AI policy

At The Voicery, we don’t generate client copy with AI.

Our staff and freelancers know we spot check copy with paid-for AI detection tools, just in case.

Here’s why we don’t generate client copy with AI:

1. What’s the point? You can do that yourself.
   Anyone can use AI to generate copy. And the better your prompts, the more usable the output. But it doesn’t mean it will be really good.
   
   

2. We know what good looks like.
   Our decades of writing, editing, journalistic, creative and strategic experience not only means we recognise when it’s good, but also we know how to make it good.
   Writing exceptional copy for a specific client to get a particular audience to take a certain action takes skill. It’s a craft.
   
   

3. Good writing is good thinking. And great writing is great thinking.
   Part of getting a good output is thinking through the inputs. Writing the copy ourselves helps us refine and test our (or our clients’) ideas.
   
   

4. We’re not just picking which words to use – we’re leaning on our deep knowledge of B2B marketing, journalism, brand voice and storytelling to be a true and frank strategic partner to our clients.
   
   

5. The material we write is typically high value and high impact.
   It frequently involves distilling complex topics, products and services into material a non-expert could read and understand.
   Ensuring our writing hits the mark involves research and knowledge-building. That frequently means interviewing senior leaders and subject matter experts at our clients (or sometimes their customers or partners).
   We probe and prod to glean the nuggets of human experience and wisdom that make B2B content truly compelling and valuable.
   
   

6. We have usually signed NDAs with our clients and are often working on internal material that won’t be shared outside their company.
   We NEVER put proprietary client material into a generative AI tool for any reason.
   
   

7. Generative AI is predictive: it suggests the next character or word based on all the relevant material it has consumed. The problem with that? Theaverage quality of B2B writing out there isn’t brilliant. What AI generates from that sea of words usually isn’t brilliant either. A strong copywriter will always do better.
   
   

8. AI is a tool. It can be so useful.
   But as copy guru Eddie Shleyner once wrote: “It’s able to do so much, so quickly – except be human. It can’t do that.”

 

Here’s when we use generative AI tools while working for clients

1. To generate transcripts and summaries
   We record interviews and calls, and use AI tools to generate the transcripts and give us summaries.
   AI transcripts have improved a lot in recent years. We generally use them as a guide, but still check the actual recording for quotes or information, or as a backup to our own notes, which don’t include a conversation’s every last “um” and “eh” and repeated points and random sidebar about someone’s holiday.
   AI transcript summaries are an interesting reference, but we make sure we use our human communication skills during the call and our human information sorting skills after the call.
   
   

2. As a brainstorming partner
   It’s super handy to use a tool like Gemini as an interactive thesaurus or to help kickstart ideas. “Give me other words for this” or “give me five taglines for that”, for example.
   (The taglines from gen AI are almost always terrible. Go read Dan Nelken’s book if you want to learn how to write good taglines.)
   
   

3. To suggest content outlines or double-check we’ve covered all the bases
   For example, we might ask, “What topics should an AI policy cover?” as a way to make sure we haven’t missed anything obvious. Or prompt: “Give me a content outline for an ebook about camper vans.” (None of our clients sell campervans.)
   Again it’s a way to ensure we haven’t had some sort of collective brain fart and forgotten something obvious. Handy.
   
   

4. To stress-test what we know about our (client’s) audience
   By asking “what heads of finance worry most about it when it comes to AI” or “what small business owners want most from stock management software”, we can make sure we’re definitely hitting all the pain points or pressing the levers that would resonate with those particular audiences (imagined in this case).
   We’ll already have talked about this at length with our clients, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check.
   
   

5. To get some ideas on how to improve about-to-be-public copy
   Only with a client’s specific consent or instruction, we ask gen AI tools to offer alternate phrasing for material we have written for them that is about to be published publicly. This can help spark an idea or unstick a writer from creative quicksand.