... Or why AI writing software can't (yet) compete with human generated content
What led you to this page? Perhaps you were looking for AI writing software, or an AI blog post writer tool. Or maybe you were looking for an experienced content writer who knows and understands AI (that's me).
AI in general has the power to transform so many facets of our lives with automated decision-making and machine learning to make data-led judgement calls faster than a human ever could. AI can be a force for good, but it can also develop unconscious bias and make poor decisions without human intervention. (Just take a look at the AI situation that happened with Apple credit cards a few years ago).
The same is true with AI blog writing software and tools. They get their root data from somewhere - usually Wikipedia. But as we all know, Wikipedia is often updated with incorrect information which can easily lead to inaccurate content once in the computer-generated hands of an AI article writer tool. As anyone who has worked in technology for any amount of time knows:
Quality of data in = quality of data out.
So there's work to do before you even begin with AI writing content – time and effort need to be spent ensuring the inputs are absolutely correct to determine what the output is. Many free AI article writer software tools use GPT3 or the newer InstructGPT (AI language modelling software) to produce content, which can require up to two pages of contextual guidance to deliver meaningful outputs. (That's work a human has to do). But does two additional pages equal the subject matter expertise of someone with decades of industry experience? Not really. What may actually happen is that you become part of a chain that's perpetuating factually incorrect data and dumbing down the quality of unique experiences and information that's out there, if you rely on AI-generated content.
And the same issue exists at the end of the AI writing content process – all content needs to be checked for plagiarism to ensure that it's original, as unfortunately, most AI tools have a fondness for copying and pasting their content – something that the industry expert content writers who have original ideas and subject matter experts don't need to do.
Nuance in AI writing content is really, really important (and really, really difficult to clarify)
Back to the start of this article: When you search Google for a writer (an actual person) who is experienced in writing about AI as a technology, the majority of results you're going to get back are about AI blog post writer software, like Jarvis or their competitors. It's the same for AI writing software. Ask for an article about AI content writing, and you're not necessarily going to get back the results you anticipated. Ask for an article about transformers, and you're as likely to get the popular children's toy, as you are the electrical power transmitter. You get the gist.
Similarly, AI writing software isn't going to be able to understand cultural context, jargon and slang, and all those things that make your content uniquely yours any time soon. It's also worth noting that artificial intelligence-generated content tools are only updated sporadically, so if you're hoping to produce content based on recent events, then you might be in for a challenging experience if you depend on AI writing tools.
AI article writer tools struggle with sentence structure and branding
Say you've built a brand that really stands out. You've developed you're own tone of voice and have a set of brand guidelines for your content writers to adhere to. Asking AI writing software to deliver against that is going to be almost impossible. It may be able to deliver in US or British English (or a multitude of other languages), but the essence of what makes your brand special is going to be lost. And it's going to be a while before AI writing content tools can deliver on that unique tone of voice.
Similarly, machine-generated AI content often uses very repetitive sentence structures in fixed patterns, which is why experienced content writers can often spot it from a distance: it lacks the personality of human-generated content. AI writing software bases its content on templates for certain things: blog posts, articles, web pages, Q&As and unless you're happy with those templates, then you may find yourself ripping up your style guide if you take the AI route.
Google, too, can already recognise the AI-generated sentence structures and patterns in machine-created writing and considers it to be spam. So you either need to do a lot of editing work on your AI content to prevent this, or just, you know... hire an actual writer that knows about your stuff.
Is AI writing software the end for freelance content writers?
There's a lot of discussion in freelance content writing groups about whether AI will replace high-quality content writing services, but the reality is, that it's not going to happen any time soon. Sure, if you're talking about lesser quality content that's churned out in content mills by non-native speakers, there's possibly a case for considering AI-generated content as an alternative, but search engines already have tools in place to detect it, which is going to see the organisations that rely on it having their SEO rankings dropping off a cliff. Not only are the search engines switched on to AI writing software – they actively don't like it.
That isn't to say that AI doesn't have a place in content writing. Many content writers are actively experimenting with AI to provide initial research for their content, to shine a light on new angles for blog posts and to help guide their own research. But in its current form, if you need to create high quality, strategic content, you're still advised to entrust it to the experts.
About the author:
I'm Jo, a professional content writer based in Brighton, England. I offer freelance content writing services, including blog posts, website content writing services, press release writing, white paper writing and more. Learn about all my content writing services here. I also offer a wide range of content strategy and management services, content editing and marketing support services for B2B, B2C and B2B2C customers.
I specialise in B2B writing, SaaS writing and writing about AI. I also write about health, wellness, beauty and skincare. (Yes, it's a weird mix, I know.)