You Hate How AI Sounds. Your Audience Doesn't.
The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI-Ready CMO
Have you ever heard someone say, “And here’s the kicker”? I have recently, and I was wondering why this person talks like ChatGPT? I have yet to hear someone unironically say “let’s delve into,” but I feel it is coming (this phrase has the most incredible anecdote attached to it, which you can read in the footnotes*).
Do we even like how AI sounds? Well, apparently, yes, we do.
The New York Times is doing a blind taste test with 86,000 readers so far (you can still take it). Five sets with two writing samples side by side, one by an actual writer, the other by Claude Opus. Pick the one you prefer.
And people did pick AI 54% of the time:
Here’s the kicker: It is literally part of my job to look at AI-generated text. I have a really good eye for spotting when something was written by Claude or ChatGPT. And I correctly identified which ones were AI-written in four of these five examples, but I still preferred them to the human-generated ones.
Now, this is a small and very unscientific sample. It is also creative writing that might not be immediately transferable to marketing. Or… is it?
Marketing copy is as much a science as it is art. We know exactly which patterns convert better. We know what sells. Taste is arguably a smaller factor in marketing than it is in creative writing.
Now back to the intro: do people prefer AI-generated text because it is generally better, or because AI has already shaped how we expect writing to sound? I argue the latter is already happening.
So next time you scold ChatGPT for sounding like AI… maybe that’s what people want.
[*] “Delve into” has a fascinating background story. It is not fully attested, but it is very plausible. All models go through a stage called Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback, RLHF, when humans give feedback on the correctness and helpfulness of AI responses. This is most often done via crowdsourcing platforms and, supposedly, many older ChatGPT models were trained this way by Nigerian English speakers. “Delve into” is apparently a common phrase in Nigerian English, so people marked those answers as helpful and correct. ChatGPT, being a good little model, decided to use it often.
Repurposer Got a Big Update
Previously, you could use Repurposer to write social media posts from an article, a YouTube video, or any text.
Now it generates slideshow videos from the same sources with a single click, with multiple templates. These are exactly the type of videos LinkedIn and other social networks always surface at the top of everyone’s feed, so you should use them often.
Slideshows can be downloaded with a single click, either as a video or as a GIF, which is useful for newsletters. Here’s a slideshow we generated from one of our previous issues:
Repurposer is available for free if you are an AI-Ready CMO Pro subscriber, along with other perks like access to our weekend-long form posts and monthly trend reports.
— Torsten and Peter
Share with a colleague. Earn paid membership months.
3 AI Marketing Tools To Try Today
Marblism
Marblism deploys six specialized AI employees that handle inbox management, blog writing, social media, lead generation, calls, and legal reviews. Use it as a solopreneur or small team to delegate operational tasks without hiring additional staff.
Originality AI
Originality AI detects AI-generated content, plagiarism, and readability scores using advanced scanning algorithms. Use it to verify content authenticity and maintain editorial standards before hitting publish.
Superlist
Superlist is an AI-powered task and project management app that blends personal to-dos, team collaboration, and smart workflows into one clean interface. Use it to replace scattered Notion pages and forgotten sticky notes with a unified task system.
Paid members, your toolkit and this month’s report are below.