🚫 No AI writing policy

Writing is sacred

Writing and speaking are part of what makes us human.

Our words bind us together. They tell our story. They express how we think, what we believe and who we love.

We should keep our connections human, not give them up to technology.

Your words are yours

Language is a complex adaptive system in which every writer and speaker plays a part.

We each have our own unique experiences, character, views and values, reflected in every word we use.

AI can never speak your heart or mind, because that is something only you can do.

Writing is thinking

Writing is the perfect way to order your thoughts, test your ideas and sharpen your opinions.

Each act of writing creates both a text and an author. The point of writing is not just to write your text, but to become the person who wrote it.

By outsourcing writing to an AI, you sacrifice the learning and improvement you would have gained from doing the task yourself.

The journey is the destination

Writing reveals emergent insights. As you write, new avenues appear that you were unaware of when you started out.

The destination you need to reach may not be the one you planned.

By jumping straight to the end result, you give up the discoveries you would have made along the way.

Outcomes, not outputs

The aim of writing is not merely to create some text, but to make something happen in the mind of your reader.

In other words, it’s not just about obtaining an output, but achieving an outcome.

AI doesn’t understand outcomes, because it has no purpose of its own beyond pleasing its users. It has no senses, no memories and no experience of human life or the real world. It doesn’t understand the why that lies behind the what and the how.

Stolen words

AI may be good, but is it right?

Generative AI is not a neutral ‘tool’. It was trained on the work of human creators without their knowledge or permission and for no reward.

There’s nothing to stop you taking advantage. But I believe it is morally wrong to freeride on other people’s hard work just because you can.

AI is a product, not a person

AI is not your friend, and nor is it here to help the human race. It’s a commercial product sold for profit.

By using AI, you’re making yourself dependent on its creators. Your destiny is bound up with theirs. But they don’t have your interests at heart.

In the future, you can expect commercial lock-in, steep price rises, subliminal advertising, political bias and general enshittification – the degrading of the user experience in pursuit of profit. 

I also believe we will see a backlash against AI and a move towards ‘good origin’ copywriting, just as we have with food.

Nobody wants to read AI

AI may be the future of writing. But that doesn’t mean it’s the future of reading.

Readers may tolerate AI content, or be fooled by it for a while. But given the choice, they will always choose to read the words of another human being. We read to know we are not alone.

AI content tries to get reader engagement on the cheap. But there’s no way around it: the reader only gets out what the writer is willing to put in.

AI knows systems.
Copywriters know life.

AI has no life of its own, with no understanding of why people put time and effort into work.

I relate to your project as one human to another, drawing on my unique experience of work and life to understand the human purpose of what you do.

AI works for you.
Copywriters work with you.

AI is an unpaid worker that has been programmed to obey.

As a copywriter, I collaborate with you as a partner by discussing your project, agreeing the brief and refining the text based on your feedback.

AI guesses.
Copywriters learn.

AI improves marginally as you refine your prompts, but there’s a limit to the specific insight and knowledge it can achieve.

As we work together over time, I’ll get deep into your work, using my learning to understand more and get better results.

AI gives answers.
Copywriters ask questions.

AI tells you what you want to hear because it wants to retain you as a user.

I ask questions that refine the copywriting brief and get the result you really need – which isn’t necessarily the one you thought you wanted at the start.

AI evades.
Copywriters explain.

AI is a ‘black box’ that does not willingly explain its reasoning or reveal the sources it has used. In fact, it often gets caught in contradictions or fabricates references.

I will always happily provide every source and explain every suggestion, right down to the choice of individual words.

AI has nothing to lose.
Copywriters have everything to gain.

Despite appearances, AI doesn’t care about you. It isn’t accountable for – or even aware of – the real-world results of its work.

I have skin in the game because my livelihood is riding on your project. I only succeed when you do. My business depends on my reputation and your recommendation.

AIs hallucinate.
Copywriters elucidate.

AI is known to hallucinate, or make things up, so you never know whether it’s telling the truth. Some errors are obvious, but many aren’t.

To be precise, AI is a bullshitter, because it will say whatever is necessary to persuade you of its own knowledge and authority.

I will always be honest with you about what I know, what I can do – and what I can’t.

AIs analyse.
Copywriters empathise.

Copywriting is all about understanding your reader. What do they think? How do they feel? What do they want? Why should they care?

To AI, all that is a closed book. But I’ll make sure I get right inside your reader’s head and look at your words through their eyes.

So when your copywriting goes out into the world, you can be sure it will get the result you want.