Should you try Copywriting with AI in 2026?
As a solo or small business owner, the pressure to show up and market your business on every platform is tempting. With tools like ChatGPT and Claude, you suddenly have the capacity to show up on social media, send out your newsletter, and quickly draft a full piece of content in seconds.
Unfortunately, what these large language models (LLMs) do is use all the data that’s already out there to create your piece of content. This means the content you create isn’t unique to your business. Instead, it’s an average of what’s already out there on the internet.
The content that looks and sounds like everyone else's – That’s what your audience glazes over (and the exact opposite of what you want your marketing to do!) After reviewing hundreds of pieces of client copy, writing dozens of websites, and testing out LLM models in many ways, I’ve realized the best-converting copy is still human-written.
Can I use AI as a freelance writer?
Before you decide to outsource your copywriting to an LLM model, there are a few things to consider. One is the question of plagiarism and whether what the LLM is providing you is taken from somebody else’s work. The second piece is whether the content provided to you will actually help you get more clients.
There’s a difference between creating content that sits there and content that moves your ideal customers along a journey to working with you.
Some things that LLMs will not be able to replicate for you are:
Thought leadership: To be a thought leader, you have to be ahead of the curve in your industry. You need opinions, a unique approach, and a deep understanding of why you do what you do. Unfortunately, this is something LLMs cannot do. LLMs will consistently put you in the middle of the bell curve, giving you generic responses. Again, this is the opposite of what you want.
Brand Voice: Yes, you can train your LLM model to sound like you – but the technology isn’t there yet where it does it well. What happens is it gives you sentences that sound good but have no strong message behind them. Plus, more and more people can identify AI-written content, and for many, it’s a turn-off from your brand.
Strategy: LLMs do not understand your business model, your capacity, or what is actually working for you in your business. They may offer you advice that fits a big agency or someone who is trying to scale, when that might not be your goal. While it’s a useful tool for brainstorming, trusting AI with the strategy behind your copy can lead you to waste time, money, and resources.
Use AI for copywriting strategically
This isn’t to say that you should never use AI, but make sure that you use it strategically and don’t trust everything it has to say without some discernment. As the person with a brain, you’re in charge of making all final calls. This includes understanding when the LLM model is straight-up wrong.
How to use AI in your copywriting process
When people rely too heavily on AI, you lose the authenticity behind the content - and that authenticity is what connects you to real people. Instead, approach using LLM models as tools rather than replacements.
Using AI as a tool to navigate the Copywriting process
There are core pieces of the copywriting process that AI can certainly help you with. This includes:
Brainstorming: AI can be a great tool when you’re stuck and need help thinking through topics. One of my favorite ways to use AI for brainstorming is to have it ask you questions. This allows you to stay in the driver’s seat with ideas for content but pushes your thinking.
Writing: I don’t recommend using LLMs to write for you, but it is useful to have it outline content for you. For example, you may give it your brainstorm and ask it to sequence it in a way that makes sense for the reader.
Editing: If you feel unsure about whether something is too wordy, repetitive, or has grammar mistakes, AI is a great tool to point out specific areas for improvement.
AI can help you with each step of the copywriting process - but it can’t replace your brain.
Common Mistakes Using AI in Copywriting
Common mistakes come from relying too heavily on AI and not having a deep enough understanding of the copywriting process. This means not knowing when to scrap, edit, or refine something an LLM has given you.
This might look like losing your voice because you copied and pasted what an LLM model gave you. You might think it sounds like you, but take a moment to read it aloud. Would you actually say those words? Are the sentences conveying a message, or do they just sound nice and flowery?
It could look like content whose message doesn’t accurately reflect the expertise behind your brand. After all, the LLM model doesn’t know your brain, your experiences, or your approach and will give you similar output as other users. This diminishes your differentiator, which may lead to fewer people choosing to work with you.
Understand the limitations of AI in Copywriting
AI is marketed to us as the solution we’ve all been looking for - finally, something that can help us check all the boxes on our content checklist. But in reality, many brands are seeing that AI-written content isn’t performing as well, and it’s not actually saving time.
There are two main pieces that AI misses the mark on: messaging and structure.
For messaging, it gives you the same generic message that others in your field get. It can’t tap into your brain, experiences or approach, so it taps into what the internet already has said about your niche. But your people aren’t looking for what’s already out there - they want to hear what you have to say.
The other piece is the structure of the copy. If you’ve used LLM models before, you know the patterns:
“Not X but Y”
“Three. Short. Sentences.”
These are legitimate writing techniques – but the robots' use of them is overkill. But because they are so common now, your brain starts to glaze over them. The same thing is happening with your audience. They see the words but they don’t hook them. Their attention keeps moving on to something else.
So when copywriting, you need to do the unexpected. Break out of the expected structure and find your unique voice. That’s what captures attention and converts.
Try the No AI Copywriting Challenge
If you’re feeling burnt out on AI content, want to capture your audience's attention, and get more conversions, try the no AI copywriting challenge. Write a piece of well-positioned content without the use of any robots. Build your copywriting muscle here:
>> Get the no AI copywriting challenge
