Are you surprised to learn I don’t like ChatGPT? Didn’t think so. Admittedly, I lost a night or two of sleep when I first heard about it. I worried the little AI monster would cost me business. But as I learned more about it, I breathed a sigh of relief because I realized this: If you would use ChatGPT to create content, you never would have been my client in the first place.
If you don’t have something to say, then I believe you should sit there quietly. That really is an OK thing to do. A unique take, a strong voice, a different point of view? Yay! Let’s talk. If not, please spare the world another deposit on the endless pile of pointless vanilla content.
ChatGPT regurgitates what’s already been said. It even makes up some things (more on that later). And none of what it produces will be in your voice. If it is part of your marketing and business strategy to publish content for content’s sake, and you don’t care how it reflects on you, then have at it. AI may give you all the SEO you want, and it will give you a bunch of words that let you think you created something.
But, let’s be honest: You didn’t.
When you work with a professional ghostwriter, the work is yours. The expertise, the thoughts, the voice, the tone, the ideas — yours, yours, yours, yours and yours. I am the conduit who gets everything out of your head and onto a page, so you can put forth something that is your very own creation.
I often say I am a subject-matter expert at nothing. Well, maybe dogs and eating, but I seldom get paid to write about those anymore. I rely on my clients’ expertise to create their content. What I write will not be a collage of stale stories, nor an amalgamation of made-up musings. It will be original, smart, reliable content in my client’s voice and tone.
If that’s not enough for you to think twice about writing via chatbot, consider the lawyers who used ChatGPT to “write” their legal briefs and got caught. Or the marketing director who called me recently because some of her company’s agents had used the chatbot to write a market update. She started fact-checking and didn’t get past the first paragraph before she found word-for-word plagiarism. She hired me to fact-check, source and rework the piece so it could be published legitimately and legally.
I never imagined ChatGPT would actually bring me business. Perhaps it’s time for a nap.