AI, Creativity, and Doing Great Work

Katherine Wildman, B2B copywriter, script writer and trainer shares her thoughts on the impact of AI on creativity and what we can do about it.

The arrival of AI tools like Gemini, Jasper, Claude, and ChatGPT is changing the way that copywriters, marketers, and communications professionals work. AI can analyse swathes of research in less than a minute, automate email sequences with ease, and repurpose content in seconds. One senior communications professional I spoke to described AI as a powerful tool for shifting her ‘out of page paralysis and into edit mode.’

The staggering pace of technological change 

As of late 2025, Google’s AI summary of ChatGPT reads, “ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly active users. The platform’s growth has been rapid, reaching 100 million users in just two months, making it the fastest app to achieve that milestone.”

AI tools are freeing people to focus on their ‘proper’ jobs by slashing the time they spend on repetitive daily admin tasks. Indeed, the above AI summary also revealed:

“Users engage with the service for a variety of tasks, with writing being the most common work-related use.”

Time-saving automation

For B2B businesses across multiple sectors, AI is helping them to do more with less. A current client has requested that we develop a series of AI prompts to sit alongside the tone of voice and verbal identity guidelines I’ve developed for his team.

His goal is to transition his writers into editing roles, where AI comes up with their first draft before they edit it with their critical (human) lens. It’s a brave new world, that’s for sure, and I’m intrigued to see how it will work—but it’s the ongoing need for a critical lens that holds my attention.

Writing to make sense of the world

That we seem to be outsourcing the skill of writing, that which brings us joy and makes us human, feels rather sobering.

In his latest book, AI can’t write but you can, copywriter and author Tom Albrighton addresses this situation.

He writes, “The labour of writing is edifying: it ignites curiosity, strengthens intellect, sharpens reasoning, focuses attention and builds moral muscle. The point of writing is not just to write your text, but to become the person who wrote it.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

The stuff of dreams? Or a hallucination

If we outsource our thinking and rely on AI to do too much of the heavy lifting around producing work, what will happen to our ability to write or to think creatively and critically about the world around us?

Especially when we remember that AI hallucinates, it makes things up, and even its name reminds us that it is an unreliable narrator—the A in AI stands for Artificial.

Creative thinking

Back in 2011, advertising legend Sir John Hegarty spoke about creative thinking. He said, “I see people walking with headphones on. They can’t absorb anything, they aren’t looking, feeling, thinking. As a creative you need to be constantly aware of what people are doing, of what is happening. Look, watch and absorb what’s going on around you. I see the people in my office watching videos on YouTube and say, ‘if it’s on YouTube it’s been done.’”

Everything that AI tells us has been done. That’s because it’s feeding our own words back to us, scraped from the internet, from books, eBooks, and journals. Stay in its presence too long and we risk ending up like the ouroboros snake, eating our own tails in an AI-enabled echo chamber.

Capturing imaginations, engaging audiences 

To create good work, to stay fresh and alert, we must acknowledge that while AI can create efficiencies, take over repetitive tasks, and – hopefully – help us get home on time, it can’t come up with the fresh ideas we need to capture our audiences’ imaginations and to engage them in our work.

Our ability to create an impact, whether that’s coming up with the concept behind a new marketing campaign, crafting a compelling new page for a website, or authoring an engaging white paper, demands that we exercise our creative muscle.

That means stepping away from our screens and feeding our curiosity with art and culture, connecting with people who have lived different lives to ourselves, moving beyond our comfort zone, and challenging ourselves with new experiences.

The more good things we feed ourselves beyond our screens, the more great work we can create. So, close your laptop and step outside for a while. Walk to the office via a different route. Take a different bus just to notice the unfamiliar. Wander around your local art gallery and listen into the conversations you hear.

Then, when you next sit down to work – your curiosity ignited, intellect strengthened, reasoning sharpened, attention focused, and moral muscle built – take a moment to enjoy seeing where your creative brain can take you.

Katherine Wildman is a B2B copywriter, scriptwriter, and trainer. Since 2009, Katherine has helped her customers promote their businesses, both on and offline, in a way that engages their audience, grows their company, and boosts their bottom line.

Today, Katherine focuses on unravelling complex problems for large organisations, and on bringing clarity where once there was a fog of corporate jargon and siloed thinking.

Katherine’s clients include big ‘hard hat, hi-vis’ businesses – and their marketing and creative agencies. Katherine brings all of the elements of copywriting – developing brand messaging, crafting website copy, scriptwriting, and tone of voice creation – to marketing managers, brand strategists, and comms teams in B2B industries to increase their share of voice, internal and external engagement, and growth.