Why ChatGPT should never get the final word in your emails

You’ve heard me rail against letting AI write your weekly nurture emails without editing them before sending them to your list.

And I’m sure you know my opinion about AI in general. That it’s a great tool, but it should never be the end-all and be-all when it comes to any sort of writing.

Yes, I’m biased. I’m a professional copywriter with a degree in creative writing and theater. I like words. So much so that I word for a living.

But I feel strongly about this for a very good reason. I’ve seen what ChatGPT and its ilk do when asked to write something. Candidly, it can be absolutely atrocious.

For example…

A few years ago, my sister was visiting from the UK over the holidays. My sister married an Englishman and emigrated to the other side of the pond to be with him. My brother-in-law has a nephew (therefore I have a nephew by marriage) and as it was that time of year, I asked what my nephew wanted for Christmas.

So my sister sent a WhatsApp message to my nephew letting him know that “enquiring minds want to know” what he’d like. He was 16 at the time and we had given him an American football for Christmas the year before.

When all of this occurred, we were sitting in one of the more popular fish taco shops in Ventura, eating lunch after having been out shopping for most of the day.

Here’s how the conversation went. Yes, this is the actual conversation in screenshots from WhatsApp. I am very lucky that my sister never deletes anything and was able to forward me the conversation.

Here was my nephew’s response.

As we all know on both sides of the pond, there is a great deal of tribalism having to do with sports teams of all sorts. I wanted to know which team my nephew was interested in. So we asked.

FYI, my sister and I grew up in Minnesota and I now live in California, thus the suggested teams.

Shortly thereafter, we received this lengthy, detailed, and rather hilariously over the top reply.

At first glance, we were impressed. The kid had apparently given it some actual thought.

Then we read it again…

And we quickly realized no 16-year-old, regardless of where they grew up and went to school, would use language like this. For anything. Ever. Anywhere.

After some good chuckles at my nephew’s expense, my sister responded…

My nephew’s next response was as hilarious as the first one.

Yep, we were right. And there were several other tells, besides the over-the-top language. Like the one my sister pointed out.

We received this somewhat chagrined response.

So… Yeah…

Why do I tell you this story?

Because time and time again, I can tell when someone has used a Large Language Model like ChatGPT, Claude, or any number of others to write their emails.

I will admit that they’ve all gotten much better in the last few years at sounding more “human.” I personally prefer Claude, as I think it does a better job of sounding more like me in one or two passes.

However, I would NEVER let anything written by an AI of any sort get published or sent out before I had gone through the entire piece to make sure it was:

• Accurate
• Truthful
• Actually sounded like me (or my client)

And this story perfectly illustrates the reasons why.

I love my nephew; he’s a smart kid. If he’d taken what ChatGPT had written for him and distilled it into his own words, we would have accepted his answer and gone about our shopping, none the wiser.

Because it would have come from him and sounded like him.

By letting ChatGPT produce his answer, he gave himself away as not really knowing what he was talking about. (He does actually like the Dallas Cowboys and follows the team but he hadn’t been following American football for very long when this conversation happened.)

This is why I insist that my Email Writing Accountability Group members go through the emails they write using an LLM and make it sound like them instead of like their robot of choice.

Your email subscribers sign up because they want to hear from you. Not from a facsimile of what ChatGPT or Claude thinks you sound like based on a sample set you uploaded to establish your brand voice.

Go ahead, use AI to get the basics on the page if it helps you to write faster.

But for the love of all that is holy to you, please go through and either rewrite it or edit it thoroughly before hitting that Send button.

This is what we do every week in the Email Writing Accountability Group.

Whether you write every word yourself, like I do, or you use AI to get started, I can help you ensure that when you hit the Send button, your email is engaging, valuable to your target audience, and will show them who you are and why you have the solution to their problem.

Click on the button below to find out more about the Email Writing Accountability Group and see if it’s a good fit for you.

I promise, I will never let you get away with sending anything as over the top as what my nephew sent in the text conversation above.

Finally, I took this week’s Landscape Photo as I was wandering around my neighborhood admiring my neighbors’ holiday lights. We get a bit competitive, especially on my street. I do not attempt to keep up, but I have lights of my own that twinkle and make me happy at this time of year. This house is just down the street from me.

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