Imagine a young, bright-eyed communicator-marketer asking the boss “are you wanting me to create some soul-less content for the company?” The boss would likely give a stern lecture on the important and valued work of the firm.
Yet that same boss might be weighing the speed, the efficiency, the reduced cost of having that content created with, say, AI. In other words, the soul-less machine. Of course the youngster could edit it, clean it up, make it sound like us. That’s certainly the rational justification the leader could grab on to.
This, or some form of this, is a scenario I imagine playing out right now all across the business landscape. And when it involves AI, it’s important to remember the game you're signing up for:
-- A prompt
-- A scrape (that always pulls from the past and isn’t future-facing)
-- A compilation
-- An edit
But soul?
That feeling & emotion that makes you & your brand stand out instead of sifted up?
You cannot edit soul "into" AI-generated content.
That will remain elusive.
Unless you hire a writer who is good at their craft.
Who gets you and your brand.
Who knows what moves people (who then move metrics).
As a writer who has benefitted from many editors, I've also been guilty of editing soul right out of a piece, or left it on the sideline altogether.
That happens when we lose sight of why we're writing in the first place -- to make a connection.
Want to make more meaningful connections?
(Of course you do.)
Then hire a professional who lives to do this important work.
Because it seems that the old adage of CHEAP, FAST, GOOD is back.
AI for writing?
It'll get you the first two, for sure.
You might even be able to edit it into something... workable.
But it will have no soul.
And in an increasingly cheap, fast, soulless churn of content...
Soul makes all the difference.