AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to sound human.

If you're worried about how AI will affect your job, the world of copywriting might offer a glimpse into the future.

In early 2023, writer Benjamin Miller (not his real name) was on a roll. He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blogs and articles to promote a technology company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. “It was a really attractive job,” Miller says. It was a chance to be creative and collaborate with experts in a variety of fields. But one day, his manager told Miller about a new project. “They wanted to use AI to reduce costs,” he says. (Miller signed a non-disclosure agreement and asked the BBC not to name him and his company.)

A month later, the company introduced an automated system: Miller's manager would enter a story headline into an online form, and an AI model would generate an outline based on the title and send a notification to Miller's computer. Instead of writers coming up with their own ideas, they would create articles based on the outline, with Miller doing the final edits before the article was published. Miller only had a few months to adapt, when news of the second layer of automation came: ChatGPT would now write the entire article, and most of his team was laid off. The few who remained were left with the even less creative task of editing ChatGPT's substandard text to make it sound more human.

By 2024, the company had laid off the rest of Miller's team, leaving him on his own. “Suddenly, I was just doing everybody's jobs,” Miller said. Every day, he would open documents written by the AI ​​and correct the robot's routine mistakes, doing the work that had once employed dozens of people.

“It was mostly just cleaning up the sentences, making them less awkward, and getting rid of any weirdly formal or overzealous language,” Miller says. “There was more editing than with a human writer, but it was always the exact same kind of editing. The real problem was that it was so repetitive and boring. I began to feel like a robot.”

Miller's experience reflects a broader shift: Across many industries, AI is being used to perform tasks once reserved for human minds. And while AI is often cheaper than humans, early adopters are quickly learning that it can't always perform at the same level. Now, people like Miller are being asked to team up with the same robots that are taking their jobs, to give algorithms a bit of humanity: a hidden army that makes AI seem better than it actually is.

This will likely only be a temporary solution if AI makes things dramatically more efficient; if not, Miller's story may be a preview of what's to come for other professions.

But on a much smaller scale, some workers are already facing dire consequences. If there's one thing big language models powered by generative AI can do, it's string words and paragraphs together, propelling some writers to the forefront.

Its impact is already being felt among copywriters who create marketing materials and other content for companies: In some parts of the copywriting industry, AI has been a blessing. It can be a useful tool It speeds up your work and enhances your creativity. But other copywriters, especially those early in their careers, say: AI is making it harder to find a job.

But some people are finding that a new type of job has emerged, one that pays much less: correcting robots' crappy writing.

“It adds a human touch, but it requires extensive editing,” says Katrina Cowart, a copywriter in Lexington, Kentucky, who has worked on editing AI texts. “The grammar and word choice are just weird. I always remove flourishes like 'therefore' and 'nevertheless,' which don't belong in casual writing. Plus, because the AI ​​makes things up, I have to fact-check the whole thing, which is very time-consuming because it's not just the big ideas. The AI ​​hallucinates these flippant little things in parting shots that you don't notice.”

Cowart says that AI humanization often takes more time than writing a piece from scratch, but the pay is lower: “The recruitment platforms where you find this work usually pay around 10 cents (£0.08) maximum per word, but that's if you're writing text – this is considered editing work, so you usually only get 1-5 cents (£0.008-£0.04) per word,” she says.

“It's boring, terrible work and pays next to nothing,” Cowart said.

But some in the copywriting world believe the arrival of AI will be a good or bad thing depending on how people approach it and where they are in their careers. Some writers say incorporating the tools into their creative process could even improve the quality of their work.

of American Society of Writers and Artists AWAI, an organization that provides training and resources for freelance writers, hosts a variety of courses on artificial intelligence for its members. AWAI president Rebecca Matter says the AI ​​class is by far the institute's most popular course right now. “It's an incredible tool,” Matter says. “For copywriting professionals, the risk isn't that we'll lose our jobs to AI, it's that we'll have to adapt. It may be uncomfortable, but I see it as a huge opportunity.”

Matter says that for most of the writers he knows, the transition to the world of AI has been smooth: In fact, AI has become such an integral part of the copywriting process that many writers now have personal “AI policies” added to their professional websites that explain how they use the technology.

Rebecca Dugas, a copywriter with nine years of experience, says that AI has enabled her to produce the same high-quality work in less time.

“I use AI whenever it makes sense for my clients,” she says, “and it’s a great co-creative partner, whether it’s for brainstorming, market research, or rewriting a paragraph when you’re stuck.”

But Dugas understands that customers may have questions about the technology. Her own AI policy Dugas explains that she's free to go without AI for those who prefer it, but it will likely cost more to do so: the extra time and mental energy required means her non-AI projects carry a higher price tag.

As AI becomes more advanced, Dugas expects some companies will turn to ChatGPT and other tools to fulfill their writing needs instead of hiring humans. “But it's also true that companies are starting to realize that if you don't understand copywriting, you can't judge the effectiveness of what an AI produces,” she says. That means there will always be high-paying jobs for talented, established writers, according to Dugas.

But copywriters lower down the career ladder may not be so lucky: Many in that position today find themselves in the midst of a series of contradictions endemic to our modern age.

A lot of copywriting work comes from website owners looking for articles that will drive more traffic from Google. But Google said last year: Initiative to remove “useless” content from search resultsThis has raised concerns that the tech giant may penalize websites that host AI-generated content. Google has maintained that it's fine with AI-written content as long as it's of high quality, but these assurances have not allayed concerns.

Cowart says that many of the freelance writing platforms that have implemented AI-detection software are also simultaneously hiring people to edit the content created by the chatbots, meaning that part of the copywriting ecosystem revolves almost entirely around trying to avoid the advent of artificial intelligence.

“They sell you AI content, pay you to fix it, and then at the same time send you emails about how to write like a human so as not to trigger the AI ​​detector,” Cowart says. “It's so insulting.” To make matters worse, the detectors are regularly updated to keep up with the ongoing changes of companies that create AI chatbots, so the rules for what might flag your writing as AI are constantly changing. “It's frustrating because there are a million ways you can say the same thing in English, but which one is more human? I don't like guessing,” she says.

Miller's time to humanize the AI ​​came to an abrupt end. After months of repeated edits, he was called into an unexpected meeting on April 5, 2024. A historic earthquake rocked his hometown of New York.he was fired; the company decided that Miller was simply an unnecessary layer of human intervention.

“I pretty much lost my job to automation,” Miller said.

Fortunately for Miller, ironically enough, he soon found a new opportunity. Undetectable AIMiller is helping companies use AI to do the job he was forced to do. rear In the first place, AI took his job.

Undetectable AI CEO Burz Juhasz says he's optimistic about the future of work, even though tools like the ones his company makes are sure to have some negative effects on the labor market. “When the car first came out, back when horse-drawn carriages were still used, people thought it was the end. But society always adapts,” Juhasz says. “A lot of jobs will be replaced, and the ones that will be hit the hardest will be freelancers. I understand how they feel. But the people who are getting paid to humanize AI are great opportunists. It's certainly not a great job, but they're effectively finding themselves in a new position at a time when we're redefining our notions of productivity. Those who can learn to work with technology will be fine.”

Miller doesn't look back fondly on his time in the AI ​​humanization mines. “I contributed to a lot of the garbage that was on the internet and destroying the internet,” he says. “By the time I left, nobody was reading it, because it was just garbage.” Miller thinks that eventually, the AI ​​articles he worked on will be deleted by the company. “It'll be like nothing happened.”