Following the movement of an entire industry, web copywriter Brigitte Bertrand initially rode the AI wave without asking too many questions. She eventually grew disillusioned when the machinery started showing through the seams. Today, she has scaled back her use of AI in her marketing work. A behind-the-scenes look.
Brigitte Bertrand is co-founder of CroustiWitchy Marketing, an agency based in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts that handles strategy, design, web integration, and content writing. As early as 2022, she and her team jumped on the generative AI bandwagon by activating ChatGPT.
“At first, we were using it a lot,” she admits. “I had built out workflows and set up a bunch of automations. We used it to write web content, emails, carousels…”
Bertrand acknowledges there was a honeymoon period at the start:
“The first few months were really great. We kept saying, ‘Wow, look at everything it can write for us.’ Then, at some point, we started to see the very watered-down side of artificial intelligence. The writing falls flat.”
“Everything starts to look the same”
These days, when she scrolls through her LinkedIn feed or reads a newsletter, her nose — sharpened by years as a journalist before she became a web copywriter — immediately picks up on the telltale signs.
“I can tell right away it’s artificial intelligence,” she says. “Even when it’s been slightly rephrased, you can see how it works with triads, the way it says ‘this is not that,’ and so on.”
With hindsight, she has begun to question the value of that kind of content.
“We thought we were saving time, but in the end, everything starts to look the same. So you have to rewrite, rephrase, rework it all. If you want to stand out on the web, your content needs to be different. And AI doesn’t let me do that. AI is a probability system, so of course it’s going to produce the most probable answer.”
A few months ago, she abandoned ChatGPT in favor of Claude and Gemini, and offers a two-cent prediction: ChatGPT will become the next Skype. She now uses Gemini to draft emails, but refuses to send a client any reply that hasn’t first been rewritten — and above all, proofread and validated for substance.
“I’ve really slowed down my usage,” she concedes.
A recent incident reinforced her resolve to hold that line for her business. She was trying to rent a chalet on Airbnb and ran into a scammer attempting to defraud her. She tried to report the incident to the platform. The best she could do? Spend two days going back and forth with an AI.
“It took a human stepping in on the third day to actually resolve the situation. It was such an unpleasant experience. That’s not the kind of thing you want your clients to go through.”
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