AI and content writing, should you or should you not?
As humanity has progressed, technology has become an integral part of our lives, there should be no doubt in our minds that we need to co-exist with it.
The picture below, is a famous viral picture that depicts how technology has modified through the years and how everything in this picture now fits in the palm of our hands aka phones.
This puts things into perspective that a) technology has been great b) we as humans have adopted to it c) it came with a new wave of challenges that we keep solving and progressing over (like the cycle of life!).
Taking history as our benchmark, the short answer would be “YES” we should definitely use AI’s support for content writing! but it’s not that simple..
Firstly let’s look at how AI works, AI technology has the capability to read/scan the internet, understand tone of voice and then churn out plagiarism free SEO driven content on the basis of this.
Therefore, the longer the history of content over the internet the better AI can learn, write and produce.
Pro’s of using AI
1.Time > Money (by far the biggest pro)
Save time, effort and energy by automatically generating content
All you need to do is submit a brief, keyword, tone of voice and specifications (based on content type) and watch AI generate captions, to essays in mere 5 minutes.
2. Writer’s block
Ever so often, even the best of us face a blockage and need a source of inspiration with AI you can literally punch in a keyword and get desired options to then work on as a starting point.
3. Initial Nudge in the right direction
Stumbling to decide your tone of voice for a piece, AI can be useful to get a bunch of articles in different tone of voice to then help you decide the final tone your content piece needs
4. Churning 50+ content per week
If you’re an agency, entrepreneur or even a freelancer who needs to produce XX amounts of articles per week/month AI can be more than a helpful hand!
5. They make good AI Assistants $$ vs hiring staff
If you want to enhance efficiency and overall ROI an AI assistant to build content v/s hiring some one full time would be your best bet (true for cases to generate automated Google ADs, Facebook ads etc)
6. Create content without any knowledge or Expertise in a field
NFT’s, Ayurveda, Metaverse, Sustainability? The possibility of generating content with AI is endless v/s our limited knowledge on topics.
Cons
1.Quality < Quantity
If you’re looking for qualitative output and are writing for Vogue, Entrepreneur.com etc you’re not going to the quality you need with AI.
That’s an advantage us Human’s have over AI, our tone of voice, speech, emotions impact our writing skills.
So if you’re looking for quality, AI can be leveraged as a starting point
2. Not Factual
AI has received some conflict over articles printed not being factual and for spreading “fake news” as it’s only capable of reading the internet and what’s popular on it. Journals, opinion driven articles and more cannot depend on AI to provide “True” facts.
Having said that, governments especially in the EU are in talks to regulate AI
3. Source of truth
let’s take an example of the war between Russia and Ukraine
if you’re to write about it depending on where you’re located and what the internet is writing, AI will be biased to churn that out. Hence the more difficult/disputable the topic the harder to rely on AI to produce source of truth.
4. Personal tone of voice/ Creativity
We as humans are emotion and logic driven, AI in essence has no emotions but mimics the emotions of the internet. Therefore for content which needs to evoke emotions in consumers, better to have that written proof read by humans.
Ex: A Cancer survivor, sharing their journey.
5. Newer topic
Since AI tools scan about 10% of the internet the newer the piece of news, the harder for AI to generate granular and detailed content on it.
Example : Gucci being bought by Chanel — Breaking News! If you need to produce that article, then depending on AI is a no go. You need the connections in real life to produce this piece ;)
In conclusion
AI is here to stay and will continuously evolve, we as humans/content writers need to leverage the tool for our advantage to automate mundane tasks and look for it’s support in lifting efficiency and ROI.
If you’re a content writing agency, blog post website, freelancer or even a social media agency in a need to churn large amounts of content then AI could be your answer if not already!
Useful links:
First Image taken from: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/photos/robot-hand">Robot hand photo created by rawpixel.com — www.freepik.com</a>
AI content Writing Tools
1.Jasper AI — Blog Writing
2. Ryter — Any type of content you need
3. Copy.AI — Affordable version of Jasper AI