Sarah Skidd, a product marketing manager based in Arizona, has found an unexpected source of income: cleaning up after AI. Skidd, who writes for startup and tech companies, was recently hired by a content agency to overhaul a hospitality client’s website.
The original text had been generated by AI, but the results fell flat. “It was bland and lacked appeal,” she said. “It was meant to attract customers, but it was just boring.”
Instead of doing a simple edit, Skidd ended up rewriting the entire copy. She spent around 20 hours on the project and charged $100 per hour. What was supposed to be a money-saving shortcut turned into a costly fix for the client.
Skidd isn’t concerned about AI replacing professional writers. “Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I believe good writers will always have work,” she said. According to her, more writers are now being brought in to repair poorly written AI content. One writer even told her that the majority of their current workload—up to 90%—involves editing or rewriting AI-generated copy.
Still, Skidd sees potential in AI as a helpful tool rather than a threat. For instance, her son and her husband are dyslexic, and AI tools help them express themselves in writing.
In recent years, generative AI like ChatGPT and Gemini has seen widespread adoption. Businesses are using these tools to speed up operations and lower costs. According to a Federation of Small Businesses’ study, over one-third of small businesses want to ramp up AI use in the next two years. Among fast-growing companies, that number jumps to 60%.
But the rush to use AI doesn’t always go as planned. Sophie Warner, who co-owns a digital marketing agency in the UK, has noticed a spike in clients reaching out after AI solutions backfire.
“We’ve had sites crash or get exposed to security issues because of bad code suggestions,” Warner explained. She shared an example of a client who wanted to update an event page—a 15-minute task. Instead, they used AI, followed its advice, and ended up with a broken site that cost £360 ($489.9) to fix and left their business offline for three days.
Warner said even bigger clients are getting caught up in AI mistakes. Her agency now spends more time helping clients understand the risks. Often, she has to charge investigation fees just to figure out what went wrong—problems that wouldn’t have occurred if professionals had been consulted from the start.
Professor Feng Li from Bayes Business School warns that businesses often overestimate what AI can do. He notes that AI systems are prone to “hallucination,”producing content that sounds convincing but is false or nonsensical. Without human review, this can cause real damage.
Professor Li agrees that many companies are jumping into AI without preparing properly. They often don’t assess whether they have the right tools, systems, or skills in place. “Buying off-the-shelf solutions without understanding their limits can backfire,” he said.
OpenAI acknowledges that outcomes with ChatGPT can vary. The quality depends on the version of the model, user experience, and how well the instructions (prompts) are written.
As for Warner, she has mixed feelings about AI’s growing role in marketing. On one hand, it seems like a cheap and easy option. But in reality, she said, it often ignores key factors like brand voice, target audience, and the psychology of conversion, resulting in content that looks generic and lacks impact.
Those shortcomings of autonomous AI systems have created opportunities for companies like Thumzup Media Corp. (NASDAQ: TZUP) that leverage a combination of AI and human expertise to give their customers the best of both worlds.
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