Every giant leap mankind has taken, be it individual, tech, brand, or marketing, has left a trail of stories in its wake. While AI may make the more laborious parts of tracking and streamlining those stories easier, picking out the more compelling, heartfelt narratives is still a job for NI – the natural intelligence of a human writer. Set up an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters in an infinite number of rooms within infinite galaxies, and they should eventually be able to knock out every single work of classic literature. Saying that AI tools will eventually take over writing jobs is kind of like that. Both scenarios are entirely possible, but with footnotes.

For writers, especially those working within advertising and marketing, on-the-job demands to upskill are not new. Traditional advertising – and digital advertising in its nascent stages – clearly demarcated the copy and creative departments. However, over the last 10 years, the line has steadily blurred and become almost non-existent. Copywriters have learnt to plan creative strategy, integrate media insights into what they communicate, and if they can, even suggest visual direction. Creative and content in marketing are basically one function, with the only skill differentiator being those who can design and those who can put the right words to the big idea.

Longform content writers, too, have long relied on their skills to turn briefs into many, many SEO-friendly words. Ghostwriting jobs have often been the side hustle of choice for students, creatives, and aspiring writers. They have acquired some experience with digital checks and are, at the very least, required to employ Grammarly and Copysentry to proof final drafts and clear them for plagiarism. In this way, they may be rather better prepared to incorporate AI into their work. They are also better placed to be replaced by AI writing tools.

We have already witnessed layoffs at content-heavy sites such as Buzzfeed and MSN, with AI-written articles replacing those written by human journalists, thus presenting the sample of fact-laden, generically-written content we can expect if the trend continues to spread. The writing is always average, never terrible, and the job is getting done at a fraction of what a team of human writers would cost and possibly in a fraction of the time.

However, call it writer’s bias or writer’s instinct, I am not entirely convinced that AI can replace human writers entirely or even ever.

When you pick up a book, whether it’s Stephen King taking you through years, decades, or days of terror, or Anton Chekhov (or any of the Russian greats) taking you through years, decades or days of their own thoughts, you pick it up for a reason – the author. If you like reading, you probably have a list of books, storylines, or exchanges that impacted your life.

If you are not one for the written word, I can bet there is a film that changed your life, a piece of dialogue that turned your world upside down, or a character whom you related to like you hadn’t to anyone in real life. You probably have heard a song, been addicted to a lyric, or loved a music video for the story it told or the images it presented; how they made you feel, or how they affected your own work or worldview. All the emotions these works have created within you started with words. Every piece of content was based on a script that someone wrote. And yes, we can easily feed cues into a writing tool to get what we want, but to get to the solution, there needs to be a human mind asking the right questions.

The need to create something; to write, to paint, to film, is born from the questions we find within ourselves as reactions to what is going on around us. The context of where we have grown up and lived through, the events we have witnessed, the big and small personal joys, and the turmoil, interests and ideas they have bred in us are what give our chosen art nuance. Without context, we would simply be toeing whatever line is most acceptable within our communities, never challenging why anything has to be a certain way.

In my work as a print lifestyle journalist, the most important thing I had to learn is to feel my way towards the story. When you are speaking to someone about a new film they have starred in, or covering a fashion, or investigating a sexual harassment controversy, you have to be cognisant of your race against time. Chances are, 30 or so big and small digital media outlets will already have reported on the film launch or the fashion event even before your story goes to press. The only USP I can offer is the story I tell, and the stories that interest me come from the questions I want answers to. So that, although our strongest superpower as writers is our individuality, as AI evolves towards achieving some semblance of individuality, the other superpower we must develop is adaptability.

There will always be technological advancements in all creative industries. Yes, some of these industries will become heavily automated. Even in art, we have seen a shift from manual cameras to digital SLRs, from pencils and paper to tablets and styli. Visual artists adapted to the new technology; art schools adapted their studio courses to produce digital artists.

If you have worked with any kind of AI programme that can write several inches of copy, you may have realised that you need to keep prompting it in terms of the facts you require, the language you would like the final piece to be expressed in, and even the emotional detail you need. AI programmes are great for writing research-based first drafts, but may need a human editor to do a final check on fact and tone. If you write for a living because there is nothing else you would rather do, then you must learn to work with the tools and add that skill to your resume.

Any kind of art – visual or written – will always need individual human context. Leaving it all up to AI will definitely produce some interesting results eventually, but that is like betting on infinite monkeys producing infinite works of classic literature in infinite galaxies.

Amina Baig has divided her two-decade-long career between journalism and advertising and has loved every second of it.
annabaig@gmail.com