Writers and others looking to harness AI-automated writing are in for a pleasant surprise: Many of these apps are easy on your wallet. Currently, there are dozens upon dozens of AI-automated writing programs vying for your business -- with more seemingly emerging every month. This June 2022 edition of the guide offers an overview of the factors driving this corner of the AI writing market. Plus, it also showcases more than 30 AI tools specifically designed to auto-create copy for you from scratch -- rather than simply editing what you've already written. Pricing for these tools starts as low as $19/month.

There's a good chance that the next pro hired on in your marketing department could be AI, according to Brooke Gocklin. Gocklin is a senior manager at Persado, an AI-generated writing service provider. Observes Gocklin: "Machines are not human -- they'll never be able to provide the same value. "But AI is able to work alongside us to generate better results, especially when it comes to repetitive and mundane tasks -- like writing A/B test copy variations and surfacing the results back to leaders fast enough to take action." Persado -- which started as an AI writing firm specializing in auto-generating personalized subject headlines for marketing emails -- stunned many copywriters back in 2019 by inking a five-year deal with Chase. Under the agreement, Chase brought Persado onboard to auto-generate slogans and other ad copy for its credit card and mortgage businesses. For an alternative perspective on the impact of AI-generated writing on jobs, check-out: "The Robots Cometh: How artificial intelligence is automating writing jobs," by Joe Dysart. This 13-minute video offers a detailed, uncritical look at AI-powered copywriter Localio.io. The tool's specialty is localization: It's designed to quickly auto-generate copy for Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn and other digital properties in more than 120 languages. The hyper-local content attracted two million new page views for the news outlet, July-to-December 2021. Bergens Tidende uses AI-generated writing from United Robots to auto-convert company annual reports into short news summaries. Says Jan Stian, project lead, Bergens Tidende: "The business bot imitates the whole spectrum of journalism.

Editors and writers curious about AI's ability to generate long-form writing will want to check-out this piece by SEPGRA, an economic think tank. The group decided to give GPT-3 -- one of the world's most powerful AI text generators -- a run for its money by inputting one, simple phrase and asking GPT-3 to respond. The phrase: "Write an essay about text written by AI." The resulting 900-word essay published in this article is emblematic of the tech's current prowess. Essentially: The piece begins with an excellent focus on the specific topic, but becomes ever-more generalized as the article unfolds. In fact, by the close of the essay, GPT-3 completely veers-off into a discussion of AI's oft-reported ability to beat the world's greatest chess masters.

AI21 is the latest company to release a competitor to GPT-3 -- currently the gold standard of supercomputer-powered, AI auto-text generators. Dubbed Jurassic-1, AI21's alternative to GPT-3 weighs in at 178 billion parameters and is available in a limited free trial to everyone. It's also billed as the largest English language AI auto-text generator on the market. This article in VentureBeat offers the results of a test-drive of AI21's auto-text generator. VentureBeat's verdict: Jurassic-1 is a promising alternative to GPT-3, with some limitations, according VentureBeat writer Abhishek Iyer.

Researchers found that 80% of marketers surveyed believe more than 25% of all marketing tasks will be automated in some way during the next five years. Meanwhile, 41% of marketers reported they enjoyed a spike in revenue after adopting AI-powered selling tools. Plus, 56% of marketers surveyed believe that AI will create more marketing jobs than it eliminates during the next decade. The study, dubbed "2021 State of Marketing AI Report Released," is available for free download on the Web. Entrepreneur Dave Kerpen is all-in on auto-text writer Copy.ai.

Indicators that writers will need to scramble lest they find themselves replaced by a robot in coming months or years were out in full force in Q2. Those included a warning that some big news outlets are simply dying to replace writers with robots. Says Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University: "Let me introduce you to the two most bottom line-obsessed newspaper publishers in the United States: Alden Global Capital and Gannett. "If they could, they'd unleash the algorithms to cover everything up-to-and-including city council meetings, mayoral speeches and development proposals. "And if they could figure-out how to program the robots to write human-interest stories and investigative reports, well, they'd do that too."

It appears we may not be ready to turn over important news curation duties to AI-driven editors, according to an opinion piece in Analytics India. Case in point: Trusting AI to get the story right resulted in a major gaffe at AI-driven MSN News last week, observes Analytics India writer Ram Sugar. The problem: MSN's AI ran the wrong photo along with a piece on racism, which it curated from another online news source. That triggered charges from the misidentified source -- Jade Thirwall -- that the AI software itself was plagued by racist programming. Observes Sugar: "Having a completely automated information curator cannot be justified -- unless some organization wants to hide behind the veil of AI by shifting the blame to a non-human entity."

While AI-generated writing has yet to produce a movie script of any worth, Guardian film critic Steve Rose says start-ups are still angling to forge a tool that will. ScriptBook, for example, is developing an AI-generated writing tool that will suggest scenes for sci-fi movies when screenwriters get stuck. In the meantime, Hollywood is already using AI analytics to help predict which combinations of ideas, movie scripts and actors will translate into box office gold, according to Rose. Not surprisingly, Rose wonders where this is all going. "Could it be that by embracing AI, Hollywood is unwittingly building an equivalent of the Terminator movies' Skynet?" Rose observes.

A new report finds that many publishers impressed by artificial intelligence generated writing and similar technologies are doing double-takes on its price tag. Essentially, 47% of key players in publishing surveyed say they like what they see, but they're uncertain that AI can deliver a solid return on investment. The irony, according to the researchers: Other evidence gleaned from the same survey shows even minimal investment in AI brings back significant sales increases for publishers. That additional investment coin could involve little more than hiring AI-savvy employees, or training existing employees in AI. "Those who have invested in artificial intelligence are happy with their experience and will continue to invest on all levels," the researchers observe. The study, "The Future Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Publishing Industry" -- released Gould Finch and Frankfurter Buchmesse -- is available for free download.

A new survey from Gould Finch finds that AI is poised to become the "essential key to success for the publishing industry," according to Colin Lovrinovic, managing director, Gould Finch. The in-depth, six-month survey brought back perspectives from 233 players in publishing. One of the report's top conclusions: Large, medium and small-sized publishers are all seeing spikes in readership with the introduction of AI tools. Specifically, the news organization's Web site will rely on'semi-automated journalism' to produce election results coverage in English for 650 UK constituencies. Another 40 stories will be AI-generated in Welsh.