While news spotlighting the increasing use of automated writing in consumer publications regularly turns heads, academic publishers have been quietly onboarding robot writing tools for years, according to Publisher’s Weekly.

“Today, close to 80% of all our journal-content processing—from editorial services to final delivery—pass through various Integra products that are built on natural language processing and RPA (robotic process automation) frameworks,” says Sriram Subramanya, CEO, Integra Software Services.

AI and similar automation bring in “improvements in productivity to tasks or functions where publishers face challenges in talent shortage or high-cost structures,” Subramanya says. “These are most apparent in the acquisition stage, involving tasks such as manuscript screening, peer review, and copyediting.”

In other AI-generated writing news:

*The New Face of Email Marketing: AI Automation: Look for artificial intelligence to increasingly auto-generate email content and high performing subject lines, according to author Aishwarya Ashok.

“Times have changed,” Ashok observes. “The debate of whether AI can process as well as humans has been put to rest. People have finally started to understand the indispensable human need for proper functioning of the AI tools.”

*The AI Company Behind Chase Bank’s AI-Writing: City A.M. offers an interview with Parry Malm, CEO Phrasee – a marketing firm specializing in AI-powered robot writing. The company just inked a five-year deal to provide auto-generated ad copy for Chase Bank.

Phrasee is a writing / analysis tool that generates multiple copies of an ad for the same product — and then predicts which version of the ad will trigger the most sales.

“This technology is coming,” Malm says. “You can either fight it and be a Luddite — or accept it and make sure that you’re an expert in using it.”

*AI-Generated Writing Doesn’t Worry Me: Marketer Erik Huberman, CEO, Hawke Media, says auto-created ads pose no threat to him.

“For example, if two ads are performing a certain way from a metrics perspective, there’s still something to infer beyond just the numbers,” Huberman observes. “One ad may offer 40% off your product, and therefore, it may be performing better than the other ad that speaks to your product’s quality.

“But you can’t just sell your product for 40% off all the time. That’s not a lasting business strategy. AI won’t know that, though.”

Essentially, “despite all of AI’s capabilities, marketing is still much too nuanced to be completely replaced by AI,” he adds. “But it can be enhanced by it.”

*Tomorrow’s Copywriter: La Crème de la Crème: Given the seemingly inevitable reality that AI will increasingly shoulder everyday copywriting, human copywriters need to position themselves as highly creative alternatives to stay viable, according to Sumanto Chattopadhyay, chief creative officer, 82.5 Communications.

These days, AI-generated writing “is about packing in as many keywords as possible, grammar, be damned – crafting, be damned,” Chattopadhyay says.

“A lot of text we read online is generated by AI, which is well suited to the exercise of increasing the word ‘value’ of text, almost as in a game of Scrabble,” he says. “So we are being replaced — at least partially — with bots.

“But human creativity still triumphs over artificial intelligence. So higher-order writing is something that will continue to be our preserve. We should leave humdrum writing work to AI, but hone our skills so that we are still sought out for the most important creative writing jobs.”

*Online Retailer Slashes Marketing Costs With AI Writing: Goods and services provider Wowcher saw a 31% reduction in the cost of each sales lead by using AI-generated robot writing to create extremely short-form ad copy, according to this article from Martech Advisor.

The secret of the robot writing’s success: “A major benefit of the tool was that it studied emoticons as part of regular speech / writing patterns,” according to Martech. “The AI engine organically formulated emoji-based social copy that resonated with a lot of users.”

The article also details other ways AI is transforming marketing.

*College Raises $9,750 in Donations in One Day Using AI-Generated Writing: Robert Morris University raised $9,750 in donations in just one day using automated writing/audience analysis solution, boodleAI, according to Christopher B. Howard, the institution’s president.

*Determining if AI-Driven Marketing Right For You: The Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute offers an extremely in-depth look in this article on how to determine if using AI-generated writing and similar robot writing tools makes sense for marketing your business.

“Content marketing is one of the top use cases today for artificial intelligence—with a range of commercially available tools to build smarter content strategies and execute at scale,” observes author Mike Kaput, a senior consultant at PR 2020.

*AI’s Impact on Journalism: Six Case Studies: Cognixia offers an informative overview of how AI is remaking the journalist’s role.

Included in the spotlighted AI applications: An experiment by Quartz Digital News, which used chatbots to dispense the day’s news.

“Users could ask queries about events, people, places or news and the system gives back the relevant content,” according to Cognixia. “This is still in the experimental stage. It aims to build bots and use the AI interface for all media platforms.”

*For Creative Copy, Humans Still Dust Machines, Pro Copywriter Says: While AI-generated writing is great at producing mostly simple, functional copy, prose that sings is still the domain of the human copywriter, according to Michelle Halsey. She’s a copywriter who specializes in SEO-optimized copy and organic lead generation.

Halsey casts a skeptical eye at automated content ‘spinners,’ which ingest an original piece of copy written by a human author. They then churn-out reams of low-quality copy knock-offs, with perhaps only a few words changed in an attempt to technically create ‘new copy.’

Their goal: To trick search engines into believing that the knock-off copy is completely original.

“Content spinners are apps, software, or sweatshop writer mills that spit-out dozens of variations on a single, reasonably decent piece of content,” Halsey observes. “Spinners barely change the words and phrasing enough to skirt copyright law. And most creatives and academics agree that the results fit the criteria for plagiarism.

“Penalties aside, most spun content is stilted — if not grammatically nauseating,” she observes.

Bottom line: “Original content with trustworthy sources earns high-quality organic backlinks and meaningful conversions,” Halsey observes. “For businesses trying to establish brand authority, there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned quality writing.”

*AI-Generated Writing Toolmaker Yseop Snags 8.3 Million Euros in New Funding: The AI company received a fresh infusion of new cash from NextStage, an ongoing financial supporter of the robot writing company.

Strong in the banking and financial services market, Yseop has been picking up clients more recently in the drug industry as well. One of its key new clients in pharmaceuticals is Sanofi. The goliath drug-maker is using Yseop’s AI-generated tool to auto-create regulatory documents.

–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.