Does AI Mean the Death of Speechwriting?

I have consistently ignored ChatGPT since it came on the scene, which is pretty impressive because I’m married to a guy who manages machine learning engineers for a living. But when I stumbled on a Facebook thread from a content writer who had lost a ton of clients to AI I started to worry. Is ChatGPT to the speechwriter what ESG is to the coal miner? Are the drones coming for my job?

A friend pointed out that since I’m “sleeping with IT”, maybe I should ask him if it’s time for a career change. So I put ChatGPT to the test and quizzed my other half about the findings. The results were very interesting.

First up I asked ChatGPT to write me a LinkedIn post and a speech about an asset class I had been diving into for a client earlier in the year. I was pretty nervous about what it was going to spit out. I had spent hours reading about the topic, tracking down experts for interviews, and honing the point of view with the principal. If what ChatGPT had to say was any good I had wasted my time at best, but at worst, my days as a speechwriter could be numbered.

Luckily, I didn’t need to worry: The LinkedIn post was bad and the speech was even worse. Both had the tone of a robot, lacked a distinct point of view, and included content so bland it was like my eyeballs were chewing on cardboard. Even after tweaking the prompts things didn’t get much better.

Phew! My job is safe for now and my husband was able to explain why. AI tools are only as good as what’s already out there on the internet. I often write about niche topics that are not widely explored online. If there’s not that much that’s publicly available AI won’t generate anything useful. And if the leader you’re writing for doesn’t have much content publicly available, AI can’t replicate their tone of voice. Furthermore, AI can only look back at what you’ve said about a topic previously. It can help with ideation, but it can’t come up with a new perspective. “It can be a thought partner, but it can’t be a thought leader.” were my husband’s words.

The other thing I noticed about the content that AI produced is that it wasn’t an accurate reflection of what I’d heard from industry experts. I asked ChatGPT for its sources and this is where I saw the real red flag. ChatGPT had this to say:

Response from ChatGPT when I asked it about sources.

I would never, ever send anything to a client that’s not properly sourced. Speechwriters beware: The content is not just bland, there’s no way to prove its accurate and news flash — the internet is full of bullsh*t. What’s really interesting though is that beyond the disinformation that’s plagued elections etc, writers are now actively publishing nonsense to stop AI from stealing from their content. This podcast talked about how fan fiction writers are actively putting gobbledegook out there to stop AI from using their work to create free content.

So, I feel relatively safe for now, but I asked my husband if he thought AI or “large language models” as he calls them will ever get good enough do my job. “I think you’ll be ok, at least for the next thirty years or so. What you do is so niche and specialist it would be hard to train AI to do it as well as a human. But content writers are going to have a really tough time.” he mused. “AI will always be the difference between supermarket sushi and going to Nobu.” he said. Pretty good analogy for a tech guy, I thought. And bottom line: CEOs always want Nobu.

Aside from the content production part of speechwriting and executive communications, another major part of my job is public speaking coaching. Will AI ever be good enough to do that? “Well, that’s a lot more difficult. It would be a tough thing to build because you don’t know what image the person speaking is trying to project.” So AI may be able to do the writing part of my job in 2053, but the coaching part should see me into my seventies and eighties at least… because you know us millennials will never retire.

I finished by asking my husband this: “If there’s one thing you want me to take away from this conversation, what is it?” His answer? “Don’t ignore AI. It’s here to stay so you can’t afford to disengage from it. You have to figure out how to use it to your advantage.” This guy knows me so well — I had sincerely planned to go back to sticking my head in the sand, safe in the knowledge that speechwriting is here to stay.

I finished my AI experiment by asking ChatGPT what it thinks AI means for speechwriters and on this one occasion I’ll let the machines have the last word:

ChatGPT’s response when I asked it what AI means for speechwriters.