For the past couple of weeks,I’ve been hearing more and more about the wonders of AI (artificial intelligence). Some say you can save time and money by using AI to write your blog posts, articles, letters - and even short stories.
Some also say that AI will put an end to my career - and that of every other copywriter. Remember when they said sites like Realtor.com and Redfin would do away with the need for real estate agents?
It's the same kind of "The sky is falling" outcry.
Anyway...
As a result of all the chatter, I’ve been looking into it and have listened to a couple of panel discussions by top copywriters.
What I learned is yes, you can use AI to write your blog posts.
But… before you publish them, you should spend some time editing and re-writing. The problem with blog posts generated 
by AI programs such as Chat GPT is that the writing lacks soul. It is flat and lifeless. And if it includes facts, you'll have no idea where it gathered those facts.
Your experience and your emotions, even when writing about a topic that isn’t considered emotional, do come through in your own writing. So do your patterns of speech.
If you’re using your blog to connect with clients and prospective clients, you do need to inject your own voice into anything you publish. I sometimes write purely informative posts for clients, and if I've known them long enough, I can approximate the way they'd put sentences together. But I still think that when you describe your own experiences, they'd better be in your own voice.
All AI can do is gather information online, sort it, and spit it back out.
It doesn’t (at least not yet) have the capacity to understand emotion. If you used it to describe a home, it would not know how to present the emotional / benefits side of a home’s features. For instance, it can’t feel the luxury of sinking into a nice deep soaking tub filled with bubble bath.
When writing an agent bio, it would not know that patience, understanding, and listening skills are more important for an agent who helps seniors who are downsizing than one who primarily helps luxury home buyers.
Can AI write your community pages?
Because I love writing community pages for clients and I spend a good number of hours gathering information for each of them, I decided to see what Chat GPT could do.
What it did was spit out some generic information, which might or might not be true. It was fast – I had the information in less than a minute, but so what?
I asked for a community profile of 6 different communities. And guess what?
5 out of 6 of them turned out to be “close-knit communities that supported both residents and local businesses.” They also had abundant entertainment opportunities, including many dining establishments and a lively arts community. In the case of my own hometown, those statements were not true.
The 6th city is known for being committed to sustainability, along with having abundant entertainment opportunities, etc. That one left out community support for small businesses.
In short, those profiles didn’t say much of anything. So in my opinion, no, it wouldn’t be a good idea to rely on AI to write your community pages.
Wikipedia, which I often use as a jump-off point in research, offers more.
Some of the information is incorrect, but it includes enough detail to point me toward other sources.
The copywriting experts had mixed opinions on the ethics of putting your own name on copy written by Chat GPT, or other AI programs.
Some said it was fine while others said no – not unless you simply used it as a base for re-writing.
One point about AI they all agreed upon:
Everyone agreed that Chat GPT was a good tool because it could give you ideas for article topics. If you type in “Tell me ten
ways to….” or “ten facts about…” It might well come up with something you hadn’t thought of.
With that in mind, a few days ago I typed in “Top 10 complaints consumers have about real estate agents.”
The #1 complaint didn’t surprise me because I’ve known it and written about it for years.
That is that some agents don’t communicate well with their clients. Clients feel abandoned when they call, email, or text their agents and don’t get a reply in a reasonable length of time. Others feel that their agents don’t explain things well enough or keep them in the loop as their transactions move from acceptance to closing.
A few of the others were a little surprising, and I’ll be writing about them in the coming weeks. So yes, it did give me ideas I hadn’t thought of.
Another consensus of opinion was that the quality of the output depended upon the input.
Writers who become adept at asking the right questions, with the right keywords, and the right refinements, will get more and better results. So if you’re interested, go, sign up, and play with it. There’s no cost – at least not yet – so you can explore all you like.
And in the meantime…
If you need some good copy for your agent bio, your community pages, a property description, or a prospecting letter, get in touch.
I’m going to play with AI – but I’m not going to use it to write for my clients.
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