It doesn't matter if AI can replace writers. It matters if hiring managers think it can.

I know a few Content Designers/UX Writers who were recently let go to make way for AI. Others are waiting for the axe to fall.

Several big tech companies, such as Duolingo, Shopify, and Klarna, have announced that AI will begin to replace human workers, and/or that no new positions will be opened without proof that AI can’t fill the gap. Some firms seem to be looking in the direction of engineering, while others are starting to turn their gaze towards design.

It’s a scary time for a lot of writers, not least because writing is seen as the first and primary capability of GPTs.

Ironically, and perhaps luckily: If Content Designers have a lot of practice in anything, it’s proving our worth. This has been the subject of dozens of articles and LinkedIn discussions well before AI became the main topic of conversation. Can’t designers just write the copy? Does it really make that big of a difference? Do we actually need someone focused just on content?

And now: Just plug the content design system into the AI. Or: Just learn how to prompt.

The answers I most often see crop up in these discussions are valid. Content design isn’t just about words; it’s about telling a story, about knowing what to say and when to say it. It’s about having a person or team devoted to clarity and consistency, and devoted to advocating for the user’s ideal experience.

Yes. 100% agree: AI can’t replace Content Designers. Not now, and maybe not ever.

But.

That’s not what actually matters. What matters is whether your hiring manager, C-suite, or other stakeholder thinks it can.

I know! I know writing isn’t just about polishing the words. It’s not just about checking the grammar and punctuation and tone and voice, as important as those all are. It’s about seeing the an entire flow, and knowing what the user needs to know, when they need to know it, and how they can best come to know it.

We’re all on the same page. But do CEOs agree? Do hiring managers? Hell, do designers and PMs?

I recently gave a UX Writing workshop to a group of mostly-junior designers, and one student’s feedback was that this particular lesson was a waste of time since AI will eventually do it anyway. What concerns me about this line of thinking isn’t the future of Content Design; it’s the future of UX as a whole.

The example I usually fall back on is error messages. Let’s say I open ChatGPT (or Gemini, or whatever your AI of choice is) and ask for an error message. I want this message to appear when someone is clicking on a time slot to make an appointment, but that appointment is already booked.

When I put in a decent prompt, it gives me a decent answer: This time slot is no longer available. Please choose a different time.

Honestly? Not bad. It explains the situation, and gives the user a way to fix the error. Decent UX, right? And that text gets better with context, and better with resources like style guides and examples. If I tell it that my company uses select instead of choose, and never uses words like please or thank you, it will make the necessary adjustments. What more could you ask for? It works.

Right?

What AI will never do is question whether my question is the right one to be asking. In this example, the AI didn’t suggest that, possibly, an error message isn’t necessary at all.

If I’m designing an appointment selector, it makes sense to only show the user what’s available. Why would I allow them to click on something that is only going to throw an error?

Of course there’s nuance to this. Maybe I want my customers to know that I usually have a 4PM slot. Fine: it can be grayed out with an explanation on hover, or it can be explained in a subtitle before the selections appear. But that’s the point: it depends on how the entire feature flows.

The main point is that AI doesn’t think this way. It doesn’t think at all: It blindly gives you what you’re asking for.

Good Content Designers don’t give their team what they’re asking for. They ask questions. They challenge assumptions. They take a bird’s eye view of the entire product, feature, page, component, and text. They tell a story. They know and remember the user.

So what can we do?

First, we can continue to make contributions to our team that go beyond grammar and sentence structure. I hear you: Chances are, you’re already doing so. This might mean being vocal in meetings about bigger UX considerations. It may look like asking more questions and challenging preconceptions.

Work often speaks for itself, but when it doesn’t, real-world examples are more powerful than theory. This may look like giving a workshop within your company to show the difference between AI-generated text and Content Designer-considered copy. It may mean working on one feature with AI alone, and the other with your full suite of expertise, and showing the different outcomes.

Content Designers have experience. We have insight. We have empathy, and we have questions. It’s what makes us human, and it’s what makes us the best at what we do.