Trained Copywriters Have a Strong Future in the AI Era
By Nick Usborne

First … yes, I think the craft of copywriting has a very bright future, in spite of the rise of AI.

Before I get into why I believe that to be true, let me share some context …

I’ve been making my living as a professional copywriter for 45 years and counting. And I have worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, like Apple, Disney, The New York Times, and many others.

Long story short — I like to think I know a thing or two about writing great copy and what it takes to be a good copywriter.

Now for the second thread: AI.

I started using AI in 2020, two years before the launch of ChatGPT to the public. Since then, and particularly after the launch of ChatGPT, I’ve been something of a power user.

I use AI for research, for analysis, for business plans and marketing plans. I use it for design and video. I use it to identify prospective clients. I use Claude Cowork to create agents that automate tasks for me, even when I’m not at my desk.

I even use AI to write content. Not for opinion pieces. Not for thought leadership pieces. But to write content on clearly defined informational topics like “Five places to visit when you’re in Paris,” or “Six ways drinking coffee can benefit your health.”

With the right training and context, AI can write that kind of content as well as, or better than, I can.

But … I’ve never been able to find an AI tool that can write good sales copy.

Perhaps counterintuitively, I asked Claude Fable 5 why this might be. It wrote me a long and insightful reply. Here are three excerpts that I think are particularly relevant:

The training data is an argument for mediocrity. An LLM [large language model] learns what sales copy is by ingesting millions of examples of it, and most sales copy ever written is mediocre. So when a model generates “sales copy,” it’s regressing toward the statistical center of the genre — the average of everything that sounds like copy. But copy that converts is almost by definition deviant. It breaks pattern, it surprises, it says the thing the other hundred landing pages in the category won’t say.

It writes to a composite reader, not a specific one. Strong copy starts with one prospect at one moment of awareness, carrying one specific anxiety, using specific language you overheard on a customer call or lurking in a forum. That research is lived and particular. An AI’s “reader” is a demographic smear — an average, everyone and therefore no one.

Helpfulness training actively sands off the edge. This one’s a bit self-incriminating, but it’s real. Models like me are tuned to be balanced, complete, and agreeable. Great sales copy is often none of those things. It’s willing to polarize, to alienate the wrong reader on purpose, to make one claim with total commitment and omit everything else.

I told you AI was good at writing content!

Why companies will always need the services of a trained, human copywriter

As anyone who has ever taken one of my training programs will tell you, the first thing I talk about is understanding who you’re writing to.

“If you don’t know who you’re talking to, how can you know what to say?”

AI can figure out the broad demographic of an audience, but only humans can truly visualize and empathize with someone, as if they’re sitting across from you at the kitchen table.

Next, to Claude’s point: “Copy that converts is almost by definition deviant.” That is to say, it deviates from the norm. It’s original, surprising, emotionally engaging.

AI can’t do that.

It can’t do headlines either. Believe me, I’ve tried to train an AI tool to write a great headline. Zero success.

It doesn’t know how to open a sales page either.

A while back I asked Claude to write me a sales page, and pushed back when it gave me an eight-line opening paragraph. “Give me a two-line opening paragraph,” I said. “Two lines are easy to read. A cognitive snack. Eight lines feel like homework.”

That had never occurred to Claude. It understood what I meant and, interestingly, said, “Let me put that into memory.”

Yes, trained copywriters have a strong future.

Some experts talk about surviving the rise of AI simply by bringing more emotion to their copywriting. I don’t think that’s the full story. AI can do a pretty good job of emulating emotion.

The key, I believe, is that AI can’t understand the emotional complexity of a human. It can’t understand the edges, the weirdness, the surprises we enjoy, the things that make us smile or laugh or cry.

AI does an outstanding job of creating the average of everything.

But this is where great copywriters stand out from the crowd. Nothing about great copy is ever average.

AI may swallow many of the repeatable areas of marketing.

But not the work of trained copywriters.