When is it okay to use AI copy in business writing? The predictable answer from a copywriter would of course be ‘never’, but in reality, who’s not tempted by a shortcut? 

For businesses that produce a lot of written output, e.g. consultants and other professional services firms, using generative AI can save (and is already saving) time and money. It’s understandable and unsurprising that it’s been adopted at scale, particularly by those who are not confident in their writing skills, and/or those who see writing as a time drain that takes them away from what they’re really good at. 

Even people who invest in a copywriter for their bigger projects still need to use words in their day-to-day work for emails, social media and more, and most are experimenting with using AI to help them do it.

But, if you’re using AI to help you write anything, there are a few things you need to know. To help you, I’ve summarised the guidance I’ve been offering clients, and shared the golden rule below. I’ve also included some suggestions for using AI to help you drive up – not dumb down – the quality of your words, for those times when you don’t have a copywriter to lean on.

The context:

I’m not talking here about the many wider use cases for AI in business; I’m talking specifically about using it for writing. That can be the big things like reports, thought leadership articles, proposals, case studies, press releases and biographies, but it can also be the day-to-day things like social media posts and emails.

The considerations:

If you use or plan to use unedited AI copy in any business writing, there are a few things worth knowing first:

Your value as a human being is on the rise

Trust is the single most valuable business commodity, and this starts with you trusting yourself, your experience and your voice. Clients come to (and pay) experts like you, because they trust that your advice is going to be much better than what they can get for free via AI. People buy from people, and your reputation has never carried more value. I’m not saying you would, but if a professional services firm produced or even partially produced reports using AI, they’d be a) under-serving clients, b) underestimating the value of their own unique expertise and experience, and c) potentially damaging their reputation/brand.

By using unedited AI copy in a proposal, you could be planting a seed of doubt into the reader’s mind about whether or not they can trust you, and by extension, your advice (they can easily check if it’s AI-generated, but we’ll come onto that). In addition, nuances get lost, and the humanity and personality of your writing can disappear altogether, along with the valuable rapport that it helps to build. 

(There are wider ethical considerations when it comes to using AI, and if this is something you’d like to learn more about it’s well worth following Felicity Wild, who is doing great work around the responsible and ethical use of AI, exploring key issues as they arise and evolve.)

It might affect your SEO (search results)

The (good or bad) impact on your website’s SEO results when you populate it with unedited AI copy is, to my knowledge, as yet unknown. Some experts say that it can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings, while others say it can have a negative effect. The truth (or the closest I’ve been able to get to the truth) is that things are changing at pace, and we just don’t know yet. 

It’s also unknown whether tech companies are penalising (or will penalise in the future) AI copy that has been generated by a competitor. For example, Google could penalise copy generated by Microsoft’s Copilot (or indeed, reward copy that has been generated by its own version – Gemini). I’m not an expert in SEO beyond having a working knowledge of it, but would advise anyone wanting to futureproof their website to bear this in mind.

What I do know is that trust is one of the four cornerstones of best-practice SEO (EEAT – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). If writing isn’t yours but you’re claiming that it is, that could potentially lead to an erosion of trust from search engines, and perhaps more importantly, readers. 

Josh Blyskal, associate marketing technical manager at HubSpot, says, “Now, more than ever, the value of content hinges on the authenticity of its creator and the underlying value, meaning, story, and perspective of the content they’re creating.” 

People will know it’s AI generated

Copywriters like me have been able to spot AI copy a mile off for some time now – we have a finely tuned radar for it. (I’ve been going on about AI copy since 2022, and I’ve even written a sonnet about it). But the telltale signs are quickly making their way into the collective consciousness. There are plenty of obvious ones, for example, overuse of the em dash, title case in headings, and an abundance of rocket emojis. There are lots of subtler ones, too – much harder to define, but there’s an air of sanitised perfection to AI-generated copy that just feels ‘off’ to me.

But you no longer need a trained eye to spot it. If someone wants to know if something is AI-generated, they can find out in seconds by copying and pasting a sample into a free AI checker, for example, GPTZero or Scribbr. The New York Times has published a list of the eight most accurate AI checkers. 

It’s not just evident in business. My daughter forwarded me a mass email sent to all students at her school, finding much hilarity in the fact that it was clearly 100% AI-generated by the very people who spend their days telling students not to use AI copy in their school work.

If you don’t use it, you could lose it

If you regularly outsource your thinking to AI, cognitive decline could follow, and that’s a very sobering thought. A recent MIT study found that:

“Using ChatGPT to help write essays leads to long-term cognitive harm—measurable through EEG brain scans. Students who repeatedly relied on ChatGPT showed weakened neural connectivity, impaired memory recall, and diminished sense of ownership over their own writing.”

Whether or not that is reversible, I do not know, but I don’t want to test the theory.

AI can strip out personality and meaning

Connected to the earlier mention of erosion of trust is the loss of meaning, resonance and connection that human writing delivers in spades. Take this sentence as an example. I’ve seen it, or a variation of it, a million times, across many sectors. You’ll have seen lots of this type of writing too.

“We’re aligning cross-functional paradigms to optimise forward-thinking deliverables and innovative solutions”.

Sounds impressive, right? But what does it actually mean? Probably something like, “We’re bringing different teams together to improve future projects and come up with new ideas”, but we’ll never know.

That’s a fairly extreme example, but the point stands. Unless the meaning is clear, they’re just empty words and very difficult, if not impossible, to digest (never mind remember).

Someone (and I can’t remember who, sorry – please let me know if it was you!) recently said to me:

“Can’t be bothered to write it = can’t be bothered to read it”.

And back in 1939 and well ahead of the curve, American poet Robert Frost said:

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

Both demonstrate, in their own way, that an original voice, however imperfect, carries great power and resonance. So trust in yours.

The golden rule for using AI copy at work:

Use AI as a tool to make your writing better, not to outsource your thinking.

I’ll add a massive caveat that AI is far from perfect, and can even hallucinate, so put robust fact-checking in place, and ALWAYS remove names, places and commercially sensitive information first. We don’t know where this info ends up.

With all that in mind, here are some ways generative AI can support you to improve your writing at work:

• Help to structure reports, articles and proposals etc.
• Basic proofreading and editing (but always use a professional if the stakes are high – e.g. a client report or a thought leadership article. Especially if you’re going to print).
• Distil pages of meeting notes into emerging themes, key points etc.
• Support basic research and help collate findings (always check sources).
• Brainstorm headings (it rarely gets you all the way there, but it can help you think in different ways).
• Suggest metadescriptions and excerpts for articles (you’ll still need to edit them).
• As a dictionary, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, etc.
• Ask it to come up with potential pain points/objections people might have to a proposal, so you can make sure you address them.
• Ask it to help you find statistics (from credible sources) that illustrate your point.
• Ask it to help define your target audience so you can write with them in mind.
• Ask it to rewrite a sentence or paragraph for clarity (but then edit it back into your own voice).

If you’re prepared to do a fair amount of editing, then producing a first draft using AI is a viable option, but rewrite it so that it sounds more like the way you’d say it. You can prompt AI with attributes like ‘friendlier’, ‘quirkier’, etc., to get closer to your own voice in the second draft. Whatever you end up with, make sure you keep tweaking it until you’re happy that it sounds like ‘you’. 

In my experience, this process takes longer than writing the whole thing yourself and it quickly becomes a false economy, but give it a go and see how you get on.

Words are your superpower

The USP of any organisation is its people – and their voices. Your words are an asset and offer a huge opportunity to connect and stand out. There has arguably never been a better time to showcase your brand’s humanity and personality while your competitors drown in a sea of vanilla.

You won’t be surprised to hear me say it, but using a freelance copywriter to help you with thought leadership articles, reports, proposals, and any other business output is the best way to use your words to their maximum potential. Good writing isn’t just grammatically correct, concise and clear; it’s also persuasive, compelling and helps to build trust and connection. 

It’s also important to understand how you sound as a brand, and a copywriter can help you define, refine, and use your brand voice.

But whenever you use AI, make it work for you by using it as a tool to make your writing better, rather than to think for you. You’re the best person for that job.

If you’d like to discuss your concerns, challenges and opportunities around using AI in your business writing, give me a shout. I’m always happy to have a no-obligation chat and offer free advice where I can.

Disclaimer: I have made every effort to ensure that all advice provided is factually accurate, in good faith, and up to date, but the world of AI is evolving at speed and I can’t take any responsibility for any inaccuracies.