What does ChatGPT have to do with Out of Office?
I’m skipping town. That’s what I told everyone on my mailing list today. It’s also what my out of office message says, right after telling you that zen is in progress. And I’ll let you in on a little secret… I let AI help me write it.
Clearly I’m capable (and qualified) to write my own out-of-office messages, so why did I tag in ChatGPT and Lex?
Because it seemed like a great test. Can ChatGPT and Lex match my voice?
The answer is… sort of.
I told both programs to:
1. Give me an out of office headline about a beach retreat.
2. Give me an out of office response about a beach retreat.
Both came up with some totally different content. But here’s what I learned:
Yes, each of the services had totally different responses…from each other.
However, each time I asked AI to regenerate out of office responses, they came up with similar ideas:
- ChatGPT’s responses were more charismatic, but almost all included some form of “recharge my batteries.”
- Lex’s responses were more formulaic, but had a bit more variation. Note: there’s only so much you can do with an Out of Office response, so formulaic makes some sense here.
So, with that said, my thoughts on AI copywriting haven’t changed too much.
However, since I haven’t shared them with you here, yet, let’s dive in:
Here are the biggest opportunities for AI at this time, in my opinion:
→ Idea generation, if you have a topic in mind. It’s a garbage in-garbage out type of thing. So you have to have a topic, and audience, and a voice/style in mind.
→ Fleshing out ideas or talking points, again if you have a basic idea of what you want to say and need to bust through writer’s block.
→ Email and Out-of-Office content. For my out-of-office reply, I absolutely rewrote everything that they created. (A) because I’m me. (B) none of it was exactly what I wanted to say. However, you could use it to generate some pretty awesome emails.
I still believe AI has some pretty significant limitations:
→ First, the degree of similarity from response to response is concerning. So while it sounds close to what I’d say…if other people took these responses verbatim, they’d have a lot of similar-sounding ideas.
→ Second, in theory, sounding similar to others isn’t horrible. However, because of these consistencies, it opens the door to plagiarism and duplicated content. And as we know, plagiarism is bad juju…and duplicate content is a HUGE SEO no-no.
In the last few weeks, several clients have asked my thoughts on AI, and I’m telling them exactly what I’m telling you here:
1. They are great for idea generation and even some “original” content that doesn’t appear on the web. Again, this largely means email and out of office content… and mayyyybe some social media content on platforms with a short shelf life.
2. I can’t justify using it to write blogs, web copy, or anything else. The price is too high. AND, most thought leadership content, which I’m a huge proponent of, can’t come from AI. It has to come from within your brain.
All that to say, I’m not embracing it wholeheartedly just yet. BUT, I’ll pop my out of office below and will BOLD the parts that came from AI.
Erin’s Out of Office Response
Subject: Zen in progress. See you January 30th.
Hi and thank you for your email!
I’m skipping town to recharge my battery at the beach.
Replies will absolutely be delayed and a bit sandy…I’ll be back the week of January 30 packed with creative ideas and smelling of Hawaiian Tropic.
Want to get started so we can hit the ground running? Here are a few ideas.
- Need brand messaging, website copy, or thought leadership content and want to know what working together might look like? Head to www.ErinPennings.com and, while you’re there, feel free to check out client results.
- Want to set up a quick consult to see if we’re a fit so we can hit the ground running in 2023? Schedule a call with me from erinpennings.com/consult
- Interested in getting tips, the occasional dinosaur anecdote, and updates for my upcoming trainings? Join my newsletter at erinpennings.com/newsletter
Need something else? Just say the word.
So you can see, I used it to add a little zip and zing, but the other ideas were mine.
The bottom line?
AI copywriting tools are just that — tools. They need a good brain on both ends — to input great ideas, and to decide what to keep and what to rewrite.
If you want to talk about building a content strategy that has great AI prompts for writing your content, let’s chat. I have ideas for you…guaranteed.
This article first appeared on ErinPennings.com on Jan 31, 2023.