The problem with using AI for content writing in 2025

I get it. Writing takes time. Writing takes effort. Writing takes creativity. 

And if you can, why not just press a button and have something written for you? I, quite frankly, would love to have this article written for me, at the press of a button. 

And I know that is the approach a lot of businesses are taking to copywriting in 2025. Whether it’s coming up with 10 tagline options in seconds, or writing a full website with a copy and paste prompt, it is now possible to get your copy from a GPT. 

Why it makes sense to use AI sometimes

To eschew all AI is like choosing to build a house without power tools. For the vast majority of us, it’s foolish to ignore the vast computing power at our disposal. 

AI removes blank page syndrome

So many founders and marketers get stuck on that blinking cursor, procrastinating when they should be writing for their business. The best way to banish that blank page is to get a rough (and I do mean rough) draft out of your head and onto the page as soon as possible.

But when you’re feeling overwhelmed and completely stuck, AI can do the trick for you. Suddenly, you have a rough (and I do mean likely to be total garbage) draft for you to interact with, to shape, and to fix. It can be a great hack when you’re just absolutely paralyzed. 

It can help you think of alternatives to what you have now

Let’s say you’ve arrived at your rough draft the old-fashioned way: through grit and typing. But you don’t like it. It’s not just that it needs polishing, it’s that it needs a whole new framework. 

Ideally, you’d step away. Go for a walk. Go to sleep. Come back the next day, and trust your brain to guide you to a framing that makes more sense. But maybe the deadline is in two hours. You have to figure this out, now.

Enter, AI. 

Give it a decent prompt and it’ll give you potential outlines/themes/and frameworks for whatever it is your writing. And if you don’t like the first result you get, you can keep getting more iterations with just a few keystrokes. Deadline, met. 

It’s fast for content you don’t care about

Let’s not pick on any particular channels shall we? But let’s say there’s one kind of copy you just absolutely know nobody reads, and yet you have to produce. This is the time to bring in AI as your assistant writer and let it take it away. With caveats of course, see “Don’t trust a single word” below. 

Why it makes me sick to see AI forced on marketers

From corporate mandates to independent gurus, there are plenty of voices preaching the virtues of outsourcing your copywriting and content marketing to AI. 

Are they all wrong? We’re not addressing that in this post. If you’ve gotten this far, you probably know my personal, not sponsored by any client or employer, thoughts. Ahem. 

But no matter how much you decide to rely on AI for help in your marketing content, please please please remember these three don’ts. 

Don’t outsource your strategy

Your strategy goes beyond your blog post outline, or your sales page formula. You might be thinking, yes, I know that, and guess what AI can help me with my strategy! Yes, if you ask ChatGPT for a marketing strategy, it will give you one. 

But it won’t be yours. Your strategy comes from you. The deep down part of you that knows your customers, has a vision for your brand, and works in your brand day in and day out. 

Outsourcing your entire strategy to AI is like outsourcing your entire strategy to an agency. You’ll get an action plan that works if you follow it, but it will be hard to follow because it’s not really yours. And, of course, it’s way worse than outsourcing the whole thing to an agency because at least people bring human creativity to their action plans. 

Don’t outsource your thinking

As Ann Handley says, “writing is thinking.” 

When you write, whether longhand with a pencil, or on your digital device, your brain is stringing together the words. It’s building the ideas. It’s scribbling out and hitting backspace when something isn’t quite right. It’s re-arranging key points, and pulling in real examples that pop into your head because you’re writing from real experience.

And not only does that shine through in the finished product, but it builds and preserves those muscles for future thinking. Don’t let your brain atrophy by outsourcing the hard part to AI. 

Don’t trust a single word 

I recently heard someone boast that they had AI crunch the numbers in a spreadsheet and it was about 90% accurate. So… the person had to do all of the work themselves in the end, because they had to check each and every number for accuracy, not knowing which 10% was in error. (This brings up the side note that AI is really, really bad at math. If you’re going to use it, promise me you won’t use it for math, at least not yet.)

I have given the clearest of clear parameters for AI to create a social post based on a blog post, and had it give me a lovely, clear, emoji-filled social post that was riddled with completely bogus statistics. 

AI hallucinates. Full stop. Yes, there are ways to mitigate this, but there aren’t any ways to completely remove this behavior. So if you don’t want to publish lies, do not trust a word it gives you! Verify every fact, every stat, every source.

And remember that models are also not as current as the internet itself, so you may run into issues because the model you are using is outdated at the moment. 

What’s a busy founder to do? 

There’s no excuse for publishing generic, robot-written copy. But take heart, you don’t have to struggle alone! There are plenty of fantastic resources for learning how to write for your business. And there are a plethora of talented writers offering their services for you. (Me, for one.)