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A closer look

Copywriter

AI can write a thousand product descriptions. It can't have the idea nobody asked for.

The ILO files this under journalists. AI could take a fair chunk of seven of the ten tasks, mostly checking, editing and picking copy. Interviewing people and writing reviews are furthest from its reach.

46 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Exposed: Gradient 3

18 of the 20 jobs up close

Why this score?

The ILO rated each task in this job for how much of it AI could do. They average 53.6 out of 100, so the job holds up at 100 − 53.6 = 46.4.

ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 3”: Most of the tasks are affected.

AI helps JSA 2025
70
Usually good news: more of the work gets quicker without the job going away.
AI takes over JSA 2025
61
This is what most people mean by “exposed”. We keep it apart from helping on purpose.
Hands-on O*NET 31.0
9.4
Software can't do hands-on work, but robots might one day. How far they've got isn't on this site, because nobody measures it well enough yet.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index O*NET 31.0 Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Copywriter 46

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Volume copy: product descriptions, variants, summaries, SEO pages.
  • First drafts against a brief.
  • Rewriting the same idea for six different channels.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Having the idea nobody asked for.
  • Knowing what an organisation must never say.
  • Being accountable for a sentence that reaches a million people.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Editing and fact-checking machine drafts at volumes no team used to write.
  • Setting and policing a voice that anyone in the company can now generate against.
  • Work that exists because everything is cheap to produce and almost nothing is distinctive.

Written by a human, from the task data. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: High

61 could do without you

It could take over a lot of this job on its own. It could help with 70 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

9 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 19 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

19 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

It isn't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. This is the closest thing we have: how much fiddly handwork and cramped, awkward work the job takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

The numbers come straight from the US job database's entry for Poets, Lyricists and Creative Writers. Its wider group, Journalists, lands in the same place.

finger skill 32.1 · hand skill 23.1 · cramped spaces 2.3 · hands-on 9.4 · caring 0.68 of 7 · rule: hands-on under 50

from the source O*NET 31.0 data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

So, should copywriters be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of the job are changing fast. Seven of ten tasks rate Medium, and volume copy is the first to go. Ideas, judgement about what a brand must never say, and editing machine drafts are where the work is heading. One caveat: the score is borrowed from the ILO's journalists group, the closest match.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing. Bank tellers survived the cash machine. The job just got more chatty.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

Fancy a rematch?

Put copywriters up against another job, then send the result to someone who needs a little humbling.

Where this page's numbers come from