Many years ago, I was Head of Communications for the Advertising Standards Authority. And in the world of advertising and consumer rights, there’s an old saying: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
I think of this when I think of AI and bid writing.
It has never been easier to produce a professional-looking tender response. Upload the specification, paste in the question, ask AI for the right number of words, and in seconds you have your answer. But this is exactly where the danger lies.
AI is very good at producing text that looks like a good bid response. But it is less reliable at producing a bid that gives you the best chance of winning.
Bid evaluators award marks for demonstrating that you understand their requirements and can deliver them better, more safely or more effectively than your competitors. You can train AI to learn about your organisation, but unless you provide the right evidence for the question, it will fill the space with plausible language about partnership working, robust governance, or whatever else seems relevant. But it’s a fair bet your competitors’ AI will produce very similar things.
There are other risks, too.
AI can overlook small but important elements of a multi-part question. It can repeat the same point in different ways, wasting precious words when you have a limited word count. And it can turn assumptions into facts, inventing processes or evidence that, if you don’t check them, could leave you in hot water.
There is also a wider risk. If organisations increasingly rely on AI to generate first drafts, they might gradually lose the thinking that the bid writing process forces them to do: What exactly is the buyer asking for? What will score marks? What evidence do we have? What makes us better?
None of this means organisations should avoid AI to produce bids. Used properly, it is an extraordinarily powerful tool. It can interrogate specifications, analyse evaluation criteria, develop structures, identify gaps, challenge weak arguments and improve drafts. But there’s an important distinction it’s worth considering:
Are you using AI to think better, or are you outsourcing the thinking to AI?
I believe that the organisations that understand that distinction will have a significant advantage. AI can generate 1,000 words in seconds, but knowing the value of these words and what will score you top marks is the valuable part.