HubSpot Manager Reflects on Shift to AI-First Blog Writing

HubSpot’s blog team moved to an AI-first writing model in June 2025, prompting both optimism about efficiency and concern about what the change would mean for writers. In an account published by HubSpot Marketing, the team’s manager describes the transition as a change to the writing process, rather than an end to the need for editorial skill.

The manager, who has led HubSpot’s blog writing team for three years and previously wrote for the blog, says the initial uncertainty extended beyond the capabilities and reliability of AI tools. A central concern was the effect on team members whose relationship with writing was closely tied to ownership of their work and the process behind it.

For many writers on the team, the appeal of the job lies in the craft itself: shaping sentences and finding ways to hold a reader’s attention. The manager notes that traffic and conversions are secondary to that experience for some writers, making a rapid change in their approach to the work a significant concern.

The account also challenges the idea that producing competent-sounding text with AI resolves the main difficulty of publishing a blog article. The manager argues that a draft intended to compete with numerous other articles on a subject requires more than the light editing someone might apply to an AI-generated email or internal memo. Generic writing, in that view, is unlikely to stand out.

HubSpot’s manager frames the issue as a balance between the efficiency AI can offer and the standards an editorial team has developed over time. The account introduces lessons from the team’s transition, including a comparison of writing before and after AI, the role of writers in the change, and implications for people managers. It says the process can save time in some areas while adding work in others, without specifying those areas in the summary.

What this means for marketers

Marketers considering AI-assisted content should assess the process as well as the draft. A useful starting point is to involve writers in the transition, examine where work is saved or added, and judge whether an article offers readers more than a generic treatment of its topic. Speed alone is not a substitute for editorial standards.