I’ll never forget the first time I used marketing platform Jasper’s AI tool to create an article. It was some time in 2022, when I was already having doubts about the future of my own content marketing company, Tigris, a tiny team of four full-timers working remotely across the U.S.
I started feeling a shift in the industry and was struggling to pay myself and my employees, who I’d sworn I’d always support with a competitive wage.
I can’t say exactly how much AI played a role in the steady loss of our clients, but I did sense that the rise of AI was leading to an overall devaluing of the work we did as content marketers.
They say, “If you can’t beat them, join them,” so I tried using AI for the first time.
As a bespoke tool for content marketers, Jasper seemed to be an appropriate choice. The first time I generated a whole article from a rough paragraph, I felt both impressed and torn. At a glance, it was a solid draft — nothing flashy or groundbreaking, but it had all the “bones.”
So being an entrepreneur, I tried to pivot. I thought that maybe we could use Jasper to generate drafts and instead pitch our services as editors. Maybe I can cut costs by training my team to work this way. I considered rebranding us into “The Copy Engineers” to draw a more future-focused clientele, and even bought a domain and drafted a new website.
Either I couldn’t pull it off, or felt icky trying to convert writers into editors of AI-generated content, so after a full year of experimentation, I closed doors on the marketing business and returned to freelance writing.
While generative AI is a massive time-saver for outlining, I am still consistently underwhelmed by the blandness of the drafts it generates. The repetitive groups of three. The uninspired headlines. The uncomfortable frequency of gerunds like “being” as sentence-starters.
Sometimes I’m loath to use it at all; I no longer dive deep to connect to an angle or concept the way I used to, which sucks most of the joy out of writing. But it does speed up the process.
Artificial intelligence has rapidly transitioned from a theoretical concept to a daily utility in the marketing world, but the question remains: Is it truly liberating marketers to focus on creativity, or is it merely shifting the nature of the workload?
The reality check: input from the front lines
To understand the real-world impact of AI, I explored the workflows of three distinct professionals: Diana Patino, a senior performance marketing manager; Sage Knox, a freelance content strategist and SEO specialist; and Sonya Schweitzer, a tenured marketing and communications professional and fractional CMO.
The consensus? AI is best utilized as a “thinking partner” rather than a replacement for human expertise.
While tools like ChatGPT and Claude significantly accelerate mechanical tasks — like drafting copy, generating outlines, or analyzing data patterns — they require substantial human oversight to ensure accuracy and maintain brand voice.
The thinking partner: acceleration over replacement
For many, the value of AI lies in its ability to remove the friction of the blank page. It’s about velocity, not just automation.
Diana Patino, who currently manages Meta and Google ads at financial services company Figure, views AI as a collaborative partner that sharpens decision-making.
“I’m pro-AI,” Patino says. “I really love how it has become a partner and it allows us to dedicate more time to more strategic tasks at work, like analyzing channel performance, consumer behavior, and generally getting out of our comfort zone because we can do things so much faster.”
This sentiment is echoed by fractional CMO Sonya Schweitzer, whose role involves bringing clarity and direction to organizations. She doesn’t use AI to make strategic decisions, but she does use it to clear the runway for those decisions to be made.
“I started paying attention to AI in late 2022 when it became practically useful rather than just interesting,” Schweitzer explains. “I didn’t jump in blindly. I tested it quietly in the background. Once I saw how much it could accelerate thinking and reduce friction, it became part of my workflow. Not as a replacement for expertise, but as a way to extend capacity.”
The “junior creative” problem
However, capacity extension comes with caveats. Sage Knox, a freelancer and former content strategist, approaches AI with curiosity but significant caution.
“I have a natural curiosity for technology, so I was impressed at first,” Knox says. “I didn’t think I would offload all my daily work to this thing, but I thought let’s experiment and see what I can do in terms of augmenting my processes.”
He compares AI outputs to that of a “first-year junior creative,” useful for establishing the structure of a piece, but often lacking the correct voice, factual accuracy, or experiential knowledge to make something refined.
Knox notes that the initial panic regarding job security faded once the quality of many AI tools, or lack thereof, became apparent.
“On the writing side, we were like, ‘I don’t have a job anymore!’” he says, “but that fear was quickly assuaged when we realized AI wasn’t putting out higher-quality things and was making content up much of the time.”
Marketers compare AI outputs to those of a “first-year junior creative.” They’re useful for establishing the structure of a piece, but often lack the correct voice, factual accuracy, and experiential knowledge.
Privacy, accuracy, and the human guardrail
One of the most critical aspects of integrating AI into enterprise workflows is the limitations regarding data privacy and accuracy. Patino highlights a major constraint for marketers: You cannot simply feed sensitive data into a public LLM.
“With ChatGPT, you still have to be very careful with the information you upload, and because you can’t use lots of sensitive information, the output will be super broad at times,” she warns.
“If I want something more insightful or detailed, I find myself spending more time analyzing what AI is giving me because it doesn’t have all of the information it needs.”
This constraint necessitates a human in the loop. While AI can brainstorm narrative structures or value propositions, the marketer must be the final judge. (In that vein, the human in the loop is also a defender of privacy rights.)
“It’s really nice, but you still have to adjust it. You are still the person who is deciding what to say, to whom, and why,” Patino adds.
Schweitzer notes that while AI is strong at pattern recognition, it fails at context. “It’s useful for creative work as a starting point, not a finish line. For strategy, it’s a support tool. Judgment, tradeoffs, and accountability still require a human,” she says.
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Long-term risk: the “de-skilling” of the workforce
Perhaps the most profound insight from these conversations is the fear of “de-skilling.” If we rely on AI to generate our strategies and write our code, do we eventually lose the ability to do it ourselves? (Or to be able to tell when it’s done well — or not?)
“There are already enough tools [we depend on] that we have ‘digital snow days’, like when Slack or Gmail is down,” Knox observes. “But if you offload all your work to AI tools that are in their infancy, and these models change overnight, you will end up having to re-engineer everything.”
The verdict? “It’s better to keep those kinds of disciplines and skills rather than relying on AI,” he says.
Schweitzer puts it even more bluntly, asserting that marketers who “rely on AI to think for them” will struggle. “[They] will move faster and understand less. It is a productivity tool, not a substitute for judgment,” she says.
Where I’ve landed
Ultimately, the question of whether AI is helpful to marketers is as personal as how you take your coffee.
Some technophiles may accept it just because it’s new and exciting, while others may reject it on practical, ethical, or environmental principles.
Most of us seem to fall somewhere in between: We take what we like, leave the rest, and adjust our work habits accordingly.
My two cents? AI is a mirror to our own perspective. If my outlook is doom-and-gloom, I will likely find supporting evidence that AI is ruining the marketing industry. If I am cautiously optimistic — and I am — I will use AI with common sense and privacy rights in mind.
At the same time, I’ll consider the impact of my choice to use it on my clients, society, and my own sense of pride in my work.
As Schweitzer wisely states: “AI won’t replace good marketers; it will expose the bad ones.” The same can be said of writers.
I’m sure you’re wondering by now: did I use AI to help write this article?
Three years in, and Jasper and I are still going strong.
Usercentrics CMO Adelina Peltea has seen it all — and now she’s seeing marketers move to new playbooks with higher quality data.