Using AI For Content Creation Without Losing Integrity

 

There’s a LOT of chatter amongst content creators about AI. If you’ve been reading my blog or following me on social media for any length of time, you’ll know my views on it. The thing is, though, whether you like it or not, AI is beginning to weave itself into our lives in many ways. And Google, along with most of the many social media platforms, has started to embrace it, saying in their policies that it’s perfectly fine to use AI-generated content without being penalised.

For a lot of creators though (and generally business owners who have a need to create content online), that’s been viewed as a green light to go ahead and let AI create the majority of their written content – and imagery as well, in some cases. That, in my view, is totally unethical, and a big no-no. And I’ll tell you why.

I’m not coming at this from a place of naivety. I have attended a couple of workshops over the past 12 months to learn what AI is (and isn’t), and have spent some time playing around with it. I’m not an expert, but I’m not a novice either.

Contrary to belief, AI does not steal other people’s content. What it produces is, by large, original(ish) text, based on information it scans from the internet. You could argue it’s not original – not completely, anyway – but it’s enough for it to pass as original, which is why it’s accepted by Google.

Here’s the big problem, though. As it stands, AI isn’t able to replicate your tone, your voice, or your accent and language nuances. It’s not able to learn that, so it will never sound like you. Therefore, that ‘know-like-trust’ factor will always be false, and simply won’t work.

On top of that, AI can’t know what you know, or relate to your particular experiences. What it churns out will always be soul-less, because it will never sound human. No anecdotes, no humour, no feelings or emotions.

With all of that said, though, AI can still be a real benefit to us as content creators – and in fact, I use it quite often to improve my work. Want to know how? Hint – it might not be what you expect!

AI Is a Great Ideation Tool

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, the ideas for content just don’t come. Let’s be honest, when you’re creating so much content for blog posts, social media, emails, and everything else, it can become overwhelming and the ideas just aren’t there. The well dries up.

I find this is where AI can really come into its own. When I’m stuck, and I know I’ve got to get something written, I turn to AI for inspiration.

I can ask something like, “Give me 3 ideas for blog posts giving my readers tips on the best practices when writing their social media profile” And within seconds, I have some pretty great starting points. Watch out though, it’s crafty, and will often ask if you want it to go ahead and write the piece – it’s important that you do this part yourself, for the reasons I mentioned earlier!

You Can Use AI As Your Personal Editor

Quite often, I’ll wrote a paragraph and just know that it isn’t quite right. It sounds…wrong, clunky, but I’m not sure why. So I copy and paste it into my AI tool, and ask it to:

1.      Check it for grammar and spelling;

2.      Suggest how I can say it better, make it clearer, or improve and make it more concise;

3.      Check for fact and suggest better information.

It’s best to think of AI as an assistant, rather than a complete writing tool. Let it help you to refine your work, but be careful not to do any ‘copy and paste’-ing!

Oh, and always double-check facts. Notice the disclaimer at the footer of ChatGPT’s page, for example:

“ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” Yes – ALWAYS.

Using AI for Non-Writing Admin (and Research) Tasks

We won’t talk about all the times I’ve asked AI to search for recipes or summarise news events…but I do like to use it to help me with admin and research sometimes, too.

Trawling through Google can be time-consuming, but in some cases, AI can come up trumps. Here are a few prompts I’ve used in the past:

·        What are the key things I should include on my home-page?

·        How can I increase my income as a copywriter?

·        Give me some suggestions on how I can use this blog post to create 10 pieces of content for LinkedIn [paste entire blog post].

Pretty nifty, eh? I know someone who used AI to come up with her entire business plan – not sure how that went, but she seems to be doing alright. Food for thought.

I think that AI is kind of villianised within the content-writing community. It’s one of those Marmite subjects, either loved or loathed. But used right, it can be a nice little tool in our arsenal – as long as you don’t disrespect your audience.

Do you use it? What are your experiences?

NB. You might be wondering if I used AI for any of this. For clarity, I did. Here is the prompt I used – worth noting that ALL of the words are completely my own, though.

“How can I respectfully use AI in my business, without compromising my ethos and my promise to my clients that my actual finished writing is all my own?”