Will Generative AI End My Career As I Know It?
When I opened ChatGPT in December 2022, I thought, "I have to pivot."
A looming disruption that could fundamentally reshape my career is a familiar experience. My first job was in the newspaper business, and I know what a struggling industry looks and feels like. And ChatGPT feels like a threat in the same way dwindling ad dollars felt a decade ago.
But is it?
What It's Like to Work in a Dying Industry
As a journalist, the first thing I saw was a staff reduction. When I started as an intern, our small-town newspaper had a publisher, managing editor, designer, four salespeople, five writers, and three admins. By the time I started at the paper full-time after graduating college, the designer and managing editor were gone, with no plans to replace them.
We were down to two writers and three salespeople when I left the paper. Today, the paper has only six staff members: a general manager, two editors, two admins, and one salesperson. I often wonder if they've redesigned the inside. Or maybe they walk into a ghost town of cubicles—a constant reminder of what was.
Most recently, it went from a daily paper to a semiweekly paper. The saddest part is the paper is lucky to be open. Several newspapers shut their doors forever, including the Edmond Daily Sun, one of the oldest newspapers in Oklahoma.
Watching the death of a 130-year-old business was devastating, especially because I was a contractor for them for a few years. I grieved not just the loss of jobs (because that happens all the time) but the end of the era. I wonder what stories go untold and what history will be lost to time and memory.
But did the news die? No. It's different.
Newspapers were hard to change. The ones that didn't pivot to more digital productions were left behind. Will ChatGPT do the same to the content marketers of the world? I'm not sure.
It's Not a Budget Crisis—It's a Time Crisis
ChatGPT will change writing, just like social media and the internet changed journalism. I am confident that is true because it already alters my approach.
Business leaders see the time savings and "time is money." And if it takes half the time to write an informational blog, you should have double the output for the same price. Or, maybe if one person can do the job of two, we'll start seeing those early signs of staff reductions. If I am honest with myself, I already see this shift happening.
Will this change cost me what I love? Instead of hand-weaving sentences together, will I become a factory worker pushing a button to mass produce a product in a way that would make even Henry Ford impressed?
But we all know that mass-produced art isn't as impressive or as interesting. We might decorate our homes in cute prints we pick up at Target, but we don't talk about it the same way we would a hand-painted piece we curated because it moved us in some way.
So who's going to be a mass producer, and who will have the privilege of being an artist (without starving)?
The reality is I can absolutely do more with generative AI. But can I do better is the big question; right now, the answer isn't always yes.
Writing as a New Mixed Media Art
When I was in college, I worked part-time at an art store. I often found myself enamored with the mixed media section. I like it because it's all about pushing boundaries and using unexpected materials in unexpected ways.
While AI-generated content often feels sterile and mechanical, maybe it's only one piece of the final output. Or at least that's how I am using it today.
I heavily lean on my intuition and experience, but at the same time, I utilize AI tools as part of my creative process. Much like a mixed media artist experiments with paint, ink, found objects, and text to create something new, I can blend my human imagination with machine learning.
My goal is to work efficiently without sacrificing the originality and personal voice valued by readers. The AI acts as a jumping-off point that I can tweak, edit and mold into something uniquely mine.
And just as a collage artist doesn't simply slap images together, I don't just accept whatever the algorithm spits out. I get my hands dirty combining the human and tech elements until I've shaped the result to fit the vision.
It's a new frontier, and if I approach it strategically, I can still practice my art without becoming a factory worker who churns out mass-produced blog posts devoid of soul.
Storytelling as a New Gold Standard
I am most concerned about the concept of informational or technical writing. The heartbeat of content marketing for the last decade was, "They ask, you answer."
It's based on the premise anyone trying to understand a topic, product, or service will go to Google and type in a question. The goal is to be on the first page of answers to build a "know, like, and trust" factor. If someone is searching for a new hot tub, and your brand just so happens to have all the information about hot tubs AND sells hot tubs, the buyer may be more inclined to purchase from you because your company is the expert in all things hot tubs.
These types of pages usually serve an SEO purpose for businesses, but it's possible this type of content won't perform as well as people begin using AI for answers to common questions. It could become, "They ask. AI answers." And where does that leave us?
People might prefer AI to do basic research because it feels less biased than a company blog. So where will we put all of our call to actions? Where will we meet our buyers and build awareness?
I think the answer is we will see an increase in the value of storytelling by individuals rather than brands. Business web pages can feel a bit … anonymous. Of course, your brand has a voice, but does it have a face? The answer is usually no. A face is always risky. But what if you diversified your risk—I'm talking about influencer marketing.
What if dozens of micro-influencers talked about hot tubs, and they just so happen to love yours the most?
It's not just influencers in the traditional sense but also your employees and leadership. Are they ready to start telling their stories in impactful and captivating ways?
Content Marketing Isn't Dead (And Neither is SEO … yet)
I wish I could go back in time and beg small-town newspapers to quickly adopt user-friendly websites that make the news sharable rather than leveraging a paywall model. Paywalls work for big outlets like the Atlantic or New York Times, but a paywall is annoying when you are just trying to see what events are happening this week or whether or not an ordinance passed the city council. Now there are few print subscriptions and just as few online subscriptions.
They increased ad revenue without increasing ROI. They let their writers go even though subscribers only cared about the journalist's work. No one buys a paper or reads a website for the ads it places, but they will buy a paper or read a website because it talks about their kid's school or their community.
I wish I begged them to focus heavily on the news that matters to their audience rather than trying to compete with state and national news because that information is readily available everywhere. I wish I could beg them to quickly adopt social strategies that would push more traffic to their website and, as a result, increase the value of their digital ad space.
Honestly, I don't know if that would have saved the industry, and I am not pretending I knew all the answers then or now, but maybe it would have given many papers that I love a fighting chance.
I hear the rumblings of the same story outside my content marketing window. We have to adapt. And we have to adopt new technologies before they devour our industries and leave us all wondering what happened.
Right now, we get to make the rules. We get to make art.
How I Am Leveraging AI
I keep experimenting with the amount of AI to include. Sometimes, I take it too far, and there is a noticeable drop in quality (just ask my editors).
Currently, AI saves me about 40% of my time and effort, which is an increase from 30% earlier this year.
My priority is enhancing creativity, not compromising it.
I treat AI as a cooperative tool, not an independent author. I provide clear direction to the algorithms through prompts and examples. Rather than fully outsourcing ideation, I utilize AI to generate preliminary concepts that I then carefully evaluate.
The AI offers raw material - fragments of ideas or passages of text - that I thoughtfully shape into coherent narratives. I do not blindly accept whatever words come my way. I curate, polish, and perfect each piece.
At times, the AI surprises me by sparking an unexpected metaphor or turn of phrase. But the craft, voice and message remain distinctly my own. I take pride in my ability to weave together human and machine contributions into a seamless finished product.
For research and fact-finding, AI provides invaluable efficiency. But when it comes to synthesizing concepts and composing polished prose, the human touch remains essential. My creative process now seamlessly integrates the lightning-fast fact-gathering from computers with the nuanced discernment of a person.
While AI capabilities will only grow, I know the true magic happens in the collaborative friction between human creativity and machine optimization. The future role of the writer is not to be replaced by the machine but to direct it.
Tasks Worthy of AI:
Mass headline production for brainstorming
Article outlines
Research through conversation
Editing (especially finding all that pesky passive voice)
Keyword research
Rewriting for new segments
Eliminating the blank page syndrome
Finding synonyms
Designing analogies
Competitive research
An Open Letter to Businesses From a Content Marketer
I urge you not to replace your human content creators but rather empower us. Trust that we will thoughtfully direct these new technologies toward your brand's needs. Have faith that creativity and strategic messaging are innately human skills.
Please, do not view AI as a way to produce mass content at scale. The highest-performing marketing speaks to audiences in a relatable voice. It builds connections through shared experiences. Leverage our talents to craft stories and insights that foster authentic engagement.
Embrace new efficiencies, but remember that quality requires human discernment. Allow us time to evaluate AI outputs and refine them to suit your brand voice and values. Understand that the human touch remains your competitive advantage.
This is a chance to augment our skillsets, not automate our roles. With the right balance of human creativity and machine optimization, we can produce content that informs, inspires, and delights at remarkable speed. But the magic lies in collaboration.
Let's Tell a Story Together
I like trying on tones and writing styles. I enjoy writing from my own voice, yes, but I also like writing for others as well. Not everyone loves to write quite as much as me, but everyone does an interesting story to tell, so let's tell it together.