A Look at New Writing Jobs in an AI Economy

Right now, searching for 'AI writing jobs' will net you a mix of roles for writers at companies focused on AI applications, technical writing jobs, chat UX or customer interaction design jobs, and increasingly, jobs for copywriters and bloggers willing to use AI to generate marketing copy at scale. Most of those AI jobs for writers are on gig work sites like Upwork… but not all of them. Companies are testing the waters with part-time and full-time listings for writers and editors who are willing to overlook the fact AI threatens to automate jobs that skilled creators have traditionally held.

Is artificial intelligence just another tool media and marketing professionals can leverage in their work? Absolutely. Is it also poised to create a two-tiered system in which fewer people are doing a greater share of the work? Very probably. I'm not going to be the one to outright predict that the majority of creatives will be left struggling to compete in a market that is increasingly dominated by machines, but creatives can't or won't adapt to this new reality may get left behind as employers make staffing decisions based on what AI can do—or what executives and VPs think it can do.

So, What Do Decisionmakers Think AI Can Do?

Right now, organizations hiring for AI-focused content roles see AI writing tools as fast, efficient content producers who need careful oversight by people. As one employer hiring via Upwork put it, AI lets a single writer become "a copy production machine." What title might a copy production machine have? I spent some time looking at AI-focused job listings for creatives. Here are the titles and job descriptions that stood out:

AI Content Writer

Applicants do not need experience writing about any topic, we are solely focused on your experience and knowledge of producing content with AI that is high quality and thoroughly covers each article’s search term. Experience with AI writing, detection, and prompts to create high-quality copy.

AI Blog Post Writer

Hiring a virtual assistant who can use AI writers to write blog articles in bulk. You will be using AI writing tools to produce content based on the topics I provide. You will NOT be writing articles yourself from scratch.

AI Writing and Research Specialist

In this role, you are going to leverage AI to cut months off the writing process. You are going to automate and templatize as much of this process as possible and should have familiarity with existing AI tools, advise on which ones are best to meet our objectives, and execute on all AI copywriting initiatives.

AI Content Wordsmith

We’re looking for someone who, above all, can deliver stellar engaging feature articles that tells the client brand's story using AI. Your tasks will involve working with AI to create compelling feature articles for clients.

ChatGPT Content Generator

We'll provide the keyword-researched content outlines with the main topics and the subheadings and your job will be to follow those subtopics to create blogs or resource articles as per our guidelines within ChatGPT.

AI Writing Assistant

Hiring a talented SEO writer who is highly proficient with AI writing tools to create SEO articles. The task will be to define low competition high volume keywords for the niche and write articles for it that rank on Google and pass Originality.ai score for non-AI written language. Looking to work with someone familiar with prompt engineering as the AI editor can be set with custom prompts that will make creating SEO-friendly non-detectable articles a breeze.

AI Content Prompt Engineer

Hiring a highly motivated and knowledgeable AI Content Prompt Engineer to join our team on the Upwork platform. The ideal candidate should have extensive knowledge of AI prompts for ChatGPT3 and Jasper, with the ability to research and fact-check all written content to ensure accuracy and originality. Research and create high-quality 800-1500 word blog posts.

AI Content Editor

We're looking for an editor that can generate multiple article blogs for our website using AI writing tools; We have a set of topics and articles that need to be rewritten using AI ReWriting, and you would just need to make sure the blog articles are high quality by touching up the content.

Thinking About the Future of Creative Work

While some may see the trend of employers hiring writers and editors to work with AI as a positive development, the reality is that it is likely to have a deeply negative impact on the creative industry. We should all be taking steps to ensure that the rise of AI writing platforms does not lead to widespread job loss in media and marketing and that everyone has access to opportunity in a changing world of work. 

What those steps actually are—who knows? It's not clear how good tools like Jasper and Copy AI will eventually get, and that's what will drive further disruptions in the creative career landscape. You can be sure organizations will create more roles like those profiled above. Whether writers and editors are ready (or willing) to take them on remains to be seen.