Personal content vs AI content

If you are a business owner and you write content as part of your marketing, you’ll probably have heard about how AI can help you to write all sorts of stuff, like your blog posts, your social media posts, emails, articles, eBooks, and other material.

And you might wonder, ‘Should I be using AI tools to write my content for me?’.

After all, think about all the time it would save! AI is capable of writing an entire blog post in less time than it takes you to make a cuppa. Why wouldn’t you want to be part of that?

In truth, while AI is without doubt The Current Big Thing, it has some pretty big flaws. The biggest one is that it can never, ever replicate the human experience. In other words, it cannot replace you, your emotions, or your own personal knowledge or expertise.

So how should we really be using AI – if at all? And what does it mean for the future of content creation?

What Google says about AI

According to Google's latest guidance, AI-created content isn’t against its guidelines. What you have to remember, though is that Google needs plentiful fresh content to survive. So it makes sense to me that it would support any system that encourages people to input more and more content because content is its lifeblood.

It does, however, state that it is striving to eliminate ‘bad’ content. Now, here’s where it gets interesting because AI is really really good at creating really really bad content. And you’d better believe that Google is gonna be on that like a bee to a honey pot.

Here’s the truth; Google knows the difference between content written by a human and content created by an AI. It doesn’t really mind that – but it is working on pushing the very best content to the top of the pile. And nine times out of ten, that’s not going to be the AI-written stuff, because it’s not (yet) up to scratch. If you don’t believe me, search Google for anything. I’m willing to bet that all of the search results on the first page…on the first several pages, are human-written.

Of course, it’s not always going to be as cut-and-dry as that, which we’ll get into later. But just know that, for now, AI-written content* isn’t good enough to write everything for you.

*By AI-written, I mean unedited.

The great AI debate

In the creative community, some huge arguments are happening about how AI is dangerous, and how it’s going to take all our jobs and will destroy creativity itself. It’s all a bit dramatic – yet it comes from a place of fear. The truth is, most of us have little to no understanding of what AI is, how it works, and what it’s really capable of.

I get it. But I also don’t think there’s any real panic, I certainly don’t think our jobs are in any danger. AI is only as good as the information it’s given. And since the majority of people don’t know how it works, they’re not going to know what to feed it to get the results they need.

Here’s where we stand right now; we have a group of people who are all for AI, who are convinced it’s going to change the world and is the best thing that’s ever happened. Then some people believe that AI is never going to be able to replicate a human, and wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot stick.

While I do think that AI can be useful, as long as people are properly trained on how to use it (which I doubt most people will be), I’m still in the second camp. And I’ll tell you why.

I don’t believe that AI can, or ever will be able to replicate my own personal experiences, thoughts, or tone of voice, nor that of my clients. It doesn’t know anything about me personally, the way I think or speak, the ethos of my business, and what I believe in.

But it’s more than that. I do this job because I have a passion for language and the written word. I love the whole process of writing – and that includes researching, ideation, and editing. I don’t want a machine to do that for me, because then the creation process wouldn’t be mine.

Do my clients pay me more than they would an AI? Yes, of course. But they’re getting something from me that they’ll never get from AI. They’re paying me for my years of experience, my personal knowledge, and my willingness to learn about their business. And I love that.

Let’s be real – there are always going to be people who would prefer to save a few quid for AI to do their content creation for them. I’m not against that as long as they can put the time in to learn how to do it in a way that produces quality content. But those people are not my clients. That’s fine.

What would be sad is if we end up in a place where online content is so generic and AI-written that we lose creative personality. We need a good mix of both so that we cater for everyone.

AI myths and how it really works

I was recently part of a focus group talking about AI (which was the inspiration for this post). I have to admit, some of the things that I thought about AI were challenged.

A lot of the information I’ve read online suggests that AI works by ‘copying’ extracts from existing content. That didn’t sit right with me – surely that’s plagiarism, right? But that’s not exactly what AI does – it’s a bit more complex than that. What it is actually doing is scanning online content within the parameters of the subject you’ve asked it about, and ‘learns’ in order to create something new and unique.

So while it is looking at existing content, what it comes back with isn’t a ‘copy and paste’ at all. The danger is, though, that there might be inaccurate or outdated information online that AI can’t filter out, so fact-checking is a must.

Many of us perceive AI as a tool, that is there to serve us and create content quickly and cheaply. We’re better thinking of it from a managerial point of view. AI is more like an assistant or an employee, in that it needs managing, and the right set of instructions.

This is why we need much more knowledge and education about it – and if we’re to use it to create our content, it’s so important for us to learn how to use it to its best. For AI to produce anything near decent, we need to feed it the right set of instructions, and to do that takes time and effort on our part.

Personal content vs AI

Despite the opinions of die-hard AI advocates, I’m still sceptical about its future. Do I think that AI content will destroy the creative industry? No. Do I believe that we shouldn’t use AI at all? No. I think there’s room for both types of content, and lime it or not, there will be businesses that go all-in, and do it well, and there will be others who prefer content written by a human.

AI can create all kinds of things. But it can never replicate what a human can do. What it creates, as far as I can tell, will always be pretty generic. It can’t share personal stories. It can’t inject humour or personality. But then not all types of content call for that.

I hope that you’ve found this article useful. If you're looking for a human copywriter to create your content, get in touch.