The Best AI Copywriting Tools and Their Uses

AI copywriting tools have promised to change the world of marketing writing for the better. They can help break writers out of their writer’s block, they can help generate repetitive blocks of text, and they can create more words per minute than a human could ever hope to do. But as with all things AI, there are many concerns. And as with all young technology, there are many flaws that need to be ironed out. In this article, we’ll discuss the upsides and downsides as well as what some of the best AI copywriting tools claim to deliver.

Downsides of AI Copywriting Tools

The promise of most AI copywriting tools is that you can save hours on writing blog posts by letting the AI do the writing for you. The concept is simple – you input a topic and a tone, and maybe specific keywords, then the tool generates legible and unique pieces of content. However, this is often far from the truth. In many cases, the AI tools will generate an article that makes a fair amount of sense and can be used with limited editing.

The Dark Side of AI Copywriting Tools

But despite the successes, things often go wrong.

In the video below, commentary YouTube creator Drew Gooden plays with Jasper.ai, one of the tools on our list. It has some very impressive moments, which Drew makes sure to highlight. However, the failures are concerning. At one point, the suggested copy is plagiarized from another website, even using that website’s name! Meanwhile, the tool charges extra for you to run a plagiarism check on the copy. Shouldn’t we trust that the AI that promises to “write original, creative content” shouldn’t plagiarize? At other points, the tool provides a suggestion that it has already suggested. All the while, the program charges per word, even if it just keeps suggesting the same thing multiple times. At best, these mistakes show that AI copywriting is still young and improving. At worst, it shows that the companies providing these services are charging their customers unfairly.

AI vs Human Writers

A major downside to using AI copywriting is that you’re not working with a human writer. While you get instant results from an AI solution, it’s not as easy to work with an AI copywriter on suggestions and tone of voice. A human writer can give more personality to your blog. They can also take specific requests and work them into your copywriting. Both options cost money, however, so you can do the math and decide if a human or an AI is more cost-effective.

But in that cost, you’ll need to factor in the time that you or someone else spends editing the content that an AI copywriter produces. If your company has a specific tone of voice, or specific technical jargon, the AI may not use them. There will also likely be some awkward sentences or grammatical errors, although the tools are quite good at stringing together logical sentences.

What are AI Copywriting Tools Good For?

With those negatives in mind, it’s clear that AI copywriting tools are not a magical solution to all of your writing problems. As Drew Gooden points out in the video above, you still need to give a prompt to the AI. And in the process of creating these prompts, you might just reach a point of inspiration and be able to write most of the article on your own.

In some cases, the AI may be able to create a full blog post with everything that you want. This is helpful, but certainly a best-case scenario. And many of the big tools we’ll list here don’t necessarily claim to replace a copywriter. They’re supposed to augment a copywriter and be an additional tool for creating great content.

Think of what an AI produces as a rough draft. The AI can create this rough draft (or several of them) in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile, it could take a human writers hours to get that far, and they would be burnt out at the end of the day. The AI can think up a variety of different angles to inspire writers to explore new ideas based on a basic prompt.

Even one of the founders of the AI that powers all of these tools admitted to the weaknesses of the technology. AI won’t be fully replacing human writers any time in the near future. This is just another tool for writers to use, or for non-writers to produce something.

Jasper.ai: Best for Short-Form Content

Jasper comes with a wide variety of useful features for writers. In addition to writing blog posts, Jasper has templates for summarizing text, writing bios, writing social media ads, and creating video hooks. This versatility makes Jasper an attractive choice for marketers, online sellers, and advertisers. The makers of Jasper consulted with SEO and direct-response marketing experts, so the AI is specially trained to create marketing-oriented content. It seems to shine when it comes to short content like descriptions, subtitles, and ad copy. So if you’re looking to list a lot of products or run an ad campaign, Jasper is a real contender.

They also promise that their generated copy is “almost always” free from plagiarism – it just so happens that one of those instances was caught in Drew Gooden’s video, posted above. 

Jasper.ai offers a free 5-day trial with 10,000 words.

Learn more about Jasper.ai

Copy.ai: Best for General or Varied Use

Copy.ai markets itself as being useful for blog posts, ad copy, eCommerce copy, social media content, and more. Their website makes it clear that they are upfront about being a tool to generate rough drafts. Their content will need to be polished by a human. But as with most of these tools, the real advantage is being able to generate ideas. Copy.ai offers 90+ templates for marketers to use as jumping-off points.

Their free plan is reasonably generous, offering 2000 words per month. This means you can probably use it to write one blog post per month while you get a feel for it.

Learn more about Copy.ai

Anyword: Best for Marketing Conversions

Anyword is an AI copywriting tool that uses predictive analytics to help marketers with conversions. This aspect makes them stand out from the competition. It can evaluate how successful your copywriting might be based on different demographics. Marketers will be able to input customer personas to help the AI learn. Anyword boasts being able to write ad copy, landing pages, blog posts and more. It could be very valuable and time-saving for marketers to have access to a tool that can accurately use a brand’s voice and ideal customer. Anyword claims an average conversion rate increase of 30%!

In addition to several paid tiers, Anyword offers a free version. But at 1000 words per month, it is on the low end compared to some of the services on this list.

Learn more about Anyword

Copysmith: Best for Product Descriptions

Copysmith bills itself as a copywriting tool for teams. While other tools focus on writing blogs, Copysmith says that its strengths lie in the realm of product descriptions and content enhancement. They seem to understand AI’s limitations when it comes to generating longer content, and are focused on the repetitive and boring task of writing product descriptions for a large number of SKUs. Their services will allow a business to scale without being bogged down by writing. So, this may not be the go-to tool for generating your next blog, but it seems to be very good at what it promises to do.

Copysmith does seem to offer a free trial of their paid plans, but does not specify what is in included in the trial.

Learn more about Copysmith

Shortly AI: Best for Creative Writers

While may of the tools on this list market themselves to businesses and marketing teams, Shortly AI positions itself for creative writers. This AI copywriting tool can work with what you’ve already written and continue the story for you, if you are experiencing writer’s block. It’s smart enough to use your own voice, and it can be used for more than just writing. It also works well as a tool for brainstorming, or expanding upon an existing idea.

Their paid plans are also unique in that there is no word limit (many of the other services on this list charge based on the number of words generated). However, they do not offer a free trial of any kind.

In 2021, Shortly AI was acquired by Conversion.ai, who has since rebranded to Jasper.ai (the first tool on this list), but it seems it will remain a standalone product for the foreseeable future.

Learn more about Shortly.ai

Writesonic: Best for Long Blog Posts

Writesonic bills itself as being able to write long-from (1500+ word) blog posts. It was trained on high-performing copy from well-known brands, which means it will write content that is effective and optimized for search. The structure of these long posts is something that the other AI copywriting tools may struggle with. Writesonic is uniquely positioned tow write entire posts, rather than just haphazard paragraphs.

We have to give points for honesty, too. In an FAQ about plagiarism, Writesonic admits that 99% of its generated content is free from direct duplication, which theoretically means that 1% of the time, directly duplicated content may sneak through. Although while Jasper.ai has a built-in plagiarism checker, Writesonic does not appear to offer the same service for these scenarios.

In addition to their paid plans, Writesonic has a never-ending free trial that lets you generate 6250 words per month.

Learn more about Writesonic

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