at doing most stuff myself.

I found it good for:
– quickly summarising a general brief to send to another writer. (Which I then added to.)
– taking a short video transcript and organising it into a carousel.
– getting over the blank page. It immediately gives you what you don’t want and then you can work from there.

So, back to my story. Got made redundant last month because the agency founders and AI will be doing our writing jobs from now on. (There were 2 of us who lost our jobs at the same time.)

This is way more than ironic, Alanis, this is a big punch in the face.
To be totally fair, they’re also taking their agency in a new direction – towards more video and less words. And they’re genuinely lovely humans.
But…WTAF.

One more thing (slipped into Columbo mode)…

Before I got this job originally, a freelance client really annoyed me and I’m not sure how common this is. I’d done a few blogs for her – all good. Then I got a very accusatory email from her telling me that she’d put my last blog through an AI detector and it came up with 60% being written by AI! 🤬 She also said it was shorter than the others by quite some way.

I replied with the part of the brief that showed she asked for it to be shorter. Explained I didn’t use AI and linked her to an article showing how unreliable detector tools can be. And also pointed out the main section highlighted by her detective was a direct quote from The Washington Post! Written in quote marks, with the link to the piece!!!

Never heard from her again and still regret not phoning her to talk it through.

I’m very glad that someone of your standing (that sounds way more pompous than I mean it to!) is publicly talking about this subject in relation to our industry. Thank you.’
Anne Nonymous

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‘I don’t use AI in my writing for one simple reason: I like to use my brain. Of course, I’ve dabbled, who hasn’t?! But it’s not a magic elixir of creativity that many have claimed it to be.’
Hayley Maguire

Camp 3: Use AI for researchy stuff, but not the actual writing

‘I have a whole POLICY about it.’

(Here are some bits I’ve lifted, Ed):
I don’t use AI to write or edit anything. Writing and editing involves thinking, and I have spent several decades charging people for my thinking, judgment and intuition. When you commission me to write for you, you’re paying for this expertise, not my ability to type.
Why would I outsource the most valuable part of my service – the one people choose me and pay me for – to a machine? 
And from your point of view, if I can’t be bothered to write it myself, why should you be bothered to read it?

I occasionally use AI for desk research, when I need a very specific answer… I type the question into Google and check the Gemini AI results that appear at the top of page one… That normally produces a reasonably credible answer which I can then go into more deeply. I’ll follow the links provided to see if the answer holds up. If it doesn’t, I search again using established news websites, directories or company sites… I can’t think of anything else I would use AI for. I am not a writer who boasts about speed or volume of words. So writing faster or producing more content are not selling points for me, and I believe generative AI has devastating implications for people’s ability to create and think for themselves.

‘I am not a Luddite, but until AI can offer a measurable benefit to my writing or editing, I’ll take a pass.’
Mary Whitehouse

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‘Anti-AI Writer here! Been in comms and writing for almost 20 years (so wayy before AI!), and so the advent of AI hasn’t really been any advantage to my writing. I’ll be honest, I do occasionally use it for initial research but I always take its output with a pinch of salt and these days I find it takes just as long to fact check the output of its research than just doing the research myself the ‘old fashioned way’.

There is definitely a lot of pressure to use AI… the old ‘It’s just a tool’ arguments, and the ‘if the quality is good why does it matter’ rhetoric, but it just doesn’t fly for me. I’ve been occasionally handed AI drafts from clients and asked to edit them to ‘make them sound more human and make the argument better’, and I more often than not find that by the time I’ve finished I’ve basically rewritten the thing from scratch but it’s just taken me almost twice as long!

So… for all the reasons above, for now, I will stay as a fully human, zero-AI generated writer and copywriter…. and I can’t see that changing any time soon.’
Alex McNab

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‘I think AI can be a useful tool for copywriters, especially for research, brainstorming and getting past a blank page. But there’s a difference between using it to support your thinking and relying on it to do the thinking for you. The concern I have is that as more businesses turn to AI to cut costs, entry-level opportunities for writers may become harder to find. For someone trying to get their first break, that can be discouraging. I don’t think human copywriting is becoming irrelevant; I think the value of original thinking, understanding an audience and knowing what to say still matters enormously.’
Asma Masood Iqbal

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‘I have endless complaints about AI: outsourcing thinking, commoditizing creativity, gutting the workforce, environmental impact, technofascist implications, nuking humanity, brand devaluation, etc.
BUT
I’ve been in this for 10 years. I use Claude daily and it’s helping me do cool things: research, challenging drafts, keeping long documents consistent, ensuring I fulfill a brief, creating prototype animations to make my content presentation snazzier.
I’ve taken on more complex jobs that pay better and I am more valuable to clients.
My clients are using AI. So I need to know what it’s good at, what it sucks at, and how I can be competitive because I WILL be shopped against it. I also feel I owe it to my clients; if AI makes my work more effective, then I should use it.
If you’re unaware of AI and how it functions so you can claim to be a writing purist, sorry, there’s going to be a writer who is using human skill and AI to take your cake.
I’m not using it to write content. Clients never see gen AI work. It’s behind-the-scenes stuff that would’ve taken me ages—and I more often than not challenge or reject AI’s recommendations.’
Michael Neidert

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‘AI has been really useful as an organisational tool, such as helping me fit a massive to-do list into structured hours or suggesting the best platforms for specific tasks. But as far as copywriting goes, I don’t use it. I’ve trialled it with proofreading before but it did a rubbish job (but maybe that’s because I didn’t use paid versions).
Nowadays, I over analyse my work because I’m fearful of anyone claiming it to be ai written when it isn’t. Online ai checkers are all guesswork but still I find myself pulling away from anything remotely ai coded, such as the em-dash, bold italics or specific wording choices. I miss when I could just write a solid piece of work and nobody held an ai magnifying glass over it. People call it “slop” but it’s usually my best work that gets accused first.’
Lucy Appleyard

Camp 4: They don’t like it and I think they don’t use it

‘I’ve been freelancing for almost a year now. I alternate between short form and design copywriting, and then fiction editing with authors and other writers.
Being an author myself I would never let AI touch my books. In copywriting it gets complicated.
All I can say is studying AI is useful to get ahead of it. I hope AI will stay well away from creativity. It’s already sneaking its way into artist and writer feeds…’
Priya Rohella

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‘Not a writer per se, but I work with words. My perspective from working as a junior artist in advertising, pre computers… It was so exciting when computers came in and I could do my own type-setting and image alterations. Visuals became more finished product. I could “play” with layout options. Great!

But I lost skills I’ve never gotten back. Being able to hand render visuals. Knowing by eye how much space a page of typed copy would look in a certain font, size, kerning and leading. The creative process between designer and client became more lengthy in iterations and expectations, in a way that ate up the expected cost and time savings. Somehow clear creative vision and some of the joy in doing design work took a hit. My experience only of course. 🙂 But kind of feels like that again with AI.’
Angela Kay

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‘I’m a copywriter, a storyteller, and a strategist. But whatever you want to call me, my mother still won’t know what I do for a living. All I know is she’d prefer that her middle son not be replaced by a robot.’
Brent Hannify

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‘It’s a scary time – and a scary world out there. But looking back, and looking forward – it’s humans that impact the best work, the best times, the best ideas, the best results. And I couldn’t believe more strongly that we need to nurture humans.
The world (or some people) is trying to convince us that we don’t need each other. That profit is more important than originality and collaboration. That our human skills that we’ve worked so hard to craft, are worth sacrificing for ease, and for convenience. That our planet is worth sacrificing for the same. That we aren’t worthy of unique ideas from uniquely human places. That our experiences can be distilled and simulated and shown back to us and we’ll eat it up like over-processed food.
We are better than that. Surely. We are better than that.’
Laura Sugden Clarke

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‘AI gives generic answers or ideas. If you want out of the box ideas, it has to come from instinct or deep observation.’
Swathy Swaminathan

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‘I’ve wanted to start copywriting for a while as a side business but have been put off by the idea of having to compete with AI for business.’
Luca De Franco

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‘I think I just found my tribe.
Writing is thinking. Saying something meaningful takes time.
I’m an arts communicator and copywriter. What you do, what we all do, is hard work, requires great skill and makes a difference. There. I said it.’
Harriet Cunningham

Camp 5: The only one who was out-and-out anti anti-AI

‘Might as well go buy a roll of tin foil and wrap your head in it if you’re not going to use AI.’
S. Umbloke

(Amazed. Thought I was opening myself up to an onslaught of pro-AI evangelists threatening to come round and stick a robotic probe up my Gentleman’s Department.)

Summing up the AI copywriting thing

If you’re still reading, hello there (maybe you got AI to summarise the page?).

It’s a big issue. ‘They’ want us to use it. Lots of very experienced writers (even those who’ve given it a fair go), are sceptical, dismissive or extremely angry about AI.

And interestingly, those who have tried it are generally even more dismissive than the likes of me, who hasn’t even so much as sniffed Claude’s aftershave. Then again, some swear by it.

Why haven’t I been tempted? Like crack cocaine, alligator wrestling or getting a tattoo sleeve, sometimes you just know it’s not for you.

I stand firm on my no-AI for copywriting stance. This bit of field research has only made it even stronger.

If you want to use it, that’s your choice, it just ain’t mine.

Last thing. Here’s what the Interbrand Best Global Brands Report 2026 had to say about the use of AI in the creative sphere:

‘AI offers efficiency and optimization. More with less. What it takes – if we let it – is the humanity that optimization lacks: the aspiration to reach for more and the conscience to know where to stop. AI gives us the intelligence of what can be done. Not the wisdom of what should be.‘

Up the humans!

Love and patience.

Jonathan x

Jonathan Wilcock (that’s me) is a Senior Freelance Copywriter.
You can drop me a line here, or email jonathan@sowhatif.co.uk