Early AI writing software such as Grammarly came on the scene to help corporate content creators with spelling and grammar checks. Now, as generative AI gains popularity, vendors promise new tools that can draft blog posts and other marketing collaterals with minimal human interaction.
But with such frenzied marketing activity around this hot trend, it’s essential for organizations to exercise caution when piloting generative AI tools and ask hard questions about a potential platform’s security and compliance. Explore the benefits and downsides of three popular AI writing tools — Writer, Jasper and ChatGPT — for your organization.
AI writing tools for enterprise use cases
An AI writing tool is software that uses natural language processing and other AI techniques to assist users with tasks such as writing emails, press releases, blog posts and similar content. These tools employ machine learning algorithms such as neural networks to analyze text patterns, grammar, syntax and context. They are trained on vast data sets of existing human-written content, enabling them to identify patterns and relationships in language and generate text that resembles human writing.
Some common enterprise use cases for AI writing tools include drafting posts for corporate blogs, creating one-page fact sheets about a product or service, and generating FAQs for a new offering. Organizations that rely on formal content style guides and corporate voice standards can also use AI writing tools to automate the process of ensuring content follows their style guide.
1. Writer
The aptly named Writer is an AI writing tool that strikes a balance between a full-fledged writing app and plugins that can integrate with Google Chrome, Microsoft Word and Outlook.
Key features
Writer’s key features include the following:
- Knowledge graphs that connect to company data sources, such as wikis and chat channels, to reflect company information in AI output.
- Custom templates that can define document format, word count and style.
- Brand governance features.
- A self-hosted large language model, eliminating the need for in-house technical expertise or special infrastructure.
Pricing
Writer costs $18 per user, per month, at the Team tier, which includes up to five people. Contact sales about pricing for the Enterprise tier.
Pros
- Writer is typically more accurate than ChatGPT, although you’ll still need to thoroughly review the content it generates.
- Co-writing with Writer speeds up content generation, which could accelerate projects.
- Writer has invested in user experience and common document templates.
Cons
- The tool still has notable limitations — don’t expect to replace any of your human writers anytime soon.
- Writer’s learning curve and the time required to set up the tool properly are easy to underestimate.
- Writer’s Team edition has a monthly limit of 15,000 words per user, which is easy to hit unless you implement custom templates from the start. Writer promises a higher limit for the Enterprise version, but doesn’t publicly provide specifics.
2. Jasper
Jasper is an AI writing platform that helps marketers produce original content and repurpose content. The platform enables marketing teams to train the AI tool to reflect their corporate style guide and voice.
Key features
Jasper includes the following key features:
- Templates that target marketers, including the AIDA framework, blog post topic ideas, and SEO title and meta descriptions.
- Jasper Brand Voice, which enables you to train the Jasper AI to mirror your business’s preferred tone and writing style.
- An art generator that can produce art and other images to support your corporate content.
Pricing
Jasper offers a Teams tier with three seats for $99 per month. Contact sales for the pricing of the Business tier.
Pros
- Jasper squarely targets the marketing persona and related use cases.
- Jasper’s focus on style guide and corporate voice helps the tool stand out from the pack in the crowded AI writing software market.
- The Jasper Campaigns feature enables users to create full marketing campaigns.
Cons
- Due to the lack of fact-checking within the application, Jasper’s copy might require extensive manual review, limiting how much time the tool will actually save many organizations.
- Jasper can’t generate a polished final product without heavy editing, so think of Jasper-created content as a rough first draft.
- The organization’s layoff of an unknown number of employees in July 2023 raises questions about Jasper’s technology, vision, staying power and quality of executive leadership.
3. ChatGPT
Launched in 2022, ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a popular generative AI option. ChatGPT is most likely where your organization or individual employees started experimenting with generative AI, but its suitability for enterprise use cases remains unclear. Many corporations — including Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Samsung and Verizon — have banned their employees from using ChatGPT to protect their customer and corporate data from accidental sharing.
Key features
ChatGPT includes the following key features:
- Chatbot-style conversational interface for the large language model GPT.
- Ability to generate text on a wide range of topics in response to user instructions and queries.
- Capable of engaging in back-and-forth dialogue, including refining responses based on user feedback and incorporating information provided earlier in the chat.
Pricing
ChatGPT offers a free version as well as ChatGPT Plus, a paid tier that costs $20 per user, per month. This provides access to the company’s newest GPT-4 model, faster responses compared with the free tier and beta features such as plugins.
Pros
- ChatGPT is built by OpenAI, a research organization that has played a significant role in developing and advancing generative AI as a technology platform.
- ChatGPT has 24/7 availability, without the word count limitations that some generative AI startups enforce on their users — although usage caps are currently in place for chats with the GPT-4 model.
- ChatGPT’s versatility enables organizations to experiment with the tool to draft a wide range of corporate documents.
Cons
- ChatGPT wasn’t initially designed as a writing tool, so writers must learn how to craft AI prompts to successfully create content using the model.
- ChatGPT’s output sometimes contains wild inaccuracies, and the model’s training data cutoff of September 2021 limits its ability to write about current events, recent trends and emerging technologies.
- OpenAI uses prompts fed to ChatGPT to retrain the model, leading to the aforementioned data privacy concerns.
Getting started with AI writing tools
The AI writing tool market is still in its hype-filled early stages. To succeed, organizations need to make suitable investments in determining their brand strategy, style guide and corporate voice before bringing AI writing tools into their content workflows.
Be pragmatic moving forward. Generative AI in the enterprise presents several underdiscussed challenges, including the role of people in how AI is used and the technology’s current technical limitations. Set appropriate expectations with managers, who might seek to replace human writers with AI writing tools without acknowledging the organization’s content workflow or considering how the move could affect prospective customers’ perceptions of the company.
