AI Writing Tools: What’s Hype and What’s Helping
In the ever-changing world of marketing and AI — because what blog doesn’t start that way these days — you can’t scroll two inches without someone declaring that machines will either take your job tomorrow or just keep recycling their own mediocre content to produce more mediocre content.
For content leaders trying to stretch budgets and teams toward big goals, the hype around AI can feel both exciting and exhausting. The promise of efficiency is tempting, but is it worth the gamble on a tool that creates more work than it saves?
From what we’ve found, AI can be powerful, but only when you use it intentionally. We’ve tested the top AI engines and kept tabs on where AI genuinely boosts efficiency … and where it just makes more work. Here’s our take on separating the hype from the helpful.
The AI Hype Cycle: Overpromising Since Forever
The real problem with AI tools? Inflated expectations. But just like the “ever-changing landscape,” you don’t have to stick with one idea of how AI can help you. AI isn’t ready yet to replace your writers, strategists, or editors. And it’s hard to even say it’s ready to help marketers solve the problems that are really keeping them up at night (read: tightening budgets, avoiding team burnout, and wondering if AI is actually a shortcut or a detour).
From what we’ve found, AI works much better as a co-pilot than as the captain. The trick is knowing when to use it: brand relevance and nuance can’t be outsourced to a machine, but with the right balance, AI can lighten the load.
Where AI Actually Helps the Writing Process
Depending on which tool you use and what you’re hoping to get out of AI, it can be good to great at a few different things that actually help writers.
1. Pre-writing
Give AI tools your interview notes, brand documents, or webinar recordings and let them parse through the documents to find key points to back up your prompt, help you determine themes, or give you ideas on what to write about. Pre-writing is one area where AI can have the biggest impact on saving time.
2. Outlining and repurposing
Drop in meeting notes, random ideas you’ve jotted down, or even an example of the format you’re aiming for and let your AI tool create a working outline. You can also feed it a podcast or video transcript and quickly spin up ideas for a blog post, a LinkedIn article, or even a TikTok script, giving you a chance to optimize content for a cluster of topics from one original piece.
3. Editing and optimization
Stuck on a sentence? Wrestling with a headline that refuses to land? AI is great at taking a clunky paragraph and polishing it into something another human would actually want to read. In fact, you’re probably already using AI for this if you’ve ever leaned on Grammarly or an SEO checker. The difference now is that AI can edit for tone, style, or even brand voice.
4. Workflow support
Some AI platforms integrate directly with task boards or content calendars, automatically assigning deadlines, tracking drafts, and even suggesting when to publish for maximum reach. AI should be used to streamline busywork, but keep humans in charge of priorities and timing.
Best Practices for Smarter AI Adoption
Want AI to be more sidekick than saboteur? Keep these in mind:
Use AI as a collaborator, not a replacement. AI can be less helpful when you use it for research. Some tools are better than others, but they’re all still prone to hallucinations and misunderstanding intent, which can send you down the wrong path
Pump the brakes on AI drafts. Once AI takes the wheel and drafts an article, you could spend more time wrangling tone, style, and accuracy than you would’ve spent writing from scratch. That’s also when your writing starts to sound robotic and generic.
Make rules. Decide where AI fits in your process (and where it doesn’t).
Give your team guidelines on AI use. Train your team to use AI tools while flexing their own storytelling muscles.
A Better Solution Than Outsourcing to AI
AI isn’t a magic fix; it can’t deliver the creativity, strategy, or authenticity that sets your brand apart from the pack. The marketing teams that succeed won’t be the ones who hand everything over to machines. They’ll be the ones who use AI for efficiency while leaning hard on human-led creativity.
At Comma Copywriters, that’s our specialty. We can work with you to blend AI’s efficiencies with a human-led strategy to keep your content fresh, relevant for GEO, and unmistakably yours. Get in touch today.
