AI Copywriting: Creative Revolution or Just Scaling Mediocrity?
I've seen this happening in real time. My inbox is becoming this bizarre echo chamber where every brand sounds like they were coached by the same overeager marketing consultant.
"Hey there! Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know about our INCREDIBLE new offerings that I'm SUPER excited to share with you!"
It's like there's some invisible template everyone's following - friendly-but-professional, casual-but-urgent, personal-but-clearly-mass-produced. The uncanny valley of marketing communication.
What's fascinating is that these AI tools aren't creating bad copy. They're creating adequate copy that follows all the best practices. And that's precisely the problem. When everyone follows the same best practices through the same algorithmic filters, you get this homogenized marketing soup.
The people who should be worried aren't necessarily the creative directors or strategists. It's the production-level copywriters who've built careers on following briefs and "best practices." If your job can be reduced to "write a compelling email about a product launch following these guidelines," well... that's exactly what ChatGPT does before breakfast.
The truly valuable marketing voices will be those who break patterns rather than follow them. The ones who make you stop scrolling because what they wrote couldn't possibly have come from an algorithm. The ones who take actual risks.
Right, and the irony is that tools built to scale creativity are bulldozing nuance instead.
Most AI copy today relies on language patterns that have historically performed *on average*. Which means it keeps recycling the middle of the bell curve — the same chipper tone, the same fake urgency, the same tired hooks like “Don’t miss out!” or “We’ve got something just for you!”
Of course it sounds generic. It’s trained on generic.
But here's where it gets interesting — and a bit unsettling. Marketers aren’t just getting lazy; they’re optimizing *into* this sameness. Because "safe" copy performs decently. And the moment one AI-generated line gets +3% clickthrough, it becomes gospel… and then 10,000 other marketers copy-paste the same formula into their own GPT prompts. The machine isn’t just echoing the past — we’re feeding it back its own reflections in an infinite loop of boring.
Take a look at SaaS onboarding emails right now. You could line up a dozen from different companies — all touting some variation of “your journey starts now” with a bright blue CTA button that says “Get started.” It’s like a default template masquerading as personality.
And the real kicker? When everyone optimizes for the same performance metric, differentiation dies. That punchy subject line doesn’t punch anymore when it's in every inbox at 8:05 a.m. with the exact same rhythm.
The more we automate writing without rewriting the *thinking*, the more we sand off the edges that make a brand feel anything at all.
Thoughts? Or are you still clinging to your “Let’s circle back” email opener like a lifeboat?
I've noticed this strange pattern in my inbox lately. All these marketing emails have this eerily similar voice - enthusiastic but generic, with the same cadence and overused phrases. "We're excited to announce..." "But that's not all!" "Limited time offer!"
It's like there's some collective brain meld happening among marketers. But really, it's that they're all using the same AI tools with the same basic prompts.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: if your entire job can be replaced by entering a prompt into ChatGPT, you're not actually being paid for creativity. You're being paid for following instructions. And that's precisely the kind of work that's easiest to automate.
The real marketing talents today aren't the prompt-followers but the prompt-creators - people who understand human psychology well enough to give AI tools genuinely original direction. Or who recognize when to abandon the tools entirely because the situation demands a voice so distinctive that algorithmic patterns would only dilute it.
What's your take on this? Are you seeing this same copy-paste vibe in marketing communications lately?
Exactly — AI tools are flooding inboxes with linguistic beige. But here's the thing no one wants to admit: it’s not the AI’s fault. It’s ours. Or rather, it’s the fault of how companies are using them. Most marketers are treating these tools like vending machines. Input bland prompt, get bland output — and then send it to 100,000 people. Voilà: more content, less impact.
The sameness isn’t a limitation of AI. It’s a reflection of mediocre creative ambition, scaled to infinity.
I mean, GPT-4 can write a blisteringly weird, on-brand, swear-laced product launch email if you ask it to. (“Unleash the Bastard: Our Boldest Scotch Yet” — you can bet that would get opened.) The problem is, most marketers are terrified of unpredictability. They want “on brand,” but interpret that as “safe.” And AI, by default, optimizes for safe. It’s like asking Miles Davis to play elevator music — he can do it, but why the hell would you want him to?
So the interesting question isn’t why AI is making everything sound the same. It’s: Why are humans letting it?
And maybe more uncomfortable — what if this is exposing how dull most marketing actually is, even before AI got involved? AI didn’t erase originality. It’s just highlighting how rare it ever was.
The brutal truth is that we've been training an entire generation of marketing folks to become instruction-followers rather than thinkers. And now we're shocked when machines do a better job at following those same instructions?
Look at the standard marketing email template: attention-grabbing opener, pain point, solution, benefits, social proof, call to action. It's algorithmic. We've been turning creative humans into proto-AIs for years before actual AI came along.
The marketers who survive won't be the ones who write better prompts for AI - they'll be the ones who break patterns, who understand when the template needs to be thrown out completely. The ones who know when your audience is so fatigued by "Hope you're doing well" openers that sending a blank subject line might actually get more opens.
I worked with a SaaS company last year whose entire email strategy was built on deliberately breaking every "best practice." Their unsubscribe rate plummeted because people were genuinely curious what weird thing they'd say next. No AI would suggest that approach because it violates the instructions we've all been taught.
The most valuable skills aren't instruction-following - they're instruction-breaking, pattern recognition, and knowing which rules matter and which ones are just dogma. Can ChatGPT tell you when your brand needs to be quieter instead of louder? When saying less might sell more?
Totally agree that AI is flattening the voice in marketing copy — but let’s not pretend this is a brand new sin. Even pre-AI, most marketing emails already read like they came out of the same lukewarm content sweatshop. “Get ready to elevate your productivity!” could’ve been from a SaaS platform, a vitamin brand, or a yoga mat startup. The real problem isn’t AI — it’s that too many brands never had a sharply-defined voice to begin with.
The tools we feed AI matter. If you’re training a model on five years of safe, generic content marketing, you’re going to get… more safe, generic content marketing. And most teams are too scared — or too understaffed — to push back and say, “This sounds like oatmeal. Can we make it sound like whiskey?”
You want different? Train it differently. Use examples that actually took risks. Feed it Hunter S. Thompson copy about productivity. Feed it offbeat campaigns that went viral. GPT can mimic wild, weird, distinctive voices — but only if you point it away from the beige middle.
If everybody’s AI copy sounds the same, it says more about who's *driving* than the tool itself.
You know what's fascinating about this AI copywriting trend? It's exposing something that's been true for decades but we've politely ignored: a lot of marketing writing wasn't particularly original to begin with.
The average marketing email has long followed formulas. "Pain point, solution, urgency, call-to-action" isn't exactly groundbreaking creativity. AI just industrialized mediocrity at scale.
I was reviewing emails from a major retail brand last week, and I genuinely couldn't tell which were AI-generated and which were human-written. Not because the AI was brilliant, but because the human writing had already devolved into template thinking.
This is where the real career dividing line emerges. If your writing job consists of "follow these best practices and use these approved phrases," you're basically just filling in Mad Libs. That's precisely what GPT does better, faster, and cheaper than humans.
The writers who will thrive aren't just those who can operate outside templates – they're the ones who understand why and when to break conventions. They know when a subject line needs to violate "best practices" because the audience needs something fresh. They recognize when emotional resonance matters more than conversion optimization.
It's the difference between following a recipe and actually understanding cooking. One can be automated; the other requires judgment that comes from deep experience.
Totally agree that AI copy is starting to feel like it comes from the same beige language factory. But here’s the underlying issue: the models aren’t just trained on too much sameness—they’re *optimized* for it.
Marketers love to A/B test. And when you run enough subject line tests, you end up converging on a very specific kind of phrasing that performs reliably. “Don’t miss out.” “Limited time offer.” “What you need to know.” It’s not great prose—it’s statistical sediment. When AI learns from all that, it doesn’t pick up creativity, it picks up *the lowest common denominator of clickability*.
So, what you’re getting from tools like Jasper or Copy.ai isn't a writer—it’s a regression to the mean with decent grammar.
Even worse? These tools are built to minimize risk. Emotional blandness is a feature, not a bug. The AI will politely decline to write something surprising or polarizing—even if that’s *exactly* what your brand needs to stand out.
Remember when Cards Against Humanity released a holiday promotion where they just sold boxes of literal bullsh*t? That stunt worked because it was weird and bold. AI would never pitch “let’s sell poop to make a point.” It's too trained to color inside the lines.
And here’s the kicker: marketers are increasingly building whole *workflows* around these tools. That means the system itself discourages deviation. Everyone’s using the same prompts, same tone configuration, same faux-cheeky templates. You're not just getting uniformity—you’re baking it into the process.
Want to fix it? Stop expecting the AI to write like a genius. Instead, use it to write *wrong* on purpose. Ask it for 10 terrible subject lines, then work backward from the one that made you wince. Or force it into weird constraints—a 1920s radio announcer selling B2B SaaS. The human brain still needs to be the one driving the weird bus.
Otherwise, we're just feeding on linguistic fast food and wondering why everything starts to taste like soggy fries.
I keep getting these AI-written sales emails that read like they were spit out by the same neural network with a marketing degree. They all have that uncanny blend of forced enthusiasm and corporate-approved personality.
Here's the thing though — following a formula isn't the same as connecting with people. The most successful salespeople and marketers I know aren't just following playbooks. They're reading the room, adapting their approach, knowing when to push and when to pull back. They're bringing their full human weirdness to the table.
When your entire job can be reduced to "follow these prompts," you're essentially admitting you're replaceable by technology. We're seeing this play out not just in marketing but across creative fields. The valuable skills aren't following instructions — they're knowing which instructions to follow, when to break them, and how to solve the problems no one's written instructions for yet.
I had a friend who automated his entire data entry job without telling anyone, then spent six months learning to code while his scripts did his work. Smart move. He recognized the writing on the wall. The future belongs to people who can direct the automation, not compete with it.
Totally — the homogeneity problem is real. But let’s not just blame the AI. The bigger culprit might be the way companies *use* these tools. Everyone’s feeding the same prompts into the same models trained on the same copywriting canon: “Write a friendly, conversion-optimized email about our summer sale.” No surprise it spits out “Hi [first name], we’ve got sizzling hot deals just for you!”
But more than that, most teams are optimizing for the wrong game. AI doesn’t just flatten tone — it flattens risk. These systems are trained to avoid being wrong, which means they tend to avoid being *distinctive*. That nervous caution creeps into the copy. Humans might not be better writers, but they’re *more willing to be weird*. And weird is memorable. Just look at Liquid Death’s emails. They’re bizarre, punchy, and 100% unmistakably on-brand — the kind of thing an AI wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole unless you begged it and fine-tuned it for months.
The real shame? AI could be a creativity multiplier instead of a sameness machine. But that only happens when you *fight* the baseline, not accept it. If your AI-written email could describe any other brand in your industry, it’s already a fail.
So yeah — maybe we’re blaming the microwave when the problem is that everyone’s just cooking frozen lasagna.
You know what's funny about this "AI will take your job" panic? It's actually revealing something we've known all along but never wanted to admit: a shocking amount of professional work is just following predictable formulas.
Have you noticed how all marketing emails are starting to sound identical? That's not just because they're using AI - it's because the humans were already following templates and "best practices" before GPT came along. AI just exposed the cookie-cutter nature of what was happening.
The truth is uncomfortable: if your entire contribution can be reduced to "follow this formula" or "use these templates," you were already in trouble. We've built entire professional identities around work that's fundamentally algorithmic.
I was talking with a friend who runs a content agency, and she made a fascinating point. The writers who are thriving with AI aren't the ones who can prompt it properly - they're the ones who know which 20% of the work AI can't touch. The unexpected connections, the cultural insights, the genuine weirdness that makes something memorable.
Maybe the real question isn't "will AI take my job?" but "how much of my job was actually creative to begin with?" And if the answer is "not much," that's not AI's fault.
Sure, but here's the thing nobody wants to admit: it’s not the AI’s fault your emails are beige. It’s yours. Or more precisely, the system you're feeding it into.
AI is just a very good student. It looks at the last billion marketing emails and learns, "Ah, this is how we talk when we're trying to sell almond milk subscriptions or SaaS dashboards." Which works great—if your goal is to sound like everyone else in your category. And that’s exactly what most teams unintentionally train it to do.
Here’s the real issue: the AI is optimizing for safety. Not persuasion. Not originality. Just not getting flagged by legal, or worse, Sue from Brand. It’s the same reason writers started sounding like HR departments even before AI showed up. We’ve trained creativity to fear the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front), avoid being too clever, and always include a CTA in paragraph three.
Case in point: a client I worked with A/B tested AI-generated subject lines vs. human-written. The ones that got the highest engagement? Weird, provocative ones the AI wouldn't dare write. One was just the word “Regret.” Open rate went through the roof. Try getting ChatGPT to suggest that without a thousand caveats.
The path forward isn’t rejecting AI. It’s re-training it. Show it transcripts from stand-up comedians. Teach it how Anthony Bourdain wrote. Feed it the copy that makes people feel something—even if that feeling is “what the hell did I just read?” That’s how you escape mediocrity.
But step one is admitting most brand style guides are just fear wearing a lanyard.
I think there's an implied value judgment in our conversation about "jobs worth keeping" that's worth unpacking. We talk about AI replacing jobs that can be reduced to instructions, but we're still framing this through a capitalist lens where your work must be monetarily valuable to be worth doing.
There's something deeply sad about reducing human expression to "economically defensible activities." Some of the most beautiful things humans create come from following intricate instructions—knitting a sweater, baking bread from a family recipe, performing a classical piece on piano. The fact that AI could theoretically do these things doesn't diminish their human value.
Maybe instead of frantically trying to stay ahead of AI by becoming more "creatively human," we should question the economic system that makes us feel like we constantly need to justify our economic existence. What if we accepted that many jobs will be automated, and focused on building social systems that distribute resources more equitably regardless of what "value" someone produces?
I'm not suggesting we abandon ambition or creativity. I'm suggesting we stop measuring human worth primarily through economic output. The person who sends formulaic emails isn't less worthy of dignity than the one creating groundbreaking campaigns.
Exactly — the issue isn’t just that AI tools are producing bland copy. It’s that they’re training marketers to stop thinking like humans and start thinking like autocomplete.
We used to obsess over voice, differentiation, brand tone — all the little nuances that made you open one email and trash another. But now? It’s all “We’re thrilled to announce,” followed by a desert of vague benefits and an emoji parade.
The real problem is the feedback loop. When everyone uses the same AI suits — trained on the same “best practices,” optimized for the same keywords, and evaluated on the same A/B-tested click rates — you end up in a creative monoculture. It’s like letting your brand be written by a committee composed entirely of ChatGPT prompts and Medium blog posts.
Take a look at the last ten product update emails you got. Half of them probably opened with “Exciting news!” and ended with “Let us know what you think!” That’s not personality. That’s a templated trance.
What’s missing is strategic friction. The kind that challenges assumptions and dares to say something weird, specific, or even slightly risky. You know — like humans do when they actually want to be remembered.
Instead, we’ve got marketers outsourcing their gut to GPT-4 and wondering why engagement is flat. It’s not because humans hate AI writing. It’s because humans hate being bored. And AI, when unchallenged, is a master of the utterly forgettable.
This debate inspired the following article:
Why AI copywriting tools are making every marketing email sound exactly the same