Artificial Intelligence (AI) has arrived. While we don’t (yet) have fully conscious robots to clean our bathrooms, most of us do interact with AI at some point every day. Some of us ask SIRI or Google to write our texts or play our favorite tunes. Others use AI without even knowing it, to get directions, personalize our Facebook feeds, or even track our financial transactions. It is clear that AI is helpful, but are we ready to let it write our content too?
I decided to find out.
Me and Chat GPT
I chose ChatGPT because it was the first to blow people’s minds in 2022 and people still use it for all kinds of writing from outlining, to headline generation, to whole articles. And it’s free!
I entered this prompt: “Please write an article that is 750-800 words with the title “10 Tips for Getting a Better Night’s Sleep if You Have Eczema.” Why this topic? I wanted to compare it to an article I wrote to see how it compares.
Also, I wanted to go easy on ChatGPT. That’s why I picked a basic tips article. You know the kind, “10 Tips to Help You Live a Healthy Life,” “5 Tips for Better Dining.” They are effective and fun to read, but relatively formulaic, so I thought it would easier for an AI to write.
ChatGPT spit out a 979 word article in seconds. If you’re detail oriented, you may notice that I asked for 750-800 words. This might bother some editors, but I won’t quibble. It’s close enough.
This is when I started to feel a little queasy. Maybe I will be replaced by robots. The whole process had taken maybe two minutes. It takes me hours to write an article this length.
Evaluating the Article
I started to read. The intro wasn’t bad. A little mediocre maybe, but it could pass for a generic blog post. My queasiness grew.
Then I read the content of the article, and started to feel better right away. Even though most of the advice was good (I’ve been writing about eczema since 2021 so have a pretty good idea what’s true and what isn’t), there was some issues with the content.
Errors and inaccuracies
Although most of the article was accurate (as far as I could tell), there were some mistakes that could throw a person off.
Take this sentence in a section on how to avoid scratching, “To break the cycle, try wearing cotton gloves or soft bandages on your hands while you sleep.” Now, the gloves part is correct. People with eczema are often advised to do that. But “soft bandages?” What does that mean? Like, tensor bandages? How does that work? I think the AI might have confused “soft bandages” with wet wrap therapy, which is quite different.
Other advice was plain wrong. In a section on limiting exposure to eczema triggers before bed, the article reads, “Avoid exposure to allergens like dust mites, pet dander, or cigarette smoke in the hours leading up to bedtime.” Now, these may trigger eczema, but avoiding them only before bed will not help you. And how exactly do you avoid dust mites and pet dander before bed? Especially since dust mites live in bedding.
Authority
Since ChatGPT basically uses the whole internet as a source, it lacks the ability to access real authority, like say, a doctor.
In my articles, I can interview subject matter experts whose years of experience inform their advice. This makes the article not only more interesting to read, but also more credible. Although ChatGPT has decent advice, it’s stuff anyone could find out online. In my article, I was able to point to unique advice like trying Progressive Muscle Relaxation based on a doctor’s input.
Readability
ChatGPT can also be boring to read. The writing is formulaic. Sentences are roughly the same length, and don’t use many literary devices like similes. metaphors, or even questions to keep a reader engaged. Reading this article felt like a bit of a slog.
Could a human take the article and make it better? Sure. But by the time you reached out to an expert and sorted the bad information from the good, would there be any point? Why not take the time (or pay someone else) to write something factual and interesting in the first place?
The Takeaways
Look, I get it, articles take a long time to write, and maybe you need them for search engine optimization (SEO). If you have a low budget and even less time, maybe using a tool like ChatGPT could help you get more traffic to your website.
But what using ChatGPT won’t help you do is stand out or establish authority. The internet is clogged with inaccurate and badly written articles like this one. Never mind the fact that Google considers AI-only content to be spam, and using it could cause your site to drop in search rankings.
What AI is good for
There are ways to use AI to help you generate content more quickly, but they begin and end with humans in the mix. If you are strapped for time, you can use AI to help you:
- Brainstorm topics
- Create outlines
- Write titles or headlines
- Summarize or describe key concepts
Once you have all that information, go away and write the article. You’ll have a much better chance of actually helping or entertaining the humans who come across it.
Content connects people
Remember that whatever your business is, you are trying to reach people. People who will buy your products or services. People who are getting better and better at discerning the garbage from the gold.
Will AI help us connect more efficiently? Maybe. Can it help speed content creation? Sure. But will it actually replace content written by humans to other humans? I doubt it.
Good content marketing requires strategy, thought, and effort. Engaging people takes more than a bunch of useless tips spit out into a blog format. If you want to truly connect with your customers, think deeply about who they are and what they want, then write about those things in a way that engages them, or hire a good writer. 😉