Looking back, you often realize how quickly yesterday’s cool experiment has already become a central part of your daily life today. When deciding to purchase my first smart-ish phone, it actually seemed practical that you could plug in a camera adapter, rather than having to carry around a full-blown camera all the time.
Similarly, AI copywriting tools quickly developed from a quick footnote during a 2021 “Smart Copy Webinar” to an everyday staple. Except with artificial intelligence, it can seem as though the tools developed way faster than smartphones, PCs or any other tech we’ve seen, so it’s easy to feel left behind, simply because you blinked for a second.
One moment you were rightfully ignoring strange and cumbersome interfaces that didn’t do more than a basic grammar checker, and nanoseconds later, you’re looking for a practical toolbox that pairs a meta description generator with a plagiarism checker and some AI assistant that can give you content ideas … and coffee. Well, lucky for you, you just found that toolbox.
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AI Copywriting 101: What It Is and How a Copy Generator Actually Works
Let’s start with the basics: What is AI copywriting? When you’re reading this, you already know what copywriting is, so we’ll skip that part. When we talk about an AI copywriting tool, we usually mean using generative AI — usually large language models, although they can be paired with industry-specific tools — to generate written content.
This AI copywriting software takes your prompts, analyzes massive datasets of existing text (or data from said tools) and predicts what words should come next, based on patterns it trained on. Think of it as an extremely sophisticated autocomplete, or T9, for the suffering companions who bought the same smart-ish phone I did.
But can you use AI for copywriting, though? — Yes, absolutely. But let’s be clear about what you’re asking (and, more importantly, what you’re getting).
As mentioned, AI copywriting tools excel at pattern recognition, speed, volume and repurposing. If you want to turn some piece of long-form content into five LinkedIn captions, your AI writing tool will be your best buddy.
Where it struggles is original insight, brand nuance, deep subject-matter expertise and anything requiring actual strategic thinking. So, you can’t just drop your copy into any chatbot asking, “Does this align with our brand guidelines?” It simply doesn’t “understand” your market positioning or which key features are your unique selling point. It won’t catch the subtle difference between growth-focused and growth-obsessed that makes your CMO happy. It can’t fact-check a feature list, even if a product description generator cranked it out (at least not without the proper setup). It can’t tell you if the data it’s citing is three years out of date.
That means, the biggest myth we need to kill right now is AI marketing tools as a push-button writer replacement. That’s not what’s happening here, but it’s not a bad thing either. AI is a drafting and ideation assistant. It can accelerate the work of people who already understand good copy and research. But it doesn’t replace the judgment, strategy or editorial polish that separates “meh” from “Where can I buy this?”.
Before investing in any AI copywriter tool, set your expectations accordingly: AI does not think. That’s still left for you during the planning phase and your team during content production. All an AI writer does is speed up your process, so your team can spend more time on the parts that matter.
When AI Tools Help Your SEO Game (and When They Hurt)
Ask any software vendor, and they’ll happily tell you they have the best AI copywriting tool that does it all. But one reason why Brafton still pairs even AI-supported content creation with editorial judgment is because, if done wrong, an AI tool can actually hurt your brand. Now, you may think, “Better not use it then.” But there’s a catch.
Why Should You Use AI Copy Generators?
I won’t tell you any of the hyped promises that AI will brew your coffee while preparing for the apocalypse. What is true is that these tools can let you batch repetitive tasks, turn messy briefs into coherent outlines, rewrite for clarity or tone without starting from scratch and repurpose content without a hassle.
Now, if you think about all those tasks and are still not convinced (maybe justifiably so), think about your competitor next door who might feel tempted to experiment. Think of the ideas their teams can come up with, because they’ve made room for critical thinking, once all the reformatting tasks in a Google Sheet were out of the way.
So no, it’s not a magic wand, and you shouldn’t treat it like one.
AI is great for:
- Ideation and brainstorming: Stuck on blog topics for Q2? Platforms like contentmarketing.ai have dedicated ideation workflows that can generate 30 angles in the time it takes you to refill your coffee.
- Headline and subject line variations: Big names like Virgin Holidays have already proven years ago that their AI workflows for email subject lines outperformed humans by up to 10% for open rates. Imagine what today’s platforms could do for your sales.
- Outlines: Feed your platform of choice a content brief and it’ll structure your H2s and talking points in seconds. contentmarketing.ai stores brand briefs permanently to even ensure your outlines align with brand guidelines.
- Social captions: Turning long-form content into snackable social posts can feel cumbersome if you do it manually. But this is AI’s sweet spot. It won’t complain about shaving off 23 words to match platform guidelines, and with the right setup, it’ll do so maintaining your brand voice.
- Meta descriptions and title tags: Their format may be a relic of the early days of SEO, but we still rely on them to find good content, and batch-generating these for 50 pages is a sanity saver. Trust the youngster with the phone-camera adapter and calluses on his hands.
- First-drafting low-stakes pages: FAQs, product descriptions, category pages — these tend to be the content types where AI-generated content requires the lowest amount of editing, because you’re dealing with templatized content where style, brand voice or humor tends to matter less.
But you should draw firm boundaries and train your team to implement them.
Do not lean on AI for:
- Strategy and positioning: Again, AI doesn’t know your market or your competitors. It may reference their brand names, but it can’t tell you what to say, only how to say something you already decided (and even that only within reason).
- Complex technical thought leadership: If your content requires genuine expertise or proprietary insights, AI will produce shallow approximations at best. Not the type of content that’ll tell prospects to buy your product.
- Sensitive topics: Legal claims, medical advice, regulated industries — anything where accuracy and liability matter — requires human oversight and fact-checking at every step. You don’t want to end up in a scenario where you need to tell Legal, “AI did it.”
- Your brand’s unique voice: AI can mimic tone, but it won’t always nail the subtle quirks that make your brand recognizable. That could be a special kind of humor, like Duolingo’s not-so-nice mascot, or cultural references that simply aren’t spelled out as frequently in most models training data, a.k.a., the internet.
The golden rule remains: Keep a human in the loop. AI can certainly generate the draft, but let humans edit, fact-check, align with brand voice and add the original perspective that makes your content worth reading in the first place. If you’re publishing AI-generated copy without serious editorial polish, chances are you’re pushing content that sounds like everyone else’s. And as time goes on, we’ll all grow really sick and tired of those AI-isms, so please, invest in your strategy first and thank us later.
Free vs. Paid: What Belongs in Your AI Toolbox and Workflow?
Finally, all the warning notices are out of the way and you can safely drive on the AI highway. There’s just one more thing (I know, I know).
Keep in mind that not every team needs a $10,000/year AI content suite. Some teams can get everything they need from free tools alone. Others are hitting workflow bottlenecks that justify significant investments. Here’s how to decide.
Key Decision Criteria
- Volume needs: Is your team writing 10 blog posts a month or 100?
- Team size: Are you a solo creator, small startup team or running a 20-person content department?
- Workflows: Are you optimizing for SEO, email marketing, social media content or all three?
- Integrations: Do you need AI that plays nice with your CMS, Slack or project management tools?
- Collaboration: Do multiple people need to work on the same briefs and drafts?
- Governance and brand consistency: Do you need centralized brand voice libraries, approval workflows or usage analytics?
- Budget: What’s the ROI threshold that justifies the subscription?
Not all of these criteria weigh the same in every scenario. A solo creator producing 100 SEO articles a month might genuinely justify a premium AI stack, while a 10-person team publishing only two newsletters a week may not need anything beyond free tools (unless they want to change their strategy). Likewise, complex governance needs can warrant an enterprise plan even when content volume is low, whereas high volume alone doesn’t always justify a major investment if workflows remain simple.
So if your team goes through that list and still thinks, “Couldn’t we just use ChatGPT?”, they might be right. For some teams, free or low-cost general AI tools or native AI features in Google Docs are more than enough. But if you do use them, it’s important to notice when they don’t cut it anymore.
When Free Tools Fall Short
- You’re managing advanced workflows across multiple content types and channels.
- You need team governance features like role-based access or content approval queues.
- You want brand voice libraries that ensure tone consistency across writers.
- You need collaboration features so your team can co-edit AI-generated drafts.
- You want analytics to track what’s working and what’s not.
- You need API access to integrate AI into your existing tech stack.
What You Should Not Pay for
- Generic templates that promise “magic” results (“Write a viral blog post!”).
- Tools that lock you into low-quality content or rigid, outdated workflows.
- Platforms that charge for features you can get free elsewhere (like basic grammar checking).
- Any tool that doesn’t let you customize tone, voice or output style.
Think of this as your shopping list or an opportunity to check in with yourself and your team before committing to any subscription. Always ask yourself: Does this solve a problem we actually have, or are we just paying for features we’ll never use?
AI Tool Breakdown
You understand where to invest in critical thinking vs. AI automation, you know how to analyze your own operational needs — which AI tool should you pick to write your marketing copy now?
Trick question. There’s no single winner. The “best” tool depends very much on your specific use case, your workflow and on whether you’ve got a strong human editor to polish the output. Here’s what you need to know about the major players.
contentmarketing.ai
What it’s best at: SEO- and brand-aligned briefs, content outlines and long-form drafts designed specifically for content marketers. This isn’t a general-purpose AI tool — it’s built for teams that need both strategy support (keyword research, competitive analysis) and execution (drafting blog posts, landing pages, whitepapers).
Ideal users: Content teams that want strategy and execution in one place. If you’re tired of juggling SEO tools, content calendars and rafting software, this is the all-in-one option.
Pricing: Brafton does offer a 5-day free trial. After that, you can choose from paid tiers. The investment makes sense if you’re producing high volumes of SEO content and want an AI platform that understands search intent, not just word prediction.
Jasper
What it’s best at: AI copy for marketing teams. Jasper is all about templates — ads, emails, landing pages, product descriptions, you name it. It’s designed for teams that need collaboration features, brand consistency and campaign-level workflows.
Ideal users: In-house marketing teams, agencies and content departments that need multi-user setups, brand voice libraries and structured workflows for campaigns. If you’re running multiple campaigns across channels and need everyone on the same page (literally), Jasper’s governance features earn their keep.
Pricing: Mid-to-high tier subscription. You’re paying for collaboration, brand safety, and workflow structure, not just word generation.
Copy.ai
What it’s best at: Fast ideation, social content, marketing copy snippets and multi-language support. Copy.ai excels at generating lots of variants quickly — perfect for A/B testing ad copy, social posts or email subject lines.
Ideal users: Startups and small teams that need volume and variety for paid ads, social media and short-form content. If you’re testing five different Facebook ad headlines and need 50 variations to choose from, Copy.ai delivers.
Pricing: Lower-priced chat tier for basic use; more comprehensive plans (Agents and Enterprise) unlock workflows, integrations and team features.
ChatGPT (and Similar General Models)
When it’s the best choice: ChatGPT is your flexible research assistant, brainstorming partner, structural editor and “Swiss army knife” for content (similar, but not equal to HyperWrite). It’s not built specifically for marketing, but its versatility is the point.
Can I use ChatGPT as a writer? Yes — but only with clear prompts, strong briefs and rigorous human editing. ChatGPT won’t automatically understand your brand voice or SEO requirements. You’ll need to train it with examples, give it detailed instructions and edit the output heavily.
When to choose ChatGPT: You’re a solo creator or small team with tight budgets, you need a tool that can do a little of everything (not just marketing copy) or you’re comfortable building your own workflows and prompt libraries.
(Simplified) Mini Comparison Matrix
- Solo creator or freelancer: ChatGPT free tier + manual editing gets you 90% of the way there.
- Startup marketing team (2-5 people): Copy.ai, Copysmith AI or Jasper’s lower tiers if you need collaboration and brand consistency; ChatGPT Plus if you’re comfortable rolling your own workflows.
- Enterprise content team (10+ people): contentmarketing.ai for SEO-focused workflows, Jasper for campaign-driven teams that need governance and multi-user collaboration.
Building a Sustainable, AI-Assisted Copywriting Workflow
Here’s the part that actually matters: integrating AI into your workflow without turning your content into bland, generic mush.
Start with a structured workflow:
- Brief: Define your goals, audience, keywords and key messages. AI can’t do this — you can (and should).
- AI-assisted outline: Feed your brief into your AI tool and let it generate an outline. Review and refine.
- AI-assisted draft: Use the outline to generate a first draft. This is your starting point, not your finish line.
- Human edit: This is where the magic happens. Cut fluff, add original insights, tighten the narrative and inject your brand voice. Depending on the platform, you can speed up some of these steps.
- Brand and SEO pass: Optimize for keywords, internal links, readability and brand consistency.
And just for good measure, a few final tips before you automate away.
Standardize your prompts and templates: The more specific and consistent your instructions to AI, the better your output. Build a library of prompts for different content types (blog outlines, social captions, email intros) and include brand voice guidelines in every prompt. Don’t make AI guess — tell it exactly what you want or use a platform that does it for you (if your requirements allow it).
Quality control is non-negotiable: Fact-check every claim. Run plagiarism checks to ensure originality. Watch for bias, especially in sensitive topics. AI can accidentally replicate problematic patterns from its training data, so human oversight is your safety net. If your content all starts to sound the same, that’s a red flag — AI is diluting your differentiation.
Track the right metrics:
- Time saved per asset: Are you cutting production time by 30%? 50%?
- Content throughput: Can you publish more without sacrificing quality?
- Performance: Are your AI-assisted pieces getting the same (or better) CTR, engagement and conversions as human-only content?
- Qualitative brand feedback: Do your stakeholders still recognize your brand voice, or has it gotten generic?
Just like my phone-camera adapter, AI copywriting tools are generally useful and can make our lives easier, but only if we use them strategically. If the workflow doesn’t click, you’ll soon wish for AI’s version of the rotary. Use them correctly, and you might build your own version of the smartphone. The secret’s in the team, not the code.
