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The Promise (and Peril) of Artificial Intelligence for Content Creators

Artificial intelligence for content creators

Artificial intelligence is arguably the hottest growth area of business this year and could be for the rest of the decade. In early 2023, Microsoft announced a $10 Billion investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Google followed a month later with a $300 Million investment in AI startup Anthropic, giving them a 10% stake in the company. So big tech’s big bucks are flowing to artificial intelligence right now, and that will sustain its growth path, at least for the foreseeable future. As you might guess, artificial intelligence for content creators will hold great promise as well.

If you haven’t already, you should familiarize yourself with these tools. ChatGPT is the most popular, and I’ve been using it since December of 2022. You can experiment with it yourself here.

At first blush, Artificial Intelligence seems like a godsend for content creators. It has the potential to address many of the most pressing problems that content creators have:

  • Ideation. This is big for me, I have always struggled with coming up with enough ideas for new content.
  • Editing. My process to editing goes like this: Publish the post, then immediately proofread it. With AI, you can have your post proofread for you quickly and easily, and have it edited in pretty much any style you choose.
  • SEO, AI can easily give you tips to improve the search engine performance and rankings for your content.
  • Visual enhancements.  AI can suggest appropriate visual components.
  • Headline writing tweaks.  AI can write your headlines for you! Many content creators and especially bloggers struggle with writing compelling headlines.

 

So as you can see, when used correctly, artificial intelligence can greatly aid content creators. But there are some potential drawbacks to consider as well.

AI Should Enhance Your Content Creation, it Shouldn’t Replace it

The best way to look at Artificial Intelligence is as a tool you can use to improve an existing output, not as a tool that creates the content for you.

Let’s look at two scenarios to illustrate the difference:

First, let’s say you have agreed to cook dinner for friends. Since you aren’t much of a cook, you decided to go with something quick and easy, spaghetti with marinara. For the marinara, you decided to choose Rao’s Homemade Marinara (which is actually quite good), but you want to pass it off as being your own homemade concoction.

So your friends arrive, but it seems Michael invited his friend Paolo to join the group, and of course Paolo would just so happen to be a world-class chef. So when your friends begin dinner, they compliment you on the spaghetti and sauce, which you claim you made yourself. Paolo compliments it as well, adds it tastes remarkably close to Rao’s that can be bought from the shelf, and asks for your recipe.  Oops.  This would be an example of having AI do the work for you, and how that can create problems.

Now let’s look at the second scenario. In this scenario, you are still making dinner for your friends, still making spaghetti, but in this example you can actually cook! And you have gotten quite good at making homemade marinara, as your friends will attest. So your friends arrive a bit early for dinner, and again, Michael invites Paolo along to dinner. When you learn that Paolo is a world-class chef, you invite him to sample your marinara as you are preparing it. He marvels at the taste, you thank him and add that you think it needs some more ‘heat’, but you don’t want to make it spicy. Paolo tastes it again and then suggests you add a pinch of black pepper. You do, and perfection! Your marinara has the exact taste of ‘heat’ you were looking for! In this example, AI, er….Paolo, took an already good homemade marinara sauce, and made it better.  The AI enhanced your work and improved the final product.

Additionally, the information given by AI isn’t always accurate. And that can quickly cause problems:

Also, the sources of information that AI tools pull from, especially visuals such as photos, may include copyrighted material, which can create additional issues:

Also, there’s the concern over spreading misinformation that’s been generated by AI:

 

So how should you use AI as a content creator?

Simply put, AI should be used to enhance content that YOU create. These tools can be quite valuable for content creators, if used correctly. What you don’t want to happen is let the AI create the content, then you tweak it. You should create the content, then use AI as a tool to help edit, enhance and improve YOUR work.

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About Mack Collier

My name is Mack Collier and I am a digital marketing and content strategist located in Alabama. Since 2006 I've helped companies of all sizes from startups to global brands such as Adobe, Dell and Ingersoll-Rand, create customer-centric programs, content and experiences. A long-time internet geek, I've been online since 1988 and began using social networking sites in 1991 when I joined Prodigy. Today, I help companies understand how new technologies like web3, crypto and artificial intelligence can integrate with existing marketing strategies to lead to exceptional customer experiences.