AI Content Generation is Scary. Here’s When to Use it Anyway.

Is AI Exciting or Frightening? (News Flash: It’s Both)

Open up the AI content generator of your choice, be it ChatGPT, Jasper, Rytr, Copy.ai, or something else. Tell it to write about whatever you want, in whatever format you like. There it is! Then, let’s say you decide the style isn’t quite right. “Write it to feel friendlier,” you command. And voila – it’s done!

As someone who writes for a living, this kind of generative AI should terrify me – and it does a little. I’ve read the dystopian fiction and seen the sci-fi movies: when we give in to our electronic overlords, it never ends well. But for all of AI’s thrilling potential, I’m here to tell you why you shouldn’t treat it like a magic writing machine, but you shouldn’t be afraid of it either.

Five things human writers do better than AI

The more you know about how AI writing apps work, the easier it is to identify qualities that capable human writers bring to their craft – qualities that AI often lacks:

  • Accuracy
    “I read it online, so it must be true!” That’s pretty much the motto of all AI content generators. They can’t write anything original – they can only repurpose pre-existing content, not all of which may be factually accurate. Most AI content generators don’t cite sources, which makes it hard for human beings to evaluate accuracy. And the more AI-generated content fills the internet, the more content generators will use that factually questionable material as source material.
  • Distinctiveness
    I want us to sound just like everybody else!” said no business leader ever. Even as you can adjust the style of AI-generated content, those stylistic markers will still feel generic. The AI’s grammar may be technically correct – but that doesn’t mean it will express your point with the clarity, energy, and style you need.
  • Creativity
    “The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.” The pioneering psychologist Jean Piaget made that statement in the 20th century, and other than leaving out more than half the population, he could have been critiquing AI. By definition, AI can only replicate and recombine existing content. It can’t make the leaps of logic that yield true creativity.
  • Searchability
    “You can’t be in love with a Google search,” Taylor Swift told Vogue magazine in 2012. But let’s face it – we marketers are totally in love with search engines. It’s why search engine optimization (SEO) and management (SEM) are so critical to our work. That said, search engines don’t like content lifted from other sources. They don’t like “stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value.” And that’s essentially what AI-generated content is.
  • Responsibility
    “You are responsible for the energy you create.” Oprah was talking about personal behavior when she said that on the finale of her television show. But who is responsible when the energy of your AI content generator plagiarizes copyrighted content, as it may easily do? If the AI content generator produces copy that inadvertently offends or harms your audiences, who’s liable? Who will take steps to ensure correct attribution and ownership? Not the AI.

Is AI Ever a Good Idea?

At this point, you probably think I’m recommending that nobody ever use an AI content generator. I’m not. AI is here to stay and – surprise! – even I sometimes take advantage of its content capabilities. There are times when you should, too. For instance, you may want to:

  • Treat AI like a very smart but highly inexperienced intern. Ask it to comb the internet for information, trends, statistics, or published perspectives. That will give you a good start and save you the tedium of gathering those bits of content. But after that, it’s on you (or the human writer working for your marketing firm) to check the accuracy of the facts and make sure that the writing actually makes sense in the context of the story you want to tell.
  • Break down your writer’s block. If you’re working on a project and feel stuck, go ahead and see what the AI does with your prompt or idea. The results won’t be perfect – and that’s kind of the point. Read the AI content critically, poking holes in what’s wrong with it. You’ll almost certainly identify how you can do it better.
  • Double-check your grammar. Running content through a grammar and spelling checker like Grammarly is only a bad idea if you absently accept every change it recommends. I promise, if you do that, you’ll wind up with some weirdly confusing language written in an oddly stilted voice. Instead, consider every recommendation thoughtfully, making your changes deliberately. You’ll catch and correct errors in ways that make your writing both clearer and clearly your own.
  • Make a point about AI’s limitations. Last year, when Relish Marketing wanted to do an April Fool’s Day post about AI taking over our creative work, I had AI write the story. I desperately wanted to correct the places where it needed some of the qualities listed above. But I resisted – specifically to make the point that such a takeover would not be happening anytime soon.
  • Get your content’s quality about 75% as far as it should go. I am aware that this is already how many people think about content. “Good enough is good enough,” they say. Likewise, a word game I play uses AI to create a poem based on the answers to each day’s puzzle. Are the results mildly entertaining? Sure. Is the poetry brilliant? No – but as a quick popup at the end of the game, it doesn’t have to be.

You Deserve Better Than Good Enough.

That could be a subhead for Relish’s origin story. Pam Willoughby founded this business largely because she recognized that “good enough” rarely is. Clients deserve better.

That’s why each of us on the Relish team is committed to bringing our clients the best possible strategy and creative that we can. Do we wish it was as easy as pressing a button? Often. Will we give AI a chance when we think it might help us, as in the situations above? Sure. But until we see an AI that knows what it means to dig deeper to understand each client, push past old ways of thinking, make creative leaps of logic, come up with new communication possibilities, and make every project as strong as it can be, you can trust us to keep bringing our very human intelligence and creativity to everything we do.

What could that look like for your business? We’d love to talk about it with you.