CopySmiths Founder on AI Writing Instruments

To Katrina McKinnon, synthetic intelligence-powered writing instruments are solely pretty much as good because the operators that immediate them. And the perfect “immediate engineers” shall be liberal arts of us, storytellers — not mathematicians.

McKinnon based CopySmiths, a blog-writing company, three years in the past. She and I first spoke shortly after that launch, lengthy earlier than the rise of AI instruments. We lately caught up, this time addressing writers for rent in a ChatGPT world.

The audio of our whole dialog is embedded beneath. The transcript is edited for size and readability.

Eric Bandholz: What do you do?

Katrina McKinnon: I’m the founding father of CopySmiths. We’re an Australia-based weblog writing company for ecommerce shops. The corporate is three years previous.

We work with writers worldwide, primarily in Kenya. They’re very keen and hungry to work. Sadly, Kenya has very excessive unemployment.

Bandholz: Are synthetic intelligence instruments impacting your corporation?

McKinnon: Simply months in the past, I used to be cautious of AI. We had by no means used AI instruments like Jasper or Frase. We as soon as used Surfer search engine optimization, but it surely left a fingerprint and created an expectation that content material is simple.

Now we handcraft all content material, however we use AI for concepts. We will direct it, for instance, “Give me a top level view on the way to clear a fountain pen.” It’ll do this fairly effectively, though there are minor particulars it doesn’t perceive.

One other good use is advanced product descriptions. We’ve got a shopper that sells headlamps and head torches for mining actions. If you happen to’re going right into a quarry, an explosive setting, you don’t need your head torch sparking a hearth. ChatGPT is sensible at teasing out all the main points. You may paste the product information into ChatGPT, and inside seconds it should spit again, “This one’s received three batteries. The sunshine lasts 24 hours.”

I don’t see ChatGPT changing into a search engine. It’s extra of a discovery and analysis device. We don’t use it to supply weblog copy as a result of it doesn’t go into the depth wanted to indicate authority on a subject. We use it for summarizing and studying.

It’s good for creating tables. You may direct it, “Make a desk evaluating these nutritional vitamins and the impact on my pores and skin, hair, or total well-being and inform me the milligram dosage.” It might create fairly advanced tables with very totally different relationships within the knowledge.

Nevertheless, the information are fallacious 80% of the time. So it requires intensive human oversight.

Bandholz: Can Google distinguish between AI and human-written articles?

McKinnon: Sure. A Google worker lately tweeted that AI content material is suitable in the suitable eventualities. So that you wouldn’t publish an opinion piece from ChatGPT, however you can actually use a simple FAQ, similar to the way to exchange the batteries.

ChatGPT is one in every of many AI writing instruments. Perplexity.ai, for instance, is a mixture between Google search and Bing chat, functioning as a search engine that precisely cites sources.

Google search is damaged. Its outcomes are crammed filled with low-quality Forbes articles. I spoke yesterday with a service provider who paid a Forbes writer to incorporate the corporate’s footwear in an article. So it’s pay-to-play. That’s not a observe I’m all in favour of.

Hopefully Google will evolve from a boring, dumb search engine.

I’m excited in regards to the coming want for AI operators, which I name immediate engineers. Many entrepreneurs are quantitative and mathematical. They run pay-per-click, “data-driven” campaigns. That’s how they develop ecommerce income.

With immediate engineering, it is going to be the storytellers — liberal arts majors and communicators — who management the language fashions as a result of they naturally suppose creatively with phrases. Over the subsequent few years, we’ll see linguistically artistic founders construct large companies.

Bandholz: The place can our viewers observe you?

McKinnon: Go to CopySmiths.com. I’ve received a Fb group referred to as Exceptional Freelance Writers in Africa. You will discover me on LinkedIn.