Dear Direct Response Letter Subscriber:

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Here's a message from my friend and associate Brian Kurtz.

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His message about AI and copywriting is right on target—and everything he says about me and AI and copy is absolutely true....

Last Thursday, legendary copywriter Bob Bly was our guest on my Titans Xcelerator Mastermind call, and I did some of my interview homework with AI.

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I asked it for the most probing questions it could come up with, and some of what came back was pretty good. .

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And some of it was AI telling me how intelligent its own questions were. :-)

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Bob has a lengthy and rich career (he's written over 100 books) so my prompt for questions was almost as long as the answer I received.

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During my introduction of Bob to the Xcelerators, I referred to him as "an AI skeptic (of sorts)."

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He corrected me right away:

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"Let me correct you. I'm not an AI skeptic."

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Bob has earned the right to be anything he wants to be called or doesn't want to be called.

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He's been a professional copywriter since 1979; and of his 100+ books, one is a classic and a must read/must own for anyone in the field, The Copywriter's Handbook.

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I've known Bob for most of my career and even hired him as a copywriter at Boardroom (the company I helped build for over 3 decades).

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Bob also hosted the "Breakthrough Advertising Interviews," where 14 giants of direct response shared what Gene Schwartz and his book taught them.

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The lineup includes Jay Abraham, Ken McCarthy, A-list copywriters Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch, and my old boss Marty Edelston (the founder of Boardroom Inc., which Gene Schwartz wrote the launch package for in 1972).

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Bob even interviewed me about what it was really like to work with Gene. And since I am still "working with Gene" (since I have the exclusive rights to his most cherished work), I can say that what I shared during my interview and all of the interviews are timeless.

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Bob was the glue through all of those interviews that made them so.

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We still sell those interviews today, and Bob told the Xcelerators it was about the most fun he's ever had in his career.

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By the way, you can buy them if you like...just email me.

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And he still writes a daily email to his online family... I know because I'm a loyal subscriber and his email lands in my inbox every single day without fail. :-)

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But getting back to Bob's perspective on AI...

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He told the Xcelerators who use AI and love it:

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"I believe it is great for you. It's just not great for me.

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He uses it in his work--especially for research--but it is not the most important tool in his writer's toolkit.

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Far from it.

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Because Bob is a writer, through and through,

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He told us that being a writer isn't what he does for a living...it’s what he IS.

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Barbara Walters once asked Isaac Asimov (the legendary science fiction writer) what he would do if he found out he had 6 months to live.

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Asimov said, "I would type faster."

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Bob told us that's his answer too.

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So he doesn't use AI to write.

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"The fun for me IS the actual writing," he said.

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And...

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"If you take that away from me, there's no benefit.”

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Knowing Bob for as long as I have, that perspective made a lot of sense.

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Why would you want to outsource the thing you love doing the most?

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But he's not "anti-AI."

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About a year ago, he was looking at a map and wondered what would happen to the stock market if the Strait of Hormuz were ever closed.

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Maybe he's a writer and a prognosticator too?