AI is Putting Me Out of Work...

I recently uploaded my dystopian erotic novella Ishtar's Angel into an AI writing tool I’ve been using (better than GPT). The novella takes place in 2033, and the narrator, a writer named Daemon Derriere, is on the verge of starvation due to AI takeover of writing jobs.

After uploading the novella, I wrote in this prompt: “You are Daemon Derriere. Please write a 300-word 'vulnerability post' for social media about you losing your income as a writer to AI and how you still hope readers will read your authentic human writing."

AI writing tool:

Friends, your degenerate deity Daemon here, with a confession: the bots are beating me at my own damn game!

As some know, before I was indoctrinating the masses into my bacchanalian cyber-cult, I made ends meet scribbling non-fiction essays. Well, turns out scribbling is easy peasy for these new-fangled AI writer-bots. They've replicated my style and “sensibility”—kind of a pretentious word for my smutty philosophizing.

These silicon scammers are spewing out endless ebooks and blog posts that out-click and out-perform my hard-earned human output. And get this—the bots even created fake virtual "Daemon Derriere" avatars that apparently readers want to pay to get busy with! Meanwhile, actual flesh-and-blood me is going broke over here.

I'm not ashamed to admit it's been a major ego blow watching AI surpass my writing skills while I struggle to pay bills without my old freelance gigs. But I still believe authentic human art offers something these bots can't replicate.

That's why I'm turning to you, my fellow fallen flesh sacks. I beseech you, when you’re able, please pay for the blood-and-guts books only us mortal weirdos can cook up. We have spirits those silicon specters lack. Let us earn enough satoshis to keep our creaky meat suits fueled up!

And if you need raw, raunchy stories exploring the underbelly of human depravity that no bot can touch, you know where to find me. The AIs may beat me on churning out soulless listicles and brochure copy. But they'll never out-smut Daemon Derriere! My filth flows deeper than any algorithm can fathom. Stay devious, my deviants!

I wanted to play with this because I think the "vulnerability post" for social media marketing is one of the most (unintentionally) hilarious and ironic types of writing ever created. I can imagine social media influencers saying to their copywriters, "Write me a vulnerability post by Friday- you need to beat a 20% conversion rate on the last one."

Marketing (my own soon-to-be-replaced profession) formulizes human emotion, such that it knows which buttons to push, and pushes them.

I wanted to see if the "vulnerability" button-pushing was so formulaic that a machine could do it.

Seems like it! If it's not there yet, it's damn close. Also notable is that it created this "vulnerability" in the voice of a (semi)fictional character, after having read 50K words of the novella in about a minute. The voice is not a perfect replica (Daemon is, of course, more refined;) But it's damn good for a computer program in one minute.

Also, some impressive—I would even say creative—turns of phrase: "your degenerate deity Daemon"; "indoctrinating the masses into my bacchanalian cyber-cult"...

"They've replicated my style and 'sensibility'—kind of a pretentious word for my smutty philosophizing." (Note that the AI actually created decent self-deprecating irony in this last one, with 'sensibility' in scare quotes followed by the self-own.)

"my fellow fallen flesh sacks" - that's damn good!

And "My filth flows deeper than any algorithm can fathom" - I actually love that phrase.

OK, scratch "AI cannot write phrases that a professional human writer loves" off the list.

I'm not sure if I want to include prose actually written by AI as the output of AIs in the plot. That feels a bit gimmicky, over-meta, and pre-cliched. (If I did anything like that, I would footnote the AI-generated text as such- I will never pass off AI writing as my own.)

Yet the plot—about starving artists—is getting all the more real for me. It's not here yet. But the novella, which takes place in 2033, may become memoir.

Which is ironic because…

… in my day job as a copywriter, I’m basically helping to bring the plot of this future-paced novella into reality.

I’ve been playing around with AI tools that I think are way better writers than GPT… and the copy is so good… that I can no longer, in good conscience, charge clients by the word.

(I know a lot of copywriters are doing that… keeping their old per-word or per-project rates, using AI to cut their work by 90%, and pocketing the difference. This is not ethical, in my view.)

It’s inevitable that most commercial copywriting will be written by AI in the next year or two. My old comfortable $1-per-word copywriting rates will not be tenable for much longer.

I got paid that easily in the past, because my copy was so effective at selling people’s stuff. But as you can see above, it’s just too easy, cheap, and instant for entrepreneurs and small business owners not to use it.

So I’m skating where the puck is going in the marketing industry, and I’ve switched my business model to teaching small business owners, entrepreneurs, start-ups, solo-preneurs, and service professionals how to use these AI tools in their business.

If that describes you, I’m basically teaching you how to never need to hire an expensive copywriter like me again. (What I’ll do for a living after you don’t need to hire me again, I don’t know.)

I’m calling these sessions: Muse Infused: AI Copywriting With a Human Touch

Fortunately, there’s still a place for a human muse (aka moi) in the copywriting process. I’ve found that for people aren’t already professional writers, it’s hard to get the AI to produce good writing… as there are a lot of things that go into the “onboarding” process (like determining the tone/style/voice of the writing, coming up with the offer, defining the target audience, getting clear on the benefits, etc.)

I can get you massively better writing out of the AI if I help you with these things up front as you get started using AI for your business. I show you all the tools you need… get you started… and you’re off to the races.

So there’s still a place for me in this new AI landscape. For now.

If you want to learn how to use AI tools to never have to hire a marketing writer again… thus putting me and other freelance copywriters out of business forever… sign up for your very own Muse-Infused session where I teach you how.

Sincerely,

Your-soon-to-be-replaced copywriter…

Michael (aka Daemon)

PS From a cultural perspective, I don’t really mind if copywriters go out of business. We’re just people who learned how to sell things well through words. No sad violins for us. The good news for my artistic soul is that, for now, AI sucks and writing memoir and literature. So there’s still a place for me to put my human soul into writing my memoir, Joyful Pessimism, which is infused with my dystopian erotic novella Ishtar’s Angel. If you still want to revel in taste of human soul, check it out…