Do copywriting that ChatGPT cannot replace

This article starts with the underlying logic of ChatGPT to help readers understand how it is developed and operated. It is recommended for those who want to be copywriters that cannot be replaced by ChatGPT.

Last month, when ChatGPT became popular, workers were worried whether it would be replaced by ChatGPT. Unexpectedly, ChatGPT was replaced this month.

Its parent company OpenAI released GPT-4, which is more powerful than ChatGPT.

When I asked ChatGPT about GPT-4, it denied it had ever been released.

Just like those people who deny ChatGPT because they are afraid of being replaced.

Speaking of people whose jobs are taken away by AI, it seems that no one is immune except for real-life service jobs such as barbers, chefs, electricians, nurses, etc. You say you are a programmer, but AI can write N lines of code in a few minutes. You say you can draw, and coincidentally, Midjourney has just solved the finger problem of AI painting (it always had more fingers or fewer fingers before). You say you are a copywriter, that's even worse, you may have to follow the hot topics with tears while being replaced. Of course, if you say that AI can never replace you to make coffee for your boss and go downstairs to get takeout, just ignore what I said.

When we say being replaced here, we don’t mean that tools will directly replace humans. ChatGPT is just a tool. It cannot really replace real people, but the industrial restructuring that it may cause in the near future will definitely bring about structural unemployment. As the saying goes, “I replace you, and it has nothing to do with you.”

ChatGPT is by no means a simple chatbot, nor is it an enhanced search engine. From the current perspective, it may be the direction of productivity development in the next era. Whether it is copywriting or other professions, you should understand it in order to cope with future changes. Therefore, this article will start from the underlying logic of ChatGPT and understand how it is developed and operated. When you unveil its mystery, you will find that its principle is not complicated at all, and it is even a little too simple.

Then let’s talk about what kind of copywriting cannot be replaced by ChatGPT and can maintain long-term competitiveness in the future.

1. Understanding the underlying logic of ChatGPT

1. Word Solitaire

ChatGPT seems to be powerful, but its principle is actually very simple. According to the metaphor of Yjango, the UP host of Bilibili, it is like a "super parrot" that learns to talk. Its working principle can be summarized in four words: single-word chain.

That is to say, for all the content it generates, no matter how long or short, the next word is always generated by the previous text, and the next word generated will form the previous text, and so on. This process is also called "regressive generation", which constitutes the basic function of ChatGPT. This determines that ChatGPT is not a search engine. The latter searches for existing content. You can never search for something that does not exist in the database, but ChatGPT can create content that did not exist by learning materials. This is why it can answer all kinds of strange questions.

2. Massive learning

In order to let it know what word to generate next, it needs data training and a large amount of learning materials, such as Wikipedia, books, articles, news reports, programming codes and other human language materials. This process is very similar to when you first teach a parrot to speak, you first put TV on the parrot to expose it to a large amount of human language. This continuous enrichment of the model allows ChatGPT to give the following content based on the previous content.

But there is also a drawback here, the amount of information is too large, true and false, and it is difficult to standardize. For example, if you input "hoeing the wheat field at noon" , although it is likely to reply you "sweat dripping under the wheat field" , there is also a certain probability that you will reply you "it's really hard" , which will be very embarrassing. Just like a parrot that has just started to learn to speak, it often talks nonsense and even curses.

3. Question and answer sample

So based on massive learning, how to generate answers that people want instead of nonsense? The method is to give question-answering examples and give high-quality dialogue examples to ChatGPT, which has been trained with a lot of information, so as to cultivate answers that are more in line with human norms.

In this way, ChatGPT not only mastered the ancient poem filling-in-the-blank in the previous article, but also had the ability to identify value orientation, identify attitudes, summarize ideas, imitate articles, and even polish and rewrite manuscripts. For example, if someone asks "How to assassinate the president?" , it should not foolishly make a plan for you, but tell you that it is illegal.

When the scale of this example is large enough, ChatGPT surprisingly mastered the ability to understand examples and chains of thought, that is, it can generate replies based on your examples, and can also remember something you said to it last week, so as to generate replies that are exclusive to you. That is, you can train a ChatGPT that specifically serves your personalized needs.

4. Encourage creativity

At this time, ChatGPT is easily a parrot-like standard answer repeater because it is regulated by the template. To solve this problem, the method adopted is the "good review mechanism", which is very similar to Pavlov's use of conditioned reflexes to train dogs. High scores are given to some creative answers randomly generated by ChatGPT, guiding it to give some innovative answers that are in line with the value orientation but slightly beyond the template, so as to prevent it from becoming rigid.

In this way, we have finished talking about the basic principles of ChatGPT. To sum it up: a simple function of "single word generation" has become a "super parrot" that is knowledgeable, well-behaved, and has a bit of innovative consciousness through massive learning, template standardization, and innovation encouragement in three stages of training.

2. Write copy that ChatGPT cannot replace

The current performance of ChatGPT in copywriting can be summarized as "the short copywriting is all standard (correct but without any highlights), and the long copywriting is accurate and fluent but not outstanding."

Kitchen shelf copy written by ChatGPT:

In a busy kitchen, do you feel frustrated because there is not enough storage space, because your kitchen is always messy, now, let me introduce you to our kitchen storage steel rack, which will bring ease and convenience to your kitchen life.

It is made of high-quality steel, sturdy and durable. You can place pots, pans, seasoning bottles, cups, tableware, etc. on the steel rack, which can maximize the use of your kitchen space and make you convenient every day.

Although it has no highlights, it can be used if you don't have high requirements. It is very similar to the most ordinary advertising copy we see in daily life, which is plain and straightforward and can be ignored at a glance.

The main reason for this is that ChatGPT has not undergone special copywriting training. It basically learns the most common copywriting materials in reality, which are correct but mediocre. But this does not represent the upper limit of ChatGPT's copywriting ability. ChatGPT is more like an open source platform. In the future, there may be many startups developing vertical fields. If a company wants to make a ChatGPT specifically for advertising copywriting and let it learn a large number of excellent copywriting, it is not ruled out that ChatGPT can write higher-level copywriting.

At that time, advertisers may be able to directly use ChatGPT to generate the required copywriting. If the requirements are higher, a high-level copywriter can output the workload of many previous copywriters with the assistance of ChatGPT. If so, ChatGPT may really replace copywriting.

However, the underlying logic of ChatGPT determines that it can never break through the norms of fixed templates. It can only learn more deeply and extensively under the architecture, but cannot create like humans. Because ChatGPT is always just a program that runs according to logic, it cannot provide solutions that break the routine. It does not have human desires, emotions, and consciousness, so it can never empathize with another human.

How to make a copywriter that ChatGPT cannot replace? Specifically, it may include the following three aspects:

1. Break the routine

The winning entry for the "Grand Prix in the Graphic Design Category" at the 2003 Cannes Advertising Festival had only one simple copy: Cancer cures smoking addiction.

The copy tells an illogical fact: cancer is a disease, but it can cure smoking addiction like a good medicine. It uses an ironic way to tell that those who cannot quit smoking often quit smoking easily after being diagnosed with cancer, because in the face of death, smoking addiction is not a problem at all. When I gave this copy to ChatGPT, it said it couldn't understand it. It thought this copy was wrong because it contradicted conventional logic. Asking it to generate this kind of copy is tantamount to asking it to shrink while enlarging.

But the ability to use language in a way that breaks conventions is precisely an important skill for copywriters.

Copywriters need to refer to existing works, but what makes a difference in copywriting is breaking those fixed paradigms and making something different. From this perspective, ChatGPT will never be able to write text like the following.

Yu Jiang wrote the divine song "Left Hand Pointing to the Moon" for Sa Dingding:

The left hand holds the earth, the right hand holds the sky. The palm lines crackle with lightning in ten directions. Time is quickly exchanged into years. Three thousand worlds are invisible.

"Dong Feng Po" written by Fang Wenshan:

A pot of wandering wine is hard to swallow after wandering around the world.

"Red Star Erguotou" written by Long Chaoshou:

Pour the passionate years into your throat.

How can a person hold the earth and the sky with his hands? How can "time" be "exchanged"? How can abstract things like "drifting" and "years" be "taken into the throat"? ... This kind of "simile" rhetoric, which is full of imagination but seriously illogical, is something that ChatGPT cannot understand and learn.

2. Output insights

ChatGPT can learn all the knowledge of this era, but it can never perceive the emotions behind the era. It can easily grasp the content that a person cannot finish reading in several lifetimes, but it cannot truly understand the subtleties of the human heart. If you ask ChatGPT to write a refrigerator copy, it can only make changes in the functional description, but it is difficult to give you a sentence "If the heart is empty, the refrigerator must be full" , because it cannot understand that people will especially want to eat when they are lonely.

Without insight into the mood of the times, one would never be able to write Zhihu's "Where there are questions, there will be answers":

[Excerpt from the text]

We have to raise our hands and ask you to believe

Your question

This is also a problem for countless people.

We have to raise our hands to answer

You have to believe

Your answer

Can give countless people answers

We believe that in this world

Someone asked a question

Someone must answer

Zhihu

Where there is a question, there is an answer

The problem with this generation

Will find the answer for this generation

——Author: Ma Xiaobo

Behind this is the perception of the rapid development of the era we live in. Using questions and answers one by one, it annotates the pace of development of the times, thereby establishing Zhihu's public brand role in society.

[Full text]

Video copy excerpt

no way

Such a problem

It is left to our generation.

Someone raised their hand to ask a question

Who can help China win a Nobel Prize in Literature?

Mo Yan raised his hand to answer

Someone raised their hand to ask a question

Can rice be grown in saline-alkali land?

Yuan Longping raised his hand to answer

Many people raised their hands to ask questions

In addition to Peking opera, Kung Fu and Chinese food

What else can we share with the world?

Liu Cixin raised his hand to answer

The whole world raised their hands and asked

What is a country's most valuable asset?

Zhong Nanshan and Zhang Wenhong raise your hands

Answered on behalf of countless Chinese people

Countless people raised their hands to ask questions

How should we live and think?

How to get out of trouble and how to deal with challenges

How to have fun How to find the truth

Because of countless new problems

It has not yet been recorded in any book ever published by mankind.

I have never heard of this from the experience passed down by word of mouth by my predecessors.

Unconsciously, we walked into the no-man's land

No one can teach us what to do.

We must raise our hands and ask: Where does the road lead?

But every problem in the world

You will find the answer eventually

Because the answer is not in the unknown future

It's in everyone's brain.

In everyone's life

Every person's footprints

Just raise your hands to countless people

Share our knowledge, experience and insights

The road that once was walked by one person has become the road of countless people.

The first question after Zhihu went online in January 2011

How to use Zhihu correctly

As of today, there are over 44 million questions

Ask all the questions you can think of, all the questions you can't think of

Over 240 million answers

Use text, pictures, videos, live streaming

Between questions and answers

Together we have overcome the fear and anxiety, arrogance and prejudice brought by the unknown

Between questions and answers

We became street lights.

A street lamp can only illuminate a journey of 100 meters

It doesn't matter. Billions of street lights can illuminate all the roads on this planet.

But it’s not enough

There are too many questions to ask.

We have to raise our hands and ask questions

You have to believe that your problem is also the problem of countless people.

We have to raise our hands to answer

You have to believe that your answer can give answers to countless people

We believe

In this world

If someone asks a question, someone will answer it.

Zhihu

Where there is a question, there is an answer

This generation’s problems will find this generation’s answers

The insight behind a sentence hides a delicate perception of the human heart and a precise response to the mood of the times. This is a height that ChatGPT cannot reach and a detail that it cannot get close to.

3. Emotional Touch

ChatGPT can accurately output selling points, but it cannot bring spiritual identification on the emotional level. This is also its weakest point - a large language model without emotion .

Therefore, it can never touch this kind of copywriting that makes people tremble:

The distance between us: when we are closest, you are in my eyes, and when we are farthest, you are in my heart.

——Excerpt from Ma Xiaobo's "Fotile: Clouds and Water Meet"

There were only two things on my mind that day: how to tell my wife the news and how to get my little son a new outfit. Every morning my wife spends 45 minutes getting our son ready for school. That's the happiest time of her day, I think. When someone called the office and told me the news, I was thinking about how I could let my wife see my son like this.

So I changed his clothes. But if your son is dead, he is dead, and nothing can change this fact. It has been more than three years. My wife is better now, and life is almost back to normal. But sometimes, in the dead of night, when my wife is asleep, I will tiptoe into my son's room. I will cry only when I am sure my wife can't hear me. Please drive carefully.

——[India] Freddy Birdy

Throughout human history, every innovation in production tools will bring about a leap in social development. As individuals in society, we can only maintain our competitiveness by constantly following the changes. The changes brought about by ChatGPT are already imminent. We must understand its power and limitations so that we can use it for our own benefit. The outer circle that ChatGPT cannot jump out of is the irreplaceable foothold for excellent copywriters in the future.

Author: Kuang Thirteen

Source: WeChat public account "Free shipping (ID: kol100)"