FAQ: Why do we still need to brief writers when we have AI?

Everyone’s pressed for time, busier than ever, expected to do more on lower budgets, with fewer resources – and all by incorporating the almighty AI. It may seem to make sense to offload the briefing of a creative professional to the robot overlords – after all, a writer just needs to know the facts to craft a persuasive argument, right?

One claim creatives have been making since the AI revolution began is that the human touch is indispensable. And in the past couple of years, corporations have also come round to that way of thinking, at least partially. We’re seeing derisive terms like “slop” and “sea of sameness” cropping up in professional contexts to describe identikit AI-generated language and imagery, and organisations from Microsoft to OpenAI are scaling back investment as projected sure-fire moneymakers like Copilot and Sora pop like bubbles.

While for writers and artists (who predicted this dilution of originality as the slop engine ground ever finer and more derivative) the schadenfreude is luscious, it obscures an important fact about the writer-client relationship. We need you as much as you need us. Of course it’s vital to have a human writer. But believe me, if you want quality first time, minimal copy revisions and a faster turnaround, it’s just as essential to have a human doing the briefing.

I’m busy. Why do you need to interview me?

It may sound trite, but I’m a storyteller. You want to communicate that something is important or necessary; my job is to put it in context to demonstrate why it is so – in other words, to weave a narrative your customers will want to read and will relate to. To understand where the beats, the rhythm and the emphasis of the story lie, there’s no substitute for the human voice. And not only will it save me time, it’ll save you money.

Here’s an outline I got ChatGPT to generate. Write an article about this.

Thanks – that’s going to be very useful for detail and background. (As you are the expert here, I assume you have fact-checked it, verified all the information?) But what I really need is to hear your perspective on it. Your hot takes. What frustrates you. What confuses you. What excites you. These are not things that AI can convey to me. Only you can tell me how things make you feel.

Here are five industry insight surveys by McKinsey and Capita, nine competitor articles and all our collected case studies. We’d like an 800-word think-piece by Friday.

You’re looking at paying for upwards of eighteen hours’ reading and research time, plus four to eight of writing for an 800-word article, rather than have a half-hour conversation? I won’t say no – work’s work – but surely that isn’t cost-effective for you?

We don’t mind if you use ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity/Gemini/[heaven forbid]Copilot! That will save you time.

Okay, say I get AI to summarise all these 400-odd pages of information. First, this is not my area of expertise. How can I tell when the model is hallucinating without reading each article for myself all the way through? Second, we again have the problem of information hierarchy: AI can’t rank facts in order of importance because it doesn’t know how highly you and your audience, your customers, value certain features or capabilities over others.

By providing me with reams of data, you’re giving me a lot of good meat. But good meat doesn’t stand up without a solid skeleton – and that can only be formed in conversation. Let’s talk.