HOWIE Share: Working with AI
AI is a massive buzzword now, and for good reason too. As it continues to impact every aspect of our world, it has challenged us at HOWIE to consider how it affects our business.
Here, we share our experience working with it so far, and our mindset about it all!
At First, Tareq Freaked Out
As professional copywriters, we were nervous when Chat GPT arrived – a simple, powerful, and free new way for anyone to write pretty much anything! It was easy to think, “Well, there goes that service!” All of the knowledge, experience, and fun times we had supporting customers to tell their stories had just become a thing of the past.
Luckily Tareq has a friend, Asa, who has been in AI for so long that most of his work has involved trying to convince people that AI is coming, and that it has inconceivable potential for everyone. So Tareq called Asa in a fluster, and was immediately put at ease. “Everything will be OK,” Asa said. “If anything, you’ll just have more time to do other cool stuff for your customers!” Hmmm, OK…
Then, he Felt Better (Sort of)
So, HOWIE started playing around with Chat. We began figuring out what it was great at, and where it fell down. In its current state (August 2023) it still has a way to go. It feels pretty generic in its language, and can be clunky when you want it to perform edits. We actually found that, in its current form, it’s actually faster for an experienced copywriter to manually write a website or video script! And wouldn’t you believe it, this blog is being written by a human! Madness!
All AI will improve exponentially, of course. But at the moment, the biggest thing it’s missing is the ability to start a project off with creative and innovative strategy that will hit a user’s unique goals and brand. That part needs a bit of human help. Basically, a skilled human needs to be able to tell it what to do!
It also can’t tell human stories, like personal journeys or case studies, which feel like that person telling their story. These require an interview, with an interviewer who asks the right questions, pulls the threads that arise, and retells that story in someone’s authentic, original voice.
This kind of strategy and storytelling is exciting work that we love to do, and we will continue to do it for the foreseeable future!
Now We’re Excited!
The scariest thing about our AI ‘aha’ moment, was realising that this actually required a monumental shift within the business we had built. This was a challenge we had to face and overcome. Actually, it’s a huge opportunity.
Now we’re using new AI in software like Photoshop (see our video demonstration beside) to make changes to images that are just incredible, and will be so valuable for our customers. We’re looking at video editing tools that will speed up some of the manual tasks that take time and add cost. And we’re even learning how to best pair human creativity and strategy with the automation of Chat.
Most importantly, delivering videos, photo, writing, and strategy to our customers, that will help them achieve their goals, is actually what drives us. So if AI means we can deliver more good stuff for the same (or less) budget, then we’re all in. Let’s do it!
See more stuff like this on our socials!
It’s easy to freak out about AI. It’s harder to challenge ourselves to change our businesses, and harness the mind-bending power of AI. Our mindset now is about figuring out how we can pair our strategic experience, hands-on skills, and creativity with AI to offer even more value to our customers, and help move them forward!
