Alexa GIF aside, this topic dovetails nicely with my previous 10 Commandments of Writing a Hammer-Resistant, Bullet-Proof Press Release, because I totally short-shrifted the artificial intelligence question.
Here’s what I wrote (in Commandment Number 5):
Thou Shalt Avoid Leaning Heavily on Artificial Intelligence Whenever Possible
Yes, we’re in the age of AI – but that doesn’t mean you can dump a bunch of text into an AI chat box and expect ChatGPT, Copilot or some other artificial intelligence to get everything right. AI is OK when attempting to overcome writer’s block, but left untended, AI can create real problems. For example, I plugged some facts into AI recently and told it to write a press release. It worked OK … up until it made up a name of a public official, and started quoting him. So, beware, friends.
Note that I didn’t write “avoid AI at all costs.”
That’s because I use AI.
No, what you’re reading right now isn’t being generated by ChatGPT – I’m sweating over a hot laptop next to a sleeping kitty at this very moment.
The truth is sometimes I get so much information, I feel overwhelmed. You’ve probably experienced the same thing: Someone dumps a ton of text into your lap (sometimes literally), and you want to scream: What Am I Supposed to Do With All This?
It’s what happened when I recently got a prewritten press release from one of my clients, who asked me to edit/punch it up/etc.
For a moment, I froze.
Then, I thought (with a devilish grin), “Let’s see what AI can do.”
So, I copied, I pasted, and hit the “enter” button on Microsoft’s Copilot AI software, asking it to write a news release, based on that information. After the little box blinked a few times … it spat out a press release, complete with a dateline, a date, and quotes.
I started reading and, the fourth word was wrong. It set a Forest Glen, Maryland, dateline. Since there is no Forest Glen, Maryland, I deduced it was the name of the neighborhood I was in (even though I didn’t tell Copilot where I was).
Still, as I read on, there was a lot of good stuff there. There were tons of facts, and they were (mostly) correct. I found a few turns of phrases that I liked. Then, my eyes ran across “Delegate John Green” as a sponsor of legislation that was mentioned in the news release. As far as Google is concerned, no one named John Green has ever served in Maryland’s House of Delegates.
For someone who never existed, John Green was very articulate.
So, I did end up using a few things from AI in the release. The rest (including Delegate Green), I tossed. But I liked the overall structure, and more importantly, it broke that paralysis.
So, AI can be a valuable tool for media relations, press releases and writing in general. I have even used to help me develop recipe ideas, based on what’s in my pantry.
So don’t be freaked out by AI. View it as anything else in your writing arsenal: Your stylebook, your grammar guide, your series-of-events timeline (we’ll discuss this later), etc.
Obviously, AI is a fairly new technology, and it will get better. Maybe it won’t even invent people out of whole cloth. Maybe someday, it will be writing entire press releases and news articles (it probably is already).
But I think QUALIFIED professionals will always be needed to guide these bots, so things don’t fun too far off the rails. Run, I mean. Geeze, I’m only human.
OR AM I?
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