Fire the writers

There isn't a day that goes by where someone (everyone) isn't talking about AI. 

Last weekend I was talking with Ms. Muse as she was thumbing, and laughing, through a copy of MADWEEK, the trade parody magazine I wrote with the esteemed and talented Tom Parker and Jim Jennewein, more than 30 years agao.

"Siegel, you're prescient," she said (sometimes she addresses me by my last name, perhaps a charming genetic remnant gifted to her by her father who was from Forest Hills, Queens, not far from my old neighborhood.)

"How so, Sheryl?"

"You guys wrote this in 1989. 34 years later, writers, in advertising and other industries are fighting to keep their jobs. Worried about losing it to AI, like Mr. Copy."

Holy shit, she's right. We had predicted this predicament while I was still sporting Dolphin running shorts and Flock of SeaGulls were still being played by radio stations.

Take a look...

Not only did we nail the burgeoning technology, we also hinted at the decline of advertising media vehicles and suggested the rise of performance marketing and the type of projects self-respecting copywriters detest.

Feeling proud of myself and getting that small dose of vocational dopamine which I haven't had in a while, I decided to pit myself against ChatGPT in a very Meta fashion. 

I asked ChatGPT to write an ad for itself, that is a software program that could effectively eliminate the need for a copywriter. What it spit out was expectedly anodyne and lackluster. 

Then I asked it to make the copy funnier.

I don't know about you. Or WordGenius Pro. But I'm not impressed. And don't believe copywriters, true copywriters, have anything to worry about.

If only my prescience had been applied to other areas. For instance, if I had the prognosticating powers to see far into the future of certain equities, I would have sold everything I had, including my valuable Cinelli bike at the time, and sunk it all into Apple Stock.

In which case, this blog would not exist and I'd be in a hammock, in the Caribbean, sleeping off my first round of day drinking.