Content Creation and AI: Good or Bad?

The intro­duction of AI content gener­ation has had a major impact on profes­sional content creation. As a result, some business owners have attempted to switch from paying live content creators to AI tools to save time and money. Like most things, however, AI gener­ators and editors may not be the all-inclusive solution you’ve been waiting for.

Learn what these AI tools can (and can’t) do and how to maximize their potential without sacri­ficing the human element that helps you stand out from your competitors and reach your audience on a more personal level.

• How AI Tools Can Save Time on Content Marketing
• The Downsides of AI Tools
• Using AI to Enhance (Not Replace!) Your Marketing

How AI Tools Can Save Time on Content Marketing

AI text gener­ators and editing tools are a great addition to your content marketing strategy. These programs pull infor­mation from the web to create or improve content. This makes them excellent resources for assisting with your current and future marketing projects.

AI Text Gener­ators (e.g. ChatGPT)

AI text gener­ators, like ChatGPT and Google Bard, work by scanning the Internet for infor­mation about whatever topic you choose. With a few prompts, these programs can answer your research questions and generate whole pages of text about your topic. This is a great way to identify new ideas for content, create outlines for content you already have planned, and cut your research time down.

AI Editing Tools (e.g., Grammarly)

Editing tools that use AI, such as Grammarly, are used to provide improvement sugges­tions for writing in real-time or as a once-over for completed content. If you have a sentence that sounds a little off but can’t figure out why, an AI editing tool will suggest an alter­native structure that either fixes the problem or helps you see the statement in a different way.

Harnessing the Right Prompts

AI editing tools often work in the background and provide sugges­tions without prompting, but text gener­ators need a little help to get you the infor­mation you need. Learning to use prompts correctly is the best way to steer the program in your desired direction. Here are several options you can try:

Example prompt: Create a content outline that provides a complete guide on (insert topic), incor­porate SEO, and use target keywords to generate headings and subheadings that address critical elements of the topic and are relevant to our target audience. Our target audience is (audience placeholder).

The Downsides of AI Tools

Although AI tools are incredibly useful in assisting with your content gener­ation, they don’t work well as complete substi­tutes for living content creators for several reasons. Choosing to rely entirely on AI for your content marketing needs comes with a number of risks.

Generic Content

AI content gener­ators are adver­tised as being capable of pulling compelling content from available infor­mation online and creating text that passes as human-created. However, since the source of infor­mation is content that others have already created, it’s important to realize that AI is not good at coming up with new ideas. This results in the content missing the value that most Internet users seek.

Repet­itive Verbiage

AI gener­ators use infor­mation from existing content to create new content. The algorithms choose the best phrasing based on complex data analytics, which could leave you with repeating words or phrases. This also means AI-created content by different users on the same subject is likely to sound very similar.

Fact-Checking Required

Since AI uses infor­mation from the Internet, which is home to a wide variety of false claims, there are no guarantees about the accuracy of the text you receive. This makes fact-checking a critical step before posting anything AI-generated.

Little Knowledge Past 2021

ChatGPT has a wealth of infor­mation available, but it doesn’t work well on more current topics. Currently, the program only has access to infor­mation posted before 2021.

Free Vs. Paid Subscription Inconsistencies

Paid subscrip­tions for AI tools come with promises of better features, but the tools don’t always deliver on that promise. While some bells and whistles are included, they may not actually add value to the experience and are sometimes oversold without living up to the hype.

SEO Rankings Gamble

Does Google currently penalize AI content? Not currently.

Will Google penalize AI content in the future? This is always a possi­bility, and search engines don’t often make their ranking changes public. This means your AI content could cause you to take a hit in your rankings without you knowing until it’s too late.

Can Google detect AI content? Yes. The repet­itive nature of AI content has made it possible for Google (and other online AI detection websites) to scan content for signs of AI creation.

Using AI to Enhance (Not Replace!) Your Marketing

AI technology has come a long way but isn’t sophis­ti­cated enough to replace human writers. However, that doesn’t mean it has no value in your marketing efforts. Consider using these tools to help guide your content, providing you with better infor­mation to get your projects started and assisting with deciding which direction you want it to go.