Last week I ran into a post over at r/youtubers asking if anyone still wrote their scripts now that AI was a thing and it really got me thinking about the pros and cons of how AI can fit into someone’s process.
As someone who writes YouTube scripts for a job, I want to share some honest thoughts from the perspective of making the best script possible. I’m not here to doomsday, but I am here to share my expertise and explain the why instead of just saying “do this” or “no don’t do that.”
Saving Time
A lot of people who I have spoken to that use AI to write their scripts do so because it is much faster to get an AI to outline and draft the first version of a script. This is, of course, true.
But it doesn’t account for the time you have to spend later on tweaking and editing the AI draft to fit your channel’s voice, style etc…
The trade off here is that you get a quick but dirty draft that will take longer to transfer onto a clean page. That’s because when you write you will probably catch mistakes as you go and make editorial choices accordingly, but with an AI, you only do so after the draft is written.
The other side of this point is that better prompts can mitigate some of this risk. Again, this is of course true, but it comes down to how well you can work with AI and more importantly how well you know yourself and your own channel.
Your prompt can be the most detailed in the world, but if it doesn’t guide the AI using scriptwriting principles that will generate a script that aligns with your channel, then we’re back at square one.
So if you use AI to write your scripts in order to save time, know that you have to approach it with the technical know-how of what makes a script good and enough mastery of your voice to be able to brief efficiently.
Retention Structure
AI isn’t a thinking being. It generates answers based on patterns gathered from training data and that training data will include well-performing YouTube videos and their structures.
However, the AI doesn’t know why it’s making those choices. Retention strategies like curiosity gaps and open-loop storytelling are broadly helpful, but the way you choose to use these things in any given script changes based on your niche, your channel, and well you.
For example, educational videos are more about value through clear information, entertainment can be more about reactions to media and so on like in true crime.
Using an AI to structure your script outsources some of the most important decisions to do with retention to a system that doesn’t understand why it’s making those decisions. And if you don’t know either, then you can’t catch the AI’s mistakes and guide the script towards a place that works for you and your channel.
I don’t often put my foot down, but for this specific part I don’t believe you can outsource retention structuring to an AI tool. That being said, you can of course feed it a standard structure or template you already use which returns to the point I made earlier. You need to have experience writing in order to use AI successfully.
Adversaries & Feedback
AI is too nice. The technical term is sycophantic and it basically means that it will rarely genuinely push back against one of your ideas because most LLM’s on the market are built to be personal assistants, not writing critique partners (and if you’ve ever been in a critique session, you know how brutal they can get).
It might identify what could be written better but it’s not going to tell you when you’re doing something wrong, at least not organically. You have to prompt it to do this which is something you would already be doing if you were writing on your own.
Knowing how to interrogate your own video idea, your own structure, your own hooks, and your own packaging will make you a better creator in the long run.
That being said, if you have a good eye for good and bad feedback, AI can be a good wall to bounce ideas, even if it’s just to hear them explained back to you.
The Caveat
All of this, of course, comes with a grain of salt. If you know what you are doing and are confident in guiding creative decisions then yes, AI could be a helpful part of your scriptwriting process, but what I want to say in this post is that to get there you need to put in the work to improve your own skills first.
It may take longer, it may be harder, but in the long run it will make you a better creator because the skills you use for scriptwriting also relate to packaging and production.
So yes, it may take time, but every script you develop and write is an investment into your channel’s future. Then, once you are more confident with those skills and your work ramps up, you can of course outsource some of that work knowing that you know what you are looking for in a good script, and that you can brief an AI, or a person, to collaborate with you in that work.