by Joe Dysart * Updated Jan. 30, 2022
Amidst the hoopla of all things artificial intelligence, writers are increasingly wrestling with a hard truth: It appears robots are coming for their jobs.
Little more than a plaything of researchers a decade ago, AI and automated robots in 2022 are regularly churning-out countless news articles, business reports, opinion pieces, sports stories, ad slogans, newsletters, press releases – and more – on a daily basis.
According to highly respected research organization Gartner, all of this AI and related technology will automate production of 30% of all content found on the Worldwide Web by 2022.
Observes Mayur Bhatt, marketing head, SEO Services Guru: “It is only a matter of time before algorithms are able to write articles on any topic and for any target group.”
Adds renowned author Stephen Marche, who warns AI-generated writing is poised to fundamentally automate the world of writing:
“Whatever field you are in, if it uses language, it is about to be transformed.
“The changes that are coming are fundamental to every method of speaking and writing that presently exists.”
It’s no wonder writers across the globe are fretting: When do these writing machines show-up at my workplace?
Evangelists of writing driven by AI insist the robots are simply here ‘to serve humanity.’
Robots will do the drudgery work, they say.
Writers will be freed-up to engage in more interesting, more in-depth and more creative work.
Says Lisa Gibbs, news partnerships director, The Associated Press, one of the earliest pioneers of AI-generated news-writing: “The work of journalism is creative.
“It’s about curiosity, it’s about storytelling, it’s about digging and holding governments accountable.
“It’s critical thinking, it’s judgment — and that is where we want our journalists spending their energy.”
Perhaps.
But for the many writers and editors who have already lost their jobs to AI, that idyllic future is a tough sell.
Down for the Count
Consider the approximately 50 freelance news editors at MSN, who were summarily dismissed recently, only to be replaced by AI-driven robots.
Those journalists had helped punch-up MSN — a news aggregation site — by selecting trending news stories written by reporters at other online news outlets.
They came up with alternative, creative headlines for the content they thought would work best on the site.
And they added photos and slide shows here and there to spice things up.
No more.
All that work is now done by artificial intelligence, according to Seattle Times writer Geoff Baker.
“It’s demoralizing to think machines can replace us,” says an anonymous news editor slashed from MSN. “But there you go.”
Consider, too, a team of freelance sports writers at 30 Swedish news sites, who were regularly tapped to produce the bread-and-butter of sports news: Post-game wrap-ups, liberally sprinkled with quotes from coaches and others close to the match.
Those freelancers are no longer needed for those writing jobs.
Instead, they’ve been replaced by an automated sports news robot system from United Robots, a major AI-generated writing toolmaker.
United Robots’ AI writing tool automatically generates basic win/loss stories about games from data, which is inputted by team coaches right after the competition.
Plus, it snatches-up quotes about the game from those same coaches — quotes that are “automatically inserted into the articles published on the news publishers’ sites,” United Robots reports on its blog.
The coaches simply keypunch-in the quotes they’d like seen in the stories about their games — and then send those quotes along to robot writers for automatic insertion.
In a phrase, all the human-to-human interaction previously needed for coverage of all those sports games on all those Swedish news sites is ‘outta here.’
In fact, United Robots’ automated writing system has been so successful, it gave an in-depth talk on how it was used to replace freelance sports writers at a recent Newsrewired virtual conference.
Need more?
Consider Radar, a hyper-local news service that has been cranking-out AI-written articles in the United Kingdom since 2017.
Instead of using reporters to cover news beats, Radar relies on robots. Those automatons mine government databases on crime, health, environment and similar — and then auto-write stories from that data with an extremely local hook.
For example: Radar’s AI software can ingest a new government report on crime across the UK, and then auto-generate hundreds of customized stories from the study, based on localized data.
Each story is hyper-localized to a town — or even a smaller community — by including data from the government report that applies solely to that town or smaller community.
The resulting micro-focused stories are sold to news outlets throughout Britain – as well as to any other news outlet that might be interested.
Observes Gary Rogers, editor-in-chief, Radar: “There is open data across all the main beats of news – health, crime, transport, education, housing, the environment – filled with stories waiting to be told.
“Much of this data is very granular with figures available at local level. It’s possible to (auto) write stories from this data for every local community in the UK.”
Pilot Programs: More Writing Jobs Under-the-Gun
Meanwhile, for a full appreciation of AI’s automation of writing jobs, consider too any number of smaller pilot programs in AI-generated writing currently underway, which focus on bringing the tech to news organizations and businesses across the globe.
Each one of these pilot implementations is testing and evaluating the idea of bringing in a robot to do work previously handled by a writer.
Case-in-point: Mar Masson Maack, a writer at The Next Web.
Initially, Maack thought it was a pretty cool idea for the tech pub to add an AI robot to the mix.
It was designed to auto-generate news about Bitcoin – one of Next Web’s oft-trafficked news beats.
But after watching the robot relentlessly churn-out copy, day-after-day, week-after-week, Maack began to have second thoughts.
“There’s one thing I forgot to consider,” Maack says.
“How it feels to have a never-tiring, high-performing, robot colleague.”
Unlike mere humans, the robot never takes a coffee break, never cracks a joke – never even pauses for reflection.
Instead, the Silicon Wonder quietly crawls the Web for news about Bitcoin, incessantly monitoring the changes in the currency’s value and relentlessly taking note of what people are tweeting and writing about it.
Then, without missing a beat, all that data is periodically run-through the AI-generated writing software, spitting out continually updated pieces about the state of Bitcoin.
Human intervention not needed, thank you.
Writing Job Threat More Widespread than Commonly Realized
So far, many writers are aware of the adoption of AI-generated writing via a few, well-publicized stories about the tech’s use at major news organizations like the Associated Press, Bloomberg, the BBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post.
All of those news outlets have made major commitments to AI-generated writing during the past few years.
But it turns out those implementations – as well as those above – represent only smattering of what’s really going on.
Currently, there are at least 130 AI and automated writing projects underway at news organizations around the world, according to Laurens Vreekamp, an associate consultant at Fathm.
And a 2021 study by some key experts in AI journalism found that 15% of news stories are now automatically generated at leading news outlets using AI.
French AI solutions provider Demain.ai alone says it published more than 150,000 AI-generated articles in a single, 12-month period.
And NTB, in nearby Norway, says its client list for AI-generated articles has swelled to 170.
Moreover, the adoption of AI-generated writing has gone far beyond news-reporting, cropping-up across a wide spectrum of writing jobs, including opinion writing, marketing, advertising, report writing and technical writing.
For example, IBM recently wowed viewers of the Bloomberg TV show, “That’s Debatable,” with a new AI tool that can ingest thousands of position papers – and then spit-out its own, original position paper.
Dubbed ‘Key Point Analysis,’ the app ‘read’ 3,500 position papers on the show’s topic — “It’s time to redistribute wealth” – then instantly generated 1,600 usable arguments on the subject in a live debate featuring top government policy makers.
“IBM-generated opinion could become significant,” as a news and content source, says Cait O’Riordan, chief product and information officer, the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, much to the dismay of copywriters, it turns out AI robots are also really good at instantly generating short ad slogans, Web copy, headlines and similarly brief text.
Early pioneer Phrasee, for example, offers an AI-generated writing tool that auto-generates short ad copy, slogans, email subject heads and the like – in a flash.
“Phrasee generates thousands of potential copy ideas — whether it’s a headline, a subject line, or something else,” observes Barb Mosher Zinck, a writer at Diginomica.
“It then takes all those copy variants and puts them through their deep learning engine to rank the best ones in order of predicted performance,” she adds.
The result: Marketers pick the best-of-the-best phrases created by Phrasee and test them live on the Internet.
The phrase that delivers the best results becomes the centerpiece of their campaign.
Moreover, dozens upon dozens of additional auto-text writers have popped-up on the market during the past 18 months — and appear headed to keep multiplying like rabbits.
Major advertisers are taking the ad tech very seriously.
Banking industry cornerstone Chase, for example, recently signed a five-year deal with Persado — which makes a similar AI-generated writing tool — to auto-generate ad slogans and other short ad copy for its credit card and mortgage businesses.
For Chase, migrating to robots was a no-risk move: Persado proved conclusively in a three-year test with the bank that it’s AI-generated writing tool produced better ad copy than humans.
Also in the Crosshairs: Business Report Writing Jobs
Meanwhile, an entire cottage industry has sprung-up in the automated writing of analytic and business reports.
It’s a trend spawned by many of the same toolmakers that initially introduced automated writing to news outlets.
The rationale behind these auto-written reports?: Why pay one or more analysts to sift through company data and come-up with a custom-designed, company report for a company department — or even an individual staffer — when you can get a robot to do it?
Initially, businesses interested in automated report writing needed to invest time and money to develop custom AI installations with the help of AI-generated tool makers.
But these days, many of these AI-generated writing solutions come as easier-to-install, pre-designed plugins for commonly used business software such as Microsoft Excel, Microstrategy, Qlik, Spotfire, SAP and Tableau.
Even Zapier – a Web service created to enable many apps and tools to work easily with one another – has gotten into the act.
Specifically, Zapier now has the ability to integrate AX Semantics’ AI-generated writing tool into more than 2,000 commonly used business tools, including Salesforce, WordPress, Magento and Shopify.
So if you’re looking for an AI-plugin to auto-generate written reports from your favorite, data-intensive program or application, chances are you can get one off-the-shelf – or easily integrated using Zapier.
All told, the easy availability of these AI report writing solutions has triggered early adoption of AI-generated writing across a wide sampling of companies in myriad industries, including:
*finance
*law
*healthcare
*pharmaceuticals
*academic publishing
*public relations
*technical writing
*social media
*market research
(For an in-depth look at how AI is auto-writing business reports, check-out “Company Reports That Write Themselves,” by Joe Dysart.
As writers look over their shoulders at all this automation, they’re also challenged by a slew of AI writing assistants and AI writing editors like Grammarly, ProWriting Aid and Acrolinx.
Without question, these AI editors and writing assistants are a boon to all writers. The wonder-tech makes it easier for all word lovers to crank-out better, more engaging, cleaner copy – whether it be a simple email or a 10,000-word think piece.
But the ready availability of all these AI assistants and editors also means that a colleague in the next cubicle — who previously could never hold-a-candle to a pro writer – can suddenly become a competitor.
Grammarly, for example, goes far beyond correcting spelling and grammar, offering advice for users on writing clarity, engagement, delivery, style, tone and more.
It also helps custom-tailor writing for various audiences, such as academic, business, casual or creative.
And it can be tweaked to edit for words and phrasing that render the tone of a piece as confident, joyful, friendly, analytical – and more.
On the Horizon: Virtually Every Genre of Writing at Risk
Essentially, with the advent of AI-generated writing, virtually every writing job imaginable currently is – or will be – fair game for automation.
And the only governor on how the technology is used – whether that be to eliminate writing jobs or make human writers’ jobs much more interesting and fulfilling — hinges solely on the person or organization that happens to be using the tech at the time.
Jane Barrett, global editor for media news strategy at Reuters, already has her own take on which way the wind is blowing.
“I think we will get to the stage where we don’t need the human journalist,” Barrett says.
“But it will be up to each publication as to what they are happy to put through (publish) – and there will be regular testing,” she adds.
Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, reluctantly agrees:
“Let me introduce you to the two most bottom line-obsessed newspaper publishers in the United States — Alden Global Capital and Gannett.
“If they could, they’d unleash the algorithms to cover everything up-to-and-including city council meetings, mayoral speeches and development proposals.
“And if they could figure out how to program the robots to write human-interest stories and investigative reports, well, they’d do that too.”
Adds Thomas Kent – a journalism professor at Columbia University: “AI isn’t sentimental, and it isn’t ideological.
“It can be used for good or for evil. It can be used to replace journalists or to strengthen journalists.
“It can be used to get the truth out, and it can be used for disinformation.
“It’s a neutral piece of technology that can be adapted for almost anything.”
It’s no surprise then that 69% of readers surveyed in 2020 saw AI-generated writing and automated writing as a job threat, according to the Press Gazette – a publication covering journalism in the United Kingdom.
And it’s no revelation that 56% of marketers surveyed in 2020 also saw those same technologies as a job killer.
But perhaps alarming is the view that the availability of AI-generated writing tools is already so pervasive, we might as well give up on teaching original writing and bring automated writing tools into the classroom.
Observes Lucinda McKnight, a senior lecturer in Pedagogy and Curriculum at Deakin University: “Perhaps, rather than banning or seeking to expose machine collaboration, it should be welcomed as ‘co-creativity.’
“Perhaps assessment should focus more on students’ capacities to use these tools skillfully, instead of — or at least in addition to — pursuing ‘pure’ human writing.”
Protecting Your Writing Job: A Gameplan
The upshot for writers?
First and foremost, writers obviously need to keep a close watch on the latest advances in experimental and prototype AI-generated writing technology.
That will help ensure they’re not whipsawed by sudden technological innovations that can change job prospects overnight.
Back in Summer 2020, for example, research firm OpenAI released a new, experimental version of its auto-text generator — GPT-3 — which still has many in the AI-generated writing community holding their breath at its prowess.
While not perfect, GPT-3 can generate fake news articles that are very tough to tell apart from the real thing – simply by taking one phrase of input from a human operator and running with it, according to GPT-3’s creators.
Full-length emails can be conjured by the tool after you type in just a few bullet-points to get it started, according to OthersideAI, a new email marketing firm that uses GPT-3 as its writing engine.
And GPT-3 can generate blog posts that seem so authentic, one of them rocketed to number one in popularity on Hacker News – a collaborative news aggregator fed by some of the Web’s most discerning intellects.
And that’s just for starters.
“The hype is real,” observes Kelsey Piper, a writer for Vox.com who personally tried out GPT-3. “It has its shortcomings. But make no mistake: GPT-3 represents a tremendous leap for AI.”
Fast-forward to 2022, and you’ll find that GPT-3 serves as the underlying auto-writing engine for dozens upon dozens of AI-generated writing tools currently on the market.
(For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.)
Keeping an Eye on Commercial Implementations of AI-Generated Writing
Critical, too, for staying one step ahead of AI is the need for writers to stay abreast of how already existing commercialized implementations of AI-generated writing technology can and will change the nature of their writing jobs — or simply eliminate those jobs altogether.
One telling example: The Observer+, a news outlet based in Singapore, currently relies almost entirely on AI-generated writing for its news copy – completely forgoing the need for human reporters.
Instead of employing often persnickety and tiresome flesh-bags, the Observer+ uses about eight AI robots to generate its news.
As a team, those robots ceaselessly search the Web, ‘scraping,’ summarizing and repackaging news from other news outlets, social media properties and online community forums for use on the Observer+.
Simultaneously, another eye-opening commercialization of AI-generated writing tech is an app from Hypotenuse – also based in Singapore.
The fresh-off-the-drawing-board product uses AI-driven computer vision to auto-generate written product descriptions.
The tech works by tasking computer vision to intensely study a product photo and then instantly generate a written product description based on the image.
Even better: Hypotenuse AI’s tech can be massaged to auto-produce copy that mimics a company’s in-house writing style.
“We can do this really quickly — we can generate thousands of them (product descriptions) within seconds,” says Hypotenuse AI founder Joshua Wang.
Yet another major genre of writing tools that need to be closely monitored: Newsletter production aids.
Currently, there are a number of continually evolving applications on the market that either completely automate the production of e-newsletters – or nearly automate the process.
News UK — publisher of The Times and the Sunday Times — for example, saw subscription cancellations fall 49% after it used AI to automatically custom-tailor e-newsletters for its subscribers.
Says Mike Migliore, head of customer value, News UK: We use self-learning algorithms “not just (to) get the right content to the right person — but (to) do so at the right time and in the right format.”
(For an in-depth look at how the production of e-newletters is being automated, check-out “AI-Created Newsletters: On the Cheap,” by Joe Dysart.)
Faster, Cheaper and the Impact on Writing Jobs
In coming years, writers looking to stay ahead of the curve will also need to keep tabs on how the falling price of AI-generated writing and similar tools are altering the value of their skills in the marketplace.
For example: Businesses looking to auto-generate reports from their databases can now scoop-up that capability from Arria NLG — a leader in AI-generated writing — at $30/month/user.
The entry level Arria solution offers out-of-the-box, auto-report generation, with no scripting or coding required. Up to 50,000 words/year can be generated by the service at the $30/month/user rate.
Moreover, Microsoft is now offering entry-level, auto business report writing as part of its Power BI analytics software. The cost: $20/month/user.
Plus, AI writing assistant Grammarly now goes for $140/year – a lot less than what it costs to pay a human editor to do similar work over the course of a year.
While Grammarly is no substitute for an editor — or a writer who takes the time to continually revise and refine a piece — it’s efficacy is close.
Similar falling price competition for writers is coming from Google, which has added AI writing capability to the mix in Google Workspace, and Microsoft, which has added AI writing capability to Microsoft 360.
Plus, even more price competition is expected to come from Microsoft’s sweet deal with OpenAI, which granted Microsoft status as the exclusive licensor of GPT-3 apps in coming years.
Inside Microsoft, that virtually guarantees GPT-3’s head-turning technology will be integrated into at least some Microsoft 360 apps – all for the price of a Microsoft 360 subscription.
If You Can’t Fight ‘Em – Join ‘Em?
Writers looking to side-step the inevitable culling of writing jobs in coming years may also want to seriously consider recasting their roles in the workplace.
One option some are trying is to become their workplace’s expert in AI writing and related technology — a move that could ensure they’re not pelted into carnage by incessant new waves of automation.
Instead of fighting AI tech, these editors and writers are embracing it, portraying themselves as the go-to person at their workplace that top management can turn to for:
*Advice on what new AI editing and writing technology to bring in-house
*How quickly that AI technology should be adopted
*Which human writing jobs should remain after the technology is onboard
Observes writer Alex Kantrowitz, who is all-in on AI-generated writing: “Over the past two years, I’ve adopted AI software at every opportunity and can report that the productivity gain is absurd.
“AI has helped me cut down on menial work and spend more time on creativity — realizing a long-prophesied promise about the technology.
“It’s also teaching me to write tighter and with more precision, and it’s shockingly good in this regard.”
Adds Joanna Penn, a writing, publishing and book marketing consultant, paraphrasing a favorite guru, Kevin Kelly:
“This is not a race against the machines.
“If we race against them, we lose.
“This is a race with the machines.
“You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots.
“It is inevitable: Let the robots take our jobs and let them help us dream-up new work that matters.”
Smart Moves for Student Writers at Universities
Meanwhile, college students looking to pursue a career in the myriad opportunities offered by skilled writing – including writing jobs in journalism, marketing, advertising and technical writing — will want to strongly consider a major that blends training in writing and computers.
The UK’s Cardiff University, for example, currently offers master classes in AI journalism, as does Axel Springer Academy in Berlin.
So far, student appetite for such training appears intense. The Knight Center, for example, saw a tsunami of interest in 2019 when it offered an online course in data journalism – a facet of automated journalism that includes AI-generated writing.
Nearly 13,000 students signed-up for the online training, according to Simon Rogers, one of the course instructors.
“We were stunned at the enthusiasm,” says Rogers, who is also a data editor on Google’s News Lab Team.
Adds Francesco Marconi, a longtime player in AI-generated writing and author of “Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism:”
“In the future, we will see more newsrooms asking for writers that understand how to work with AI, editors that understand how to oversee smart tools and programmers that can design journalistic computer programs.”
Specific writing jobs and similar employment Marconi sees ahead for university students trained in both writing and AI include:
*Automation Editors: These retooled editors will be responsible for ensuring AI integrations with the newsroom go smoothly – all the while maintaining editorial reliability.
*Computational Journalists: These 2.0 versions of the traditional ‘ink-stained wretch’ will weave their way with words as they embrace the latest in AI-generated writing and research tools.
*Newsroom Tool Managers: Scouts for ever-better AI newsroom technologies, these experts will also train on-staff journalists to ensure they get the most from AI.
*AI Ethics Editors: The conscience of news outlets, these overseers will be “responsible for the transparency and explainability of algorithms, as well as the use of training data,” Marconi observes.
The Long View: AI and the Threat of ‘Good Enough’
Bottom line: Even with writing that is increasingly automated by AI robots, it’s hard to imagine a world in which entirely original, human-generated writing is no longer highly prized.
In-depth – and in context — breaking news stories, probing trend pieces, perception-changing exposes and the like will still need to hinge heavily on human-to-human interaction – at least for now.
The same holds true for fiction and nonfiction writing that glimmers with perspective, style and originality. To date, human beings still best their robot competitors in writing of the highest quality.
Even so, the hard fact remains that AI will be producing an increasing torrent of automated writing in coming years – work product that competes in a world often entrapped in the icy grip of ‘good enough.’
The resulting reality: Sure, all publishers want brilliant pieces, head-turning insights and writing that’s perspective-changing – or even life-changing — for their readers.
But if those same publishers are able to use robots to sell advertising around automated copy that is little more than a homogenized regurgitation of human writing – or writing that is little more than machined words that champion a ‘just-the-facts-ma’am’ benchmark — why should those publishers bother paying dearly for human-generated writing that is ‘something more?’
As your friendly, neighborhood robot might agree:
Bleep Bloop.
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–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.