Artificial intelligence enters the advertising market and scares copywriters

Since the beginning of January, the CEO of Agência Digital de Marketing Fator Roberto Fernandes, 41, has been testing the artificial intelligence of ChatGPT to optimize processes in his company. The robot writes simple advertising texts, proposes guidelines on the requested topics and even helps with Excel formulas and programming.

The downside, according to Fernandes, is still the overload times on the website of the robot created by OpenAI. In its beta phase, ChatGPT fails to meet all the demand for its services.

“I want to subscribe to ‘the pro version’ as soon as it comes out,” says the publicist, referring to the $42 version available only to a select group of users. As he reports, the virtual assistant makes text suggestions in minutes, while a professional would take hours of research.

The use of the robot has been the subject of debate and concern among professionals in the field.

Part of advertisers fears that technology will replace labor in the production of simpler texts —there are other platforms that produce image, video and music. “Editors increasingly appeal to ready-made formats that capture the public’s attention, but are easily reproducible. As the payments per work are increasingly smaller, it is possible”, says professor at the School of Communications and Arts at USP Luli Radfahrer .

Creative professionals and agency owners argue that artificial intelligence depends on skilled copywriters to deliver better results. Technical knowledge allows giving the right instructions to the algorithm to structure quality material.

In this process, people must lose their posts, but new vacancies must arise. “Companies strive to increase productivity. It is inevitable”, says Fernandes.

The Brazilian group ReportFlex, which offers consultancy based on data analysis, launched Robotizia in January, a digital writing assistant that produces initial versions of texts in Portuguese and English.

The engine that generates the contents is the updated version of GPT-3, the algorithm used in ChatGPT.

There are two differences to the North American robot: the platform’s interface aimed at producing copies (advertising texts made to sell) and the algorithm’s additional training with texts by the creators of Reportflex, Rodrigo Gimenes and Kelly Evangelista, both professionals in marketing.

THE Sheet tested the application, which delivers materials in both Portuguese and English, based solely on the language in which the question is asked — the assistant still stumbles and occasionally sends texts in English for requests in Portuguese.

Rodrigo Gimenes, CEO of Reportflex, says that the language autodetection feature is just launched. “If it comes in the wrong language, just ask for the text a second time.”

In some cases, Gimenes says Robotizia does up to 90% of the work. The user can ask for data on the theme, choose the tone of the piece or even indicate writers’ styles as a reference.

It remains for the professional to decide whether the content is in accordance with the client’s profile or whether the final text is good enough, according to Robotizia user Luciene Marinho. It uses the algorithm to serve clients for which it offers digital marketing services.

“Robotizia helps me produce a storytelling in 20 minutes that I used to take a whole day to do”, says the publicist. She, who signs the 70,000-character package, points out that she wanted a version without limitations.

“Sometimes, the text doesn’t come out as we imagined and we lack words to spend on a new text. I end up needing to work on what was done”, he says. Still, it managed to decrease the demand for freelance writers. “It’s easier to use the technology, because we don’t need to train the person.”

As of February 16th, Robotizia will have its first national competitor: Clarice Escritora, which will be launched by the textual proofreading startup of the same name. The algorithm for generating content is the same as GPT-3.

The founder of Clarice, Felipe Iszlaji, says that the differential of his product will be the improvement of GPT-3 especially for Portuguese. In addition, whoever hires Clarice Writer will also have the proofreader.

THE Sheet used the proofreader, which gives useful writing tips to current text generators, which, without proper instructions, reproduce clichés and exaggerate in adjectives and adverbs.

According to Iszlaji, his product is different from others because it relies on his company’s expertise in text correction. Clarice estimates that it will charge BRL 59.90 for up to 30,000 words/month or BRL 139 for 100,000.

Iszlaji’s idea is to start in the advertising market, where the structure of texts is simpler, but then expand to other areas, such as journalism. “We are advancing little by little. Waiting for technology to write novels is skipping steps.”

The two biggest companies in the market for generating advertising texts with artificial intelligence are Copy.AI and Jasper. Aimed at the English-speaking public, the two platforms deliver less fluid texts in Portuguese.

Sought after, Copy.AI claims to have 78,000 users in Brazil. The company’s partner in Brazil, the TikTok channel “JornadaTop”, with 2 million followers, produced a video script for the social network using the artificial intelligence tool. The result yielded 34,000 likes.

Jasper did not respond to questions from the Sheet until the publication of this report.