How To: Balance AI and Human Creativity (+ 7 AI Copywriting Tools That Work!)

The rise of artificial intelligence (and AI copywriting tools) has irrevocably changed the way both marketers and consumers think about copywriting — we now have the ability to generate hundreds, or even thousands, of words of copy with just a short prompt and the click of a button.

Copywriters and marketers are, understandably, feeling increasing pressure to accelerate their workflows using artificial intelligence. But without additional human input and refinement, copy generated entirely by AI can feel derivative, soulless, or (at worst) be outdated or inaccurate.

As a result, the market has been flooded with content that looks the same, doesn’t feel authentic, and fails to inspire action. Standing out amid all that noise can be tricky, even if you have great content, because there’s just so much of it. It’s a problem exacerbated — if not caused — by AI but, as counterintuitive as it might seem, could AI also be the answer?

Below, we’ll look at ways to harness the power of artificial intelligence for good, cover some of the best free copywriting tools using AI on the market, and explore how you can use them to supplement your content — without losing the human spark that makes your copy feel like you.

Is AI copywriting better than a copywriter?

Let’s cut right to the chase: no, AI is not better than a copywriter.

Although AI can generate drafts and rewrite content in a matter of seconds, it doesn’t understand any of the goals, strategies, or nuances associated with your business unless you train it to do so (more on that later!). As a result, it might use an unsuitable tone of voice, generic messaging, and/or fail to convey your unique selling proposition (USP) effectively.

In fact, using it poorly could hurt your brand: recent research conducted by Bynder indicates that around 50% of consumers can spot AI-generated copy. 52% of those surveyed said that they would become less engaged when reading copy that they knew to be AI-generated. 

With that said, social media management tool Buffer found that the median engagement rate for AI-assisted (note: assisted, not generated) social media posts is around 1% higher than the rate for non-AI-assisted posts. In other words, there’s a balancing act at play here.

Artificial intelligence can’t think for itself — it relies heavily on pattern recognition, allowing it to generate responses that it predicts will be suitable based on the prompt provided. As most of us know from experience, or from “AI fails” stories in the news, that may not always be true.

With that in mind, there’s a case to be made that finding the best copywriting tools for marketers and/or integrating AI copywriting into your work is less about replacing copywriters than it is about finding ways to use it to supplement your copy efforts and make their lives easier.

AI copywriting requires excellent training data

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: AI is only as good as its ingredients.

Most gen AI tools, including copywriting tools, are trained on extremely broad datasets. They’re jacks-of-all-trade by nature, and will attempt to answer any question you throw at them. The problem with this? Its responses will be vague, and won’t reflect your customers’ journey.

Making sure the copywriting AI tool(s) you’re using “knows” about your business can help with that. Providing copywriting software with fresh and accurate data about everything from your products or services to information about your customers (such as average age, location, buying habits, etc.) is the best way to get outputs that will actually be relevant to your niche. 

As a content agency eager to embrace the potential of AI, we’re constantly looking for ways to improve the training and input process. In our experience, that could mean uploading PDFs, ad copy, video tutorials, spreadsheets, or non-sensitive user data into the tools you’re using.

TL;DR? The more context you provide to a tool, the better you can expect its output to be!

7 notable AI copywriting tools to try

In addition to more mainstream AI tools — Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok, Meta AI, and so on — there are various (paid and free) copywriting tools out there that are of use for marketers and writers. Here are some examples of AI copywriting software and potential use cases for each:

• Copy.ai – Run workflows for automating sales and marketing functions
• SEO Writing Assistant (by Semrush) – Helps you balance your copy’s readability with SEO best practices 
• QuillBot – Check for grammatical errors, mix up tone, or shorten/expand your copy
• Breeze Content Agent (Hubspot) – Pulls information from your CRM to create targeted landing pages, blog posts, and so on
• Jasper – Generate social media campaigns, social posts, campaign briefs, etc.
• Blog Ideas Generator – Another HubSpot tool, this one (no surprises here…) helps you generate ideas for future blog posts
• Copymatic – Generate content (including long form), copy, and images using AI

The above list is far from exhaustive — you can use these tools to do all sorts of things, or you could try using, say, ChatGPT for every use case listed above. Whichever tool(s) you’re using, your focus should remain on feeding it with enough information to provide outputs that are tailored to your business processes. And always to supplement your copy efforts, not replace them!

Prompt libraries and hacks to get useful results faster

Figuring out the right prompt could be the difference between an output that’s vague or misleading and one that works really well, with minimal editing and tweaking required. 

Prompts can take various forms, so test out the following patterns when generating copy:

• Role-Based – e.g. “Imagine you’re a marketing manager at a startup…”
• Format-specific – e.g. “Write a blog post with a hook-y intro and actionable tips”
• Constraint – e.g. “Use one sentence bullet points with a professional tone”
• Iteration – e.g. “Provide five variations, getting gradually more salesy”

A prompt library refers to a collection of commands or instructions that are proven to deliver quality results. Prompt libraries are useful because you can deploy them over and over again, saving you valuable time (and boosting your results!) when generating copy using AI tools.

7 practical ways to apply AI copywriting tools today

We’ve already touched on several different ways to use some of the best copywriting tools for marketers, but let’s zoom out and consider a few use cases you could test out with any gen AI tool:

• Generate multiple variations of ad copy with different angles
• Brainstorm keyword-rich outlines and/or FAQs for your SEO efforts
• Create social media captions, including hashtags, optimized for different platforms
• Prompt AI to create alternative ways to frame the story around a product release
• Use AI to model customer personas to preemptively address any objections
• Repurpose your content, e.g. turn a blog post into a carousel for social media
• Draft memos and internal announcements tailored to your company’s voice

You’ll notice that these use cases tend to focus on brainstorming, rewriting, and generating alternate content, rather than creating something entirely new from scratch. That’s by design, as that’s where AI tools tend to shine — when they’re doing grunt work or sparking creativity. That frees you up to focus on strategy and refinement, rather than the heavy lifting of early drafting.

Treat AI as a junior assistant, not the creative director, and you’ll see much better results.

The future of copywriting is AI + human, not either/or

Businesses and individuals that are seeking to entirely replace copywriters with AI tools are in for a rude awakening, because artificial intelligence is just not there yet. And, based on how AI works right now, there’s an argument to be made that its current iteration will never get there.

AI can’t replace human creativity or insight, and attempting to use it to do so is doomed to fail. 

Smart marketers aren’t using AI to replace copywriters, designers, or SEO professionals. They’re using it to brainstorm ideas, run quick tests, repurpose existing content, and so on. In other words, they’re taking advantage of AI’s speed and efficiency — without relying on it to do all of the creative and strategic work needed to craft an effective piece of copywriting.

That, for now at least, remains the exclusive domain of human copywriters!

Here at Wordsmithie, we’re all about blending the power of AI with strategy, conversion, and human insight. To learn more about our process and how to work with us, get in touch using the form below.