Writers say the job is less like writing

How to use these voices

1. Use the model to attack your draft before you use it to write one. The writers who are positive about AI use it that way.
2. When a client produces a ChatGPT line in the meeting, answer with what the line lacks: the fact and the check.
3. Read your first three sentences as a journalist would. Rosie Taylor's list of signs is in the last section.

The X posts on this page came from the X API on 7 October 2026. Each quote is word for word, and a long post is quoted in part. The search covered about 270 posts. Most posts on the subject sell a tool or a course, and we left those out.

Writers: faster, and less like writing

A senior copywriter, made redundant from a marketing agency in summer 2026, told The Drum (9 September 2026) about a long piece that was once a day's work:

"the expectation now is that you should be able to do that in a morning."

The same writer on what is left:

"I struggle to call any of it 'writing copy.' It's 'producing content.' It's depressing… It's not the job you sign up for when you become a writer. You do so little writing."

Mike Reed, founder of the brand-writing agency Reed Words, trained a model on his own writing and reported in Raconteur (21 August 2025):

"Outsourcing my writing meant outsourcing my thinking."

A copywriter on r/copywriting (30 July 2026), on the edit pass: "The copy comes back technically correct and completely bloodless."

64% of the 573 copywriters in the ProCopywriters Survey 2026 say they would press a button to erase generative AI.

Two writers in the same Drum article disagree. Zuki Sedgley, copy director at Mother Design: "It's just not true that AI can replace copywriters". Andrew Boulton, lead copywriter at HSBC: "The rise of AI hasn't particularly touched me."

The writers who get value use it as a critic

Zoe Scaman, founder of the strategy studio Bodacious, to Digiday (22 April 2026):

"I put ideas in there, and the whole point is that Claude is supposed to tell me if it's shit"

Mike Reed, in the same Raconteur piece: "The one time I published an AI draft virtually unchanged, it became my best-performing post."

Ann Handley of MarketingProfs, in Orbit Media's 2026 survey (8 September 2026): "AI makes it stupid-easy to remove effort."

"AI can write you 50 headlines in ten seconds. Someone still has to pick one and delete the other 49. You are the tastemaker."

Copyhackers, copywriting school, on X, 6 October 2026

"Each of them has done an absolutely incredible job. [...] But at the same time not a single slide is good enough."

Tom Goodwin on X, on a presentation that he gave to three models to design, 30 September 2026

"AI rewards structure. Bad thinking plus AI just gets you bad answers faster."

Samson Marks, UK agency founder, on X, 30 September 2026

Agencies say taste is the job now

We read the websites of 28 brand and design agencies on 7 October 2026. Eleven publish something that links AI to writing. Nine publish on AI and say nothing about writing. Eight publish nothing of substance. The list holds no advertising network agency.

Most of the agencies that write about AI make one argument. The tools give speed and sameness, and the person supplies the judgement.

Wolff Olins, in an essay on its site (no date on the page):

"AI predicts the predictable. Everything is becoming faster, smarter…and blander."

Ryan Wareham, managing director for EMEA at R/GA, in The AI Taste Gap (15 April 2026):

"Tools without taste produces volume. Taste without tools is too slow."

Mirek Nisenbaum, partner at Base Design, in Belgian Branding (9 March 2026):

"AI cannot supply conviction. It can only amplify it."

His rule in the same article: "Thinking first. AI second."

Jessica Walsh, founder of &Walsh, in Adobe Design (no date on the page): "AI does not fail interestingly; it fails blandly."

DixonBaxi gives its view in a job advertisement: "Our bet is on conviction over efficiency."

Pentagram's page on an essay by its partner Giorgia Lupi says when her team uses AI: "it is always after that final moment of intuition".

Further, the agency that was DesignStudio, in its change-of-name notice (September 2025): "We're already seeing AI emulate illustration styles, photography, copywriting, and naming."

R/GA shows two pieces of writing work made with AI. For Wio, a bank in the UAE, it used AI with Arabic and English writers and "generated 100K+ potential names" (R/GA). For TaDa, a delivery service, it trained a model on the brand voice, "Guided by copywriters" (R/GA). Neither page gives a result.

Mother Design, whose copy director is quoted above, publishes no view on AI on its own site.

Managers ask for speed and give no training

A former executive at an independent ad agency, to Digiday (27 August 2026):

"Instead, it's just thrown at everyone. Leadership is like, "Be more efficient." That's it. But the staff are then thinking, I can't do my job and learn this."

A marketing strategist, also to Digiday (14 August 2025): "We're told we have to use AI to stay relevant, then demonized for doing exactly that. It's exhausting."

A commenter on r/PublicRelations (24 August 2026): "My coworkers will take something I've written that's perfectly good and tell AI to spruce it up".

Clients expect the saving now

Mike Hayward, chief creative officer at Copacino Fujikado, to Digiday (8 August 2025):

"I've been in meetings where clients will go: 'ChatGPT just spit out this line.' They'll actually do it in the meeting. That makes it more challenging to justify your value"

Rory McEntee, chief marketing officer of the gym chain GymNation, in The Drum (9 June 2026):

"AI has killed the billable hours wrapped around creativity that were never really about creativity."

He also says what he pays for: "Now more than ever, I value and work with agencies that offer creative ideas, genuine strategy and on-the-ground execution."

Nicole Vinson of Kellanova, to Digiday (20 August 2025): "We want our agency partners to have skin in the game".

Jay Wilson, a Gartner analyst who speaks to CMOs, to Glossy (20 April 2026): "The honeymoon around AI and agencies is essentially over".

"AI makes the pressure on hourly pricing pretty easy to understand. If work gets faster, hours become a less useful way to explain its value. But “pay for outputs” isn’t a complete answer either. You still have to define the output."

Ryan Bozeman, content marketer, on X, 3 October 2026

His post refers to a WFA study of agency fees. We did not check that study.

Clients want to be told

Matt Sutton, head of marketing at Columbia Sportswear, to Digiday (18 September 2025): "We know from social listening that Gen Zs reject AI content more than any other demo".

A client on r/marketing (23 January 2026), after finding a ChatGPT tracking tag in a link in an agency's draft: "we are paying them a lot of money to write for us".

Readers and journalists say they can see it

Jordyn Holman, a reporter at The New York Times, quoted by PR Daily (8 September 2026):

"Unfortunately, our inboxes are now stuffed with AI-generated pitches and outreaches. That's a turnoff."

Rosie Taylor, a UK freelance journalist, gave Press Gazette her signs (30 October 2025): "Weirdly short sentences. Sentences which list three things. Commas in the wrong place around 'and', 'or' and 'but'."

Joe Lazer, who writes the newsletter The Storytelling Edge (30 July 2026): "the experience of reading a post that you think was written by a human and then realizing it's AI-generated is soul-crushing."

A user on r/digital_marketing (26 May 2026): "my feed now looks like AI talking to AI in the comments."

57% of 1,000 UK consumers say they can usually tell when content is AI-generated (Optimizely, vendor survey, September 2026).

"I was thinking about how I recognize AI writing, and one big tell is excessively colorful verbs. A handful of journalists might write that a proposal "drew" 100 votes, but any normal person will just say "got"."

Paul Graham on X, 19 August 2026

"Its fitting that one of the tells of AI writing is over-assigning agency and action to inanimate objects: "the code knows it now," "the plan remembers," etc."

Ethan Mollick on X, 17 September 2026

""it's not x it's y" used to be what we said to emotionally wrap up an argument, double down on a serious point. Using it every third sentence feels sterile."

Alexander Sheppert, physician and AI engineer, on X, 5 October 2026

"AI will be especially fatal to writing that takes too long to get to the point. Now there will always be a more concise alternative, and 99% of readers will choose it."

Paul Graham on X, 5 September 2026

"If you use AI to write me a long email asking me to help you 1) I can tell 2) I’m never going to help 3) I’m going to block your email Have some respect for people"

Tom Goodwin, advertising author, on X, 27 August 2026

"A funny thing is that I now get more insightful comments on my posts about obscure science fiction authors or modernist poets or Bauhaus architecture than ever before, but that is entirely due to AI powered slop accounts."

Ethan Mollick on X, 12 June 2026

"The problem is that the output from the AI detector fooling startup is bad writing."

Ethan Mollick on X, 18 August 2026