I'm a full time copywriter for SaaS companies and I'm actually finding the opposite. My experience is people are having AI write stuff then trying to massage it themselves. When they can't get it to a point where they're happy with it they eventually just throw up their hands and hire me for pre-AI project scopes with 2025 rates. Not saying that's the experience everywhere, but AI has been much less problematic for me than most of the narratives I've seen online (knock on wood)
A problem I have with Brian Merchant's reporting on this is that he put out a call for stories from people who have lost their jobs to AI and so that's what he got.
What's missing is a clear indication of the size of this problems. Are there a small number of copywriters who have been affected in this way or is it endemic to the industry as a whole?
I'd love to see larger scale data on this. As far as I can tell (from a quick ChatGPT search session) freelance copywriting jobs are difficult to track because there
isn't a single US labor statistic that covers that category.
The problem isn't getting rid if people's jobs. Jobs are not inherently valuable. The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.
That's like saying "the problem isn't the unmaintainable cost of healthcare, it's that we haven't eliminated all diseases and aging". I.e. the latter is a long way off, and might not ever be 100% feasible, so it's horrifying and inhumane to imply we should allow the suffering caused by the former in the meantime.
In addition, abrupt changes in industry landscape are problematic.
The expectation for everyone to retrain and do something else is not necessarily reasonable, especially in an environment that does not have much of a social support system for education, training, and extended periods away from the workforce.
And we all know that the market doesn't magically make replacement jobs better or the same as the previous ones.
I have ideas, lots of ideas, most of them bad. This hobby had me compare how people (including myself) predicted what a new technology would bring in the future with what actually happened. With few exceptions we get it wrong. Most of the time something terrible will happen and something terrible will be predicted but they are practically never the same thing.
>The problem is we have not built a society or economy where everyone can thrive regardless of their employment.
The way I'd read this sentiment is that the arrangement of society is ultimately arbitrary and if we could only choose a different system we could by truly free. I'm not sure if I'm reading you correctly or not. That said, my impression is that people will not really be able to get away from something like that looks like traditional jobs. The core traits seem to be group dynamics, hierarchical competition, status-attainment -- all where resources are not infinite nor are opportunities for status.
We've already had sufficient technological advances such that people would not need to do much labor, but functionally speaking I just don't think people can organize themselves into _any_ possible arrangement. I think the potential arrangements that could exist are limited by nature.
I'd go one step further: The problem is that we cannot build a fair and equitable socioeconomic capitalistic-driven society. Rather than complain about capitalism, I've written a near-future hard sci-fi novel that proposes and explores creating a society that doesn't rely on monetary capital to operate. My theory, which guides the plot, is that we have to look at the seeds of capitalism, namely food, and figure out how to eliminate the exchange of currency for it.
I posit that until this point in history there has never been a time where technology would allow us to grow and distribute food for free (in terms of both financial cost and labour of time). With the rise and convergence of AI, robotics, low-cost renewable energy, advances in optimal light-biomass conversion, diminishing costs on vertical farms, and self-driving vehicles, we have within our reach a way to produce food at essentially no cost.
Think through what would happen to society and our economy if food was free for anyone, anywhere. Think about the meaning of work.
If these ideas intrigue you, beta are readers wanted, see my profile for contact.
The only thing that seems hopeful is that people are finally talking about it at mass scale.
I promise you as an anarchist agitator that is unbelievably new just even in the last couple years and precisely what usually happens prior to actual direct action.
My fellow anarchists hate the fact that Donald Trump did more for anarchist-socialist praxis than every other socialist writer in history.
But I’m sure somebody will blow this off as “it’s only three examples and is not really representative”
But if it is representative…
“then it’s not as bad as other automation waves”
or if it is as bad as other automation waves…
“well there’s nothing you can do about it”
Anecdotally I was in an Uber yesterday on the way to a major Metropolitan airport and we passed a Waymo. I asked the Uber driver how they felt about Waymo and Uber collaborating and if he felt like it was a threat to his job.
His answer was basically “yes it is but there’s nothing anybody can do about it you can’t stop technology it’s just part of life.”
If that’s how people who are being replaced feel about it, while still continuing to do the things necessary to train the systems, then there will be assuredly no human future (at least not one that isn’t either subsistence or fully machine integrated) because the people being replaced don’t feel like they have the capacity to stand up to it.
I can't help but wonder if this is a bit like a few years ago when comedians were complaining that nobody was laughing at their jokes anymore. They realized that it was a mandate to figure out how to be funny again, because what was considered "funny" had changed.
In this instance, and probably most instances of art/craft, copywriters need to figure out what is creative again, because what is considered "creative" has changed.
I could also see this being the journey that AI customer support took, where all staff were laid off and customers were punted to an AI agent, but then the shortcomings of AI were realized and the humans were reintroduced (albeit to a lesser degree). I suspect the pendulum will swing back to AI as the memory problems are resolved though.
The problem is that most copywriting is not and shouldn't be very creative. Often times it's just outsiders who know how to make public communication clear.
The sad part is that the managers deciding on using AI are the ones who rarely understand what is good public communication - that's why they were hiring someone to help them with it.
With AI they get some text that seems legit but the whole process of figuring out why&how is simply skipped. It might sometimes work but it's doubtful it builds knowledge in the organisation.
I have more of a problem with poor governance than strong automation. The economy should provide us all food and shelter, beyond that, do what you love.
A couple friends have been laid off in fields similar, where AI is excelling and reducing demand for labor significantly, and it seems they’re mostly unaware and saying/thinking it’s the job market that is tough / time of year and maybe it will improve in 2026 as budgets are executed. I’ve not had the heart to tell them they will likely need to change careers. And that’s if they can, in my opinion the faster they realize that the better off they will be. I don’t think the laypersons familiarity with AI right now understand that this is full out reductive in labor and there is no substitute.
> I’ve not had the heart to tell them they will likely need to change careers ... in my opinion the faster they realize that the better off they will be.
I understand your reluctance. Yet I think, if you believe this, you should have that hard conversation sooner rather than later.
When I feel deeply cynical about the quality of our modern life, I imagine that one of the reasons it's so easy for us to "settle" for the "good enough" output of AI in certain areas, especially around corporate copywriting, art, and yes perhaps even code is that these areas already fundamentally suck.
I believe that good skillful writing, drawing, or coding, by a human who actually understands and believes in what they're doing can really elevate the merely "good" to excellent.
However, when I think about the reality of most corporate output, we're not talking about "good" as a baseline level that we are trying to elevate. We're usually talking about "just barely not crap" in the best case, to straight up garbage in maybe a more common case.
Everyone understands this, from the consumer to the "artist" (perhaps programmer), to the manager, to the business owner. And this is why using AI slop is so easy to embrace in so many areas. The human touch was previously being used in barely successful attempts to put a coat of paint over some obvious turds. They were barely succeeding anyways, the crap stunk through. May as well let AI pretend to try, and we'll keep trying until the wheels finally fall off.
Why don’t we see it in the aggregate job data? Could it be that people sometimes lose jobs for “reasons” but that’s just the normal flow of the economy? Until there’s some effect on actual unemployment rates I wouldn’t be worried.
Employment stats are designed to measure economy-wide shifts, not early, localized, white-collar disruptions. The sampling will smooth those effects away until they’re large.
CPS samples 60k households per month to represent ~150+ million workers. Households stay in the sample 4 months, out 8, back 4.
Copywriters will get smoothed out in the aggregate, and the definition will mask this. Even if you work one hour, you are technically employed. If you are not actively looking for work for more than a month, you are also not technically unemployed.
Unemployment data is a lagging indicator for detecting recessions not early technological displacement in white-collar niches.
There are some claims that an increasing percentage of employment is comprised of lower paid and more precarious gig workers, e.g. from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kirkogunrinde/2025/11/18/gig-ec... "Hours worked on gig platforms in 2025 have increased, even as payroll growth has slowed, suggesting more workers have taken up gig work during a cooling labor market, according to a report released by Goldman Sachs."
If a human component is required in addition to the cheaply machine-automated part, that belies the claim that 'most of the work has already been done'.
The human part, turning it from slop to polished, becomes the most important part of the work, and then (and in any case) should be paid at human rates.
This doesn't really address anything, though. The human part will be 10x more productive when they're polishing than when they're having to start with a blank page, and now nine nearly as competent, experienced people have been fired and are offering to work for less than you're being paid. Poof! It's now a minimum wage job, and has barely gotten any easier.
They can actually just hire the worst of you (who will do unpaid overtime, and let you call him a dummy when you're upset), because it's not a big deal that he's only 5x as fast as you used to be compared to your 10x as fast as you used to be. They can't even attract that much business now because the lowest end of the market completely disappeared and is doing it at home by themselves.
Prepress/typesetting work went from a highly-specialized job that you spent years mastering and could raise a family with to a still moderately difficult job that paid just above minimum wage within a single generation, just due to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Those tools don't even generate anything resembling a final product, they just make the job digital instead of physical. In the case of copywriting, AI instantly generates something that a lazy person could ship with.
This is a crucial point. Freelancers who are asked to edit AI generated content should be charging more per hour, not less. A lot more - something that ends up with the client saving money, and ALSO them saving time and making money. If automation is implemented like this, both parties can win and somehow split the difference.
However, we live in a world where people have to compete to survive. Since a major portion of the task is automated, all of a sudden there are many available copywriting editors looking for work. The abundance tends to drive down the wage on sites like Fiverr.
Indeed. In software, we're all telling ourselves that code reviewing as a skill just gained a bunch of value, so we should focus on improving our skills there. I feel like editing has always been part of professional writing, so these folks should focus on editing as a pivot.
That is, if you're selling razor blades, you want the handle and the shaving cream to be cheap. Well then, if you're turning slop into polished, then you want the slop to be cheap. And AI makes it much cheaper.
I can't think of a more insufferable AI cheerleader. I wish I could hide all submissions of his blogposts, as well as his comments. (Note that I flag neither.)
Having jobs for the sake of having jobs is a ridiculous proposition. Copywriting is largely obsolete. Sure, it sucks to be in that profession right now, but what alternative is there. A Machine does your job far cheaper than you and even right now it is "good enough" to replace everything but the most complex and demanding writing.
Government job programs were a defining feature of economic prosperity during the New Deal. Saying jobs for the sake of jobs are bad isn’t historically true.
requiring people to work for the sake of requiring them to work is also ridiculous, yet here we are. once a good basic income and guaranteed housing program is put into place we can get rid of bullshit jobs as a class.
rfarley04|2 months ago
simonw|2 months ago
A problem I have with Brian Merchant's reporting on this is that he put out a call for stories from people who have lost their jobs to AI and so that's what he got.
What's missing is a clear indication of the size of this problems. Are there a small number of copywriters who have been affected in this way or is it endemic to the industry as a whole?
I'd love to see larger scale data on this. As far as I can tell (from a quick ChatGPT search session) freelance copywriting jobs are difficult to track because there isn't a single US labor statistic that covers that category.
readthenotes1|2 months ago
coffeefirst|2 months ago
But we’re also seeing a lot of schlock…
morkalork|2 months ago
singpolyma3|2 months ago
happytoexplain|2 months ago
dangus|2 months ago
The expectation for everyone to retrain and do something else is not necessarily reasonable, especially in an environment that does not have much of a social support system for education, training, and extended periods away from the workforce.
And we all know that the market doesn't magically make replacement jobs better or the same as the previous ones.
6510|2 months ago
everdrive|2 months ago
The way I'd read this sentiment is that the arrangement of society is ultimately arbitrary and if we could only choose a different system we could by truly free. I'm not sure if I'm reading you correctly or not. That said, my impression is that people will not really be able to get away from something like that looks like traditional jobs. The core traits seem to be group dynamics, hierarchical competition, status-attainment -- all where resources are not infinite nor are opportunities for status.
We've already had sufficient technological advances such that people would not need to do much labor, but functionally speaking I just don't think people can organize themselves into _any_ possible arrangement. I think the potential arrangements that could exist are limited by nature.
thangalin|2 months ago
I posit that until this point in history there has never been a time where technology would allow us to grow and distribute food for free (in terms of both financial cost and labour of time). With the rise and convergence of AI, robotics, low-cost renewable energy, advances in optimal light-biomass conversion, diminishing costs on vertical farms, and self-driving vehicles, we have within our reach a way to produce food at essentially no cost.
Think through what would happen to society and our economy if food was free for anyone, anywhere. Think about the meaning of work.
If these ideas intrigue you, beta are readers wanted, see my profile for contact.
szundi|2 months ago
AndrewKemendo|2 months ago
I promise you as an anarchist agitator that is unbelievably new just even in the last couple years and precisely what usually happens prior to actual direct action.
My fellow anarchists hate the fact that Donald Trump did more for anarchist-socialist praxis than every other socialist writer in history.
simonw|2 months ago
AndrewKemendo|2 months ago
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-u...
I bookmarked the series which looks exactly like what everyone in tech is saying ISN’T happening:
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/s/ai-killed-my-job
But I’m sure somebody will blow this off as “it’s only three examples and is not really representative”
But if it is representative…
“then it’s not as bad as other automation waves”
or if it is as bad as other automation waves…
“well there’s nothing you can do about it”
Anecdotally I was in an Uber yesterday on the way to a major Metropolitan airport and we passed a Waymo. I asked the Uber driver how they felt about Waymo and Uber collaborating and if he felt like it was a threat to his job.
His answer was basically “yes it is but there’s nothing anybody can do about it you can’t stop technology it’s just part of life.”
If that’s how people who are being replaced feel about it, while still continuing to do the things necessary to train the systems, then there will be assuredly no human future (at least not one that isn’t either subsistence or fully machine integrated) because the people being replaced don’t feel like they have the capacity to stand up to it.
mvkel|2 months ago
In this instance, and probably most instances of art/craft, copywriters need to figure out what is creative again, because what is considered "creative" has changed.
I could also see this being the journey that AI customer support took, where all staff were laid off and customers were punted to an AI agent, but then the shortcomings of AI were realized and the humans were reintroduced (albeit to a lesser degree). I suspect the pendulum will swing back to AI as the memory problems are resolved though.
omnimus|2 months ago
The sad part is that the managers deciding on using AI are the ones who rarely understand what is good public communication - that's why they were hiring someone to help them with it.
With AI they get some text that seems legit but the whole process of figuring out why&how is simply skipped. It might sometimes work but it's doubtful it builds knowledge in the organisation.
moltar|2 months ago
Once AI can write proper compelling converting copy then I’ll change my mind.
Mistletoe|2 months ago
e-dant|2 months ago
conductr|2 months ago
vintagedave|2 months ago
I understand your reluctance. Yet I think, if you believe this, you should have that hard conversation sooner rather than later.
icegreentea2|2 months ago
I believe that good skillful writing, drawing, or coding, by a human who actually understands and believes in what they're doing can really elevate the merely "good" to excellent.
However, when I think about the reality of most corporate output, we're not talking about "good" as a baseline level that we are trying to elevate. We're usually talking about "just barely not crap" in the best case, to straight up garbage in maybe a more common case.
Everyone understands this, from the consumer to the "artist" (perhaps programmer), to the manager, to the business owner. And this is why using AI slop is so easy to embrace in so many areas. The human touch was previously being used in barely successful attempts to put a coat of paint over some obvious turds. They were barely succeeding anyways, the crap stunk through. May as well let AI pretend to try, and we'll keep trying until the wheels finally fall off.
mmooss|2 months ago
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-u...
simonw|2 months ago
zeroonetwothree|2 months ago
burnerRhodov2|2 months ago
CPS samples 60k households per month to represent ~150+ million workers. Households stay in the sample 4 months, out 8, back 4.
Copywriters will get smoothed out in the aggregate, and the definition will mask this. Even if you work one hour, you are technically employed. If you are not actively looking for work for more than a month, you are also not technically unemployed.
Unemployment data is a lagging indicator for detecting recessions not early technological displacement in white-collar niches.
ThrowawayR2|2 months ago
jacknews|2 months ago
The human part, turning it from slop to polished, becomes the most important part of the work, and then (and in any case) should be paid at human rates.
pessimizer|2 months ago
They can actually just hire the worst of you (who will do unpaid overtime, and let you call him a dummy when you're upset), because it's not a big deal that he's only 5x as fast as you used to be compared to your 10x as fast as you used to be. They can't even attract that much business now because the lowest end of the market completely disappeared and is doing it at home by themselves.
Prepress/typesetting work went from a highly-specialized job that you spent years mastering and could raise a family with to a still moderately difficult job that paid just above minimum wage within a single generation, just due to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Those tools don't even generate anything resembling a final product, they just make the job digital instead of physical. In the case of copywriting, AI instantly generates something that a lazy person could ship with.
thePhytochemist|2 months ago
However, we live in a world where people have to compete to survive. Since a major portion of the task is automated, all of a sudden there are many available copywriting editors looking for work. The abundance tends to drive down the wage on sites like Fiverr.
And that's why unions are so important!
rpdillon|2 months ago
AnimalMuppet|2 months ago
That is, if you're selling razor blades, you want the handle and the shaving cream to be cheap. Well then, if you're turning slop into polished, then you want the slop to be cheap. And AI makes it much cheaper.
fluidcruft|2 months ago
"Gamblers generate slop, businessmen sell it as 'AI-powered.'"
Something important is missing.
bsndjdkd|2 months ago
[deleted]
simonw|2 months ago
rvz|2 months ago
It's time to get your bag before the AI bubble pops.
anonnon|2 months ago
constantcrying|2 months ago
dymk|2 months ago
MangoToupe|2 months ago
No, it's not, and the steep decline in quality of writing has reflected this. The industry is just committing suicide.
zem|2 months ago