[…]How have the copywriters been faring, in a world awash in cheap AI text generators and wracked with AI adoption mania in executive circles? As always, we turn to the workers themselves. And once again, the stories they have to tell are unhappy ones. These are accounts of gutted departments, dried up work, lost jobs, and closed businesses. I’ve heard from copywriters who now fear losing their apartments, one who turned to sex work, and others, who, to their chagrin, have been forced to use AI themselves.
Readers of this series will recognize some recurring themes: The work that client firms are settling for is not better when it’s produced by AI, but it’s cheaper, and deemed “good enough.” Copywriting work has not vanished completely, but has often been degraded to gigs editing client-generated AI output. Wages and rates are in free fall, though some hold out hope that business will realize that a human touch will help them stand out from the avalanche of AI homogeneity.
Copywriting as an industry has been dead for years already. I know, I used to want to be a copywriter. Even 15 years ago, it wasn’t really an option anymore.
Building off this, the last time I remember anyone being a copywriter at a software company I’d worked for was IBM in 2015.
They simply expected the developers to write the documentation. Strangely, this actually worked some of the time, but is usually why modern docs are cobbled together and half-finished, or omitted entirely.
Say what you will about AI being used in this way, but it’s still fuckloads better than the current trend of putting everything on fucking Discord jfc whyyyyy
@alyaza I’ve sadly been there, and we’re constantly being fed so much BS about AI. Companies are using it because they can, not because they should.
My company is about to lay off hundreds and replace them with an ai chatbot/rent fixing. We’re a corporate landlord. This will not end well for anyone.
Are they expecting AI to… make decisions regarding tenants? I wonder if they are aware of universal prompt injection.
They don’t care. Security it a joke to them. I should know, I ran the sec department.
It’s funny how completely opposite to this my experience over the past couple of years has been. Twice now I’ve been practically begging my managers to let me use AI-based tools to make my work easier, they’ve responded “no, we don’t want AI touching any of our stuff for vague legal paranoia reasons”, and then the company suffered a collapse and everyone got laid off.
I call BS. They almost definitely did not collapse solely because they insisted on not using AI in the way you proposed.
If you want to argue, be my guest, but you have to be more specific than “they didn’t use AI as I told them, now they’re bankrupt”. Sounds like correlation to me.
Sounds like correlation to me.
Did I say otherwise?
and then the company suffered a collapse and everyone got laid off.
This feels like the ending to most stories these days. My friend’s company shoved AI down his throat, and then the company suffered a collapse and everyone got laid off.
If you’re forced to use AI you should immediately quit that job.
Some people are better off using AI since their work output would be shit otherwise, then again, those people should get universal basic income instead of pretending to work.
Most people with jobs can’t afford to just quit. Also the job market at the moment is insane.
Exactly. Even more reason to quit. Fuck this system.
