I have spent a decent portion of my adult life writing. I have published over 2,500 legal blogs, had a story in a magazine, created print ads, and churned out tens of thousands of social media posts. Writing is a craft and should be studied; no one was more suspicious of AI as a writing tool than I was.
In November 2022, my boss asked me and the other copywriters to try ChatGPT—long before it was a household name. I had decided on its merit before trying it because all I did was type, “Write me a legal blog about estate planning.” It gave me a short article that could have been written by a deranged computer who stopped learning to write in elementary school. I reported that it was a useless tool that had no place in our business. Like most things, I was wrong.
The Associated Press Uses AI
Many people have assumed that they can tell when AI writes something. I will argue that these people can detect bad AI. (If you are skeptical about AI, take a time out and listen to the Law Firm Marketing Minute episode with John Newton, Head of Technology at Ontro.ai. He talks about what AI can do for small law firms, which still has me thinking about it.) The Associated Press has been using AI since 2014, and I know no one was calling them out eight years ago. You’ve been reading AI for over a decade. Even Grammarly is a form of AI.
Your Input Makes AI What It Is
AI is a tool, not a cheat code. I sought top-tier work with low-level effort when I put in my first prompt. My view on AI shifted when I first heard about “super prompts.” This was another way of saying that the more information you gave it, the better the product it will generate. I began drawing on my writing experience about grammatical rules, tone of voice, structure, and POV. Did it give me a well-written blog I would feel comfortable sending out into the world? Not quite, but it was significantly closer.
AI is a force multiplier. It will not turn an inexperienced writer into a professional, but it will leverage what you bring. It can also make that same inexperienced writer adequate. As a book nerd who spent most of his life jealous of Hemmingway, I will point out that he said the first draft of anything is [expletive deleted].
These days, I let AI write these drafts for me. I pool my resources and deliberately crafted instructions and let it make a draft. In grad school, I read a draft, set it aside, and rewrote it almost from memory. This has been my approach to AI, and it’s letting me create a better product faster. You can become more efficient if you see AI as a tool that leverages your existing skill sets.
How Much of This Was Written By AI?
Ironically, none of it—but that’s my point. AI didn’t replace me, and not everything I do is entirely reliant on it. It’s another tool in my arsenal, like a horde of other things I use. Shift your perspective about AI and let it be something that you experiment with. At Spotlight Branding, we say that AI will not replace attorneys, but attorneys who use AI will replace those who don’t.
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