Raising the Red Flag

Pencil shaving image by Kim Siever on Flickr

I recently saw an AI copywriter job on LinkedIn for a Singapore GenAI company. It was a pretty ambitious ask of the candidate, because beyond the nice-sounding words of how “making ads is still an art” yet “advertising itself is becoming a science”,  it required the candidate to bring both their own machine AND internet connection to the job. 

And that’s just part of the “qualifications.” 

For the responsibilities you will be expected to deliver client briefs every day or every other day, with “quality and client satisfaction of deliverables” being the primary KPI. Yeah, no. I highly doubt that one can deliver high quality AND high performing ads that satisfies the clients in such a short turnaround. 

I’m not even going to talk about how you’ll probably be expected to also handle clients directly which is an entirely different skillset for a good reason. 

Don’t like, don’t apply

I don’t intend to apply but I wanted to write about the job posting because it underscores the current reality - companies and organisations WILL try to cut corners where they can, because every cent saved leads to a larger hoard. And this often means treating employees as numbers rather than, you know, as humans. 

If you are a copywriter looking to utilise Gen AI so it’ll save you time, by all means go ahead. I highly support copywriters who want to use GenAI to save time and brainpower so you can focus on more important stuff, but I would also remind you to always remember to check your copy. 

GenAI is not infalliable, nor will it ever be invincible. If you’re here then you know that not only are GenAIs prone to hallucination, but they’re really bad at exercising judgement. Treat it as you would an intern - always double check your sources and edit for clarity. But also, like an intern, be forgiving when it invariably makes mistakes. The thing about GenAI is that while it is very eager and sincere and enthusiastic, it also makes the mistakes of youth. 

And that is where your experience and discernment as both a copywriter and human being comes into play. Because at the end of the day, as a marketing copywriter, we are still selling (presumably) to other humans. We’re not selling to robots (it is debatable whether psychopaths can be considered robots or robotic in nature but that is not an argument for now).