For many L&D professionals, it can be surprising just how much writing they do in their day-to-day roles.
From writing course descriptions to elearning scripts, and from crafting compelling internal comms to building clear instructions to help employees find what they need, when they need it, words play a massive role in L&D.
While some L&D professionals love flexing their creative muscles and getting involved in copywriting, it doesn’t come naturally to everyone, which can leave your learning content feeling a little lacklustre.
More and more L&D teams are now using AI for copywriting, and when it’s done right, it can accelerate and elevate your learning content. But it’s also easy to get it wrong – so let’s take a look at some of the dos and don’ts for using AI for copywriting!
DO: Learn to write great AI prompts
If you’ve found yourself unimpressed with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, it could be because you haven’t yet mastered the art of writing a good AI prompt.
The more detail you can provide, the better the output will be. For instance:
“Write me a script for my elearning video about health and safety”
will give you a much more generic result than:
“I work for a UK-based clothing retailer called Hat Attack. I’m converting our face-to-face health and safety training into an elearning course, and want to create an intro video. Please write me a script for a 60-second video to be read out by an actor playing a warehouse manager about the importance of safe working practices, the fact the course will take 45 minutes and the fact there will be a quiz at the end. The tone should be authoritative, but friendly.”
And the beauty of AI for copywriting is that you can always go back and ask for refinements, such as 'make it more light-hearted' or 'make it more concise'.
A good AI prompt follows these three Ss:
- Specific (in terms of length, tone of voice and content)
- Supported with context (such as any important background information about where the content will be used or why it’s needed)
- Structured (ask for the specific output you’re looking for, e.g. ‘5 bullet points, with one sentence of explainer copy for each’)
DON’T: Leave your AI content unedited
AI for copywriting is best when it’s used as a jumping-off point, rather than copied and pasted verbatim.
Many AI tools are trained to deliver outputs in US English unless you specify another localisation (or language), so make sure you make this part of your prompt if you want content in UK English, for example.
AI content can also feel generic, and even if you’ve requested a particular tone of voice (such as ‘formal, plain English’ or ‘whimsical and fun’), the output will very rarely sound exactly like the human ‘author’. That’s why you should review content and add in those little flourishes that make it sound like you (or your company’s tone of voice) to humanise the copywriting. This is especially important for your internal comms – you want your messages to sound like they're coming from real people, not robots!
DO: Look beyond ChatGPT
While ChatGPT is by far the most popular AI for copywriting tool, it’s not the only tool! While generative AI tools all do relatively similar things, they may be trained on different data sets or have additional features that make one a better fit for you than the others.
ChatGPT alternatives to try include:
If your business already uses the Microsoft or Google suites, Copilot or Gemini could be good places to start, as they integrate seamlessly with your existing software, such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs, to help you turbocharge your copywriting without having to leave your normal tools.
Looking for more AI tool inspo? We've got you covered! Check out our ultimate list of AI tools for learning and development.
DON’T: Assume everything will be correct
As good as AI for copywriting tools are (and they’re getting better every day), they can still be prone to ‘hallucinations’. That means that they can sometimes produce false information. This may happen when the tool has been trained on misinformation or misinterpreted source content, with AI hallucinations thought to happen around 3% of the time. Information could also be out of date, especially if things have changed in the last couple of years since most generative AI tools hit the market, so you may need to do your own research.
Of course, this shouldn’t be an issue if you’re just writing intro scripts or course descriptions, but it can be a major problem if you’re writing compliance training or mandatory legal content.
Most AI for copywriting tools will provide sources so you can verify information yourself, but for any high-stakes content, ask your SMEs to review the AI-generated output to ensure it’s factually correct and accurate.
DO: Use AI for inspiration
Just because you’re using AI for copywriting, that doesn’t mean you have to stick religiously to the output generated! In fact, some of the best outcomes arise when you combine AI’s speedy research and structuring skills with human creativity and understanding of nuance.
Instead of asking AI to write your content from start to finish, try asking it to suggest an outline or a structure. For example, don’t just ask it to generate content for a 30-minute elearning course. Instead, ask it to come up with the course structure, including what type of learning activities or interactions to include on each page.
Top tip: Ask your AI tool to adopt a specific persona, then ask it questions it can answer as that persona. For instance, ask ChatGPT to pretend to be a middle manager at an insurance company, then ask it what it needs to know to successfully carry out its role. This can then inspire the learning content you create, which is especially useful if you’re short on time and need answers quickly.
DON’T: Try to pass AI content off as your own!
Trust us: people know when content is 100% AI generated. There are lots of telltale signs, such as the overuse of words like ‘fostering’, ‘utilising’ and ‘leveraging’, but AI content also starts to feel very samey and doesn’t match the ‘writer’s’ usual voice.
If you’re just using AI to come up with an outline or to tweak the tone of your copywriting, there’s no need to disclose the use of AI. However, if the entirety of your elearning course is AI generated with absolutely no editing or fact checking (which we don’t recommend, for the record!), it’s worth making this clear to avoid misleading learners or inadvertently declaring false information as fact.
AI for copywriting tools are trained on existing content from across the internet, and while it’s unlikely it will copy an entire source verbatim, you don’t want to inadvertently plagiarise someone else’s content. That’s why it’s so important to check the sources used by your generative AI tool, and when in doubt, be sure to cite the original source.