as originally published on LinkedIn…
As a writer, I like AI. It has the potential to create positive results as a content contributor for copywriters, marketers, and their customers.
Through clients, I’ve worked with several platforms powered by machine learning and AI. The data and insight supplied are incredible, giving a clear view of the search and content landscape. It made getting to know the audience and writing fresher, more informed, and more valuable content simpler.
With that said, there is a difference between AI contributing to content creation and AI writing content. I remain skeptical of AI-written content. I mean, I’m not afraid a machine will “terminate” my career. (Get it…terminate, like the Terminator….never mind…)
Rather, a machine writing content defeats the ultimate purpose of writing – and marketing – in the first place, doesn’t it? We write to communicate with each other. If we hand that task off to AI, are we still communicating?
It’s with this “Yes, I think this is great” and “Maybe we need to think this through” mindset that we’ll cover:
- Where AI content writing is today
- Benefits of AI to marketers
- How AI benefits writers
- Considerations to temper enthusiasm for AI writing
AI Content Writing Today
What do you think about this copy?
“Advertising dollars are shifting away from expensive, TV-driven campaigns to a newly authentic online advertising environment. And it’s impacting brands on both sides of the aisle. The latest Brand Value report from Econsultancy and Bain & Company shows luxury brands have suffered a huge fall in brand value over the past four years. Meanwhile, in a world where brand loyalty is lacking, new purchases are being made increasingly on the word of mouth of an individual who tells his friends.”
It was written by Barry Tyree and published on August 8, 2019, at www.thismarketingblogdoesnotexist.com. Odd name for a marketing blog? Maybe, but no odder than the fact Barry Tyree is an AI and all the content, including the above, is created by an algorithm.
Is the copy good? No. Of course, if we’re being honest with ourselves, as a casual reader or if you were merely skimming, you might not notice. Let’s be candid with each other, there’s a lot of weak writing online.
Fortunately for copywriters, AI writing good content is still a long way off. A paper published in February 2019 by OpenAI reported:
“Overall, we find that it takes a few tries to get a good sample, with the number of tries depending on how familiar the model is with the context. When prompted with topics that are highly represented in the data (Brexit, Miley Cyrus, Lord of the Rings, and so on), it seems to be capable of generating reasonable samples about 50% of the time. The opposite is also true: on highly technical or esoteric types of content, the model can perform poorly.”
In a study of “general linguistic intelligence” by AI models, Cornell University researchers observed:
“Our results show that while the field has made impressive progress in terms of model architectures that generalize to many tasks, these models still require a lot of in-domain training examples (e.g., for fine tuning, training task-specific modules), and are prone to catastrophic forgetting.”
AI is clearly not yet in the writing business. It does, however, regularly contribute to content success.
AI’s Benefit to Marketers Today
Many brands have already embraced AI in programmatic advertising and SEO platforms. It’s only a matter of time before every marketer relies on AI for content creation.
Here are several ways marketers will/do use AI.
Data
Beyond demographics, clicks, and engagement, marketers will be able to drill down to understand exactly which words and phrases resonate best with the audience. This goes way beyond traditional direct response A/B testing.
Hyper-personalized Experiences
From identifying the best copy phrasing to best distribution sites to real-time testing, brands will find it easier to deliver on-brand messaging specifically tailored to the individual user.
Improved Context
Marketers will not only know their audiences better but will understand where an audience is in relationship to the content at the point of delivery. This will allow for more tactical and personalized content delivery.
Enhanced Content Strategy
There are two elements to this: more data and a machine that can do the menial work, making it easier to scale the effort. AI and its ability to do real-time testing guarantee valuable data. The eventual ability to do menial content writing like creating meta-tags will free marketers and content creators to focus on actually developing better ideas and writing higher quality content.
More Complete, and Correctly Done SEO
Writing and publishing content is only one part of the effort. Many technical SEO elements must be done too. When people do this, even the best can make mistakes. AI won’t.
Smoother Sales & Marketing Funnels
Every benefit of AI for the marketer ensures better user experience and a smoother transit through the sales and marketing funnel. Users will be able to find the content they seek at every step along the way, moving smoothly from one step to the next.
An Easier Time Communicating the Copy Requirements to Writers
Marketers will know exactly what they need in their copy. They’ll be able to be more strategic in content development, identifying topics and focusing on elaborating their point of view (POV) to ensure their content is unique and valuable.
AI Benefits Writers Too
Writers shouldn’t be fearful of AI’s involvement in the content and copy creation process.
For example, the data collected, organized, and presented by AI can help a writer gain a much clearer understanding of an audience faster. This makes writing relevant content easier. It also informs storytelling.
Writing tools like Grammarly and the Hemingway App (which use AI) help with editing and proofing.
There’s also the benefit of time gained. AI may not (currently) be much good at writing, but it certainly can evaluate data real-time and insert the copy that most resonates with an audience.
Responsive Display Ads are one example of this. A marketer/writer inputs several versions of copy such as headlines, descriptions, and links. Then, the AI applies the ones it determines to be most likely to succeed, mixing and matching content in real-time based on user response.
Effectively, it’s exactly what direct response marketers have been doing for decades, just faster.
So, how does this benefit writers?
They can focus on developing and writing high-quality, deeper, more valuable content.
For example, for some clients, I’ve written a Key Copy Platform. In effect, I work with the client to determine their brand message, voice, tone, and the different marketing channels they plan to use. Then, I write a document that includes a host of different copy types for each: headlines (ie., ads, landing pages), subject lines (emails), body content, etc…
The client pays for one document and can mix and match the content as needed. In many ways, it’s like what Google’s Responsive Display ads do.
With AI, writers will be able to create similar copy platforms. In return, they will be liberated to work on crafting higher quality ebooks, white papers, case studies, and more which AI cannot do.
The writers benefit from high-value content which builds relationships with the audience leading to better results and translates into less hurry and better pay.
Potential Dangers of AI in Content Creation
AI involvement in content isn’t all rainbows and roses.
As AI content creation becomes more and more a reality, there’s been an increased awareness of the potential dangers and misuse of such a technology.
Kristin Tynski of Fractl, writing on the SEMrush blog, identifies several dangers of AI content creation in a post titled, “The Biggest Threat to SEO Isn’t Human.” It’s an article worth a read It’s an article worth a read which highlights potential dangers like:
– Article spinning by AI content bots. Effectively content bots tricking search engine bots in what amounts to all-out SEO bot warfare.
– “Algorithmically-generated YouTube video content spam.” Written content isn’t only at risk as AIs continue to spin video content with two of three AI video spammers still active.
– Generally bad intentioned activity such as AI-produced fake news, AI-driven email phishing, and social manipulation through intelligent chatbots.
Quite simply, AI is fraught with potential downsides. For writers and marketers, one of the biggest involves losing their connection with the audience(s).
AI has the potential to remove the humanity from writing, transforming the act of marketing into “push-button” manipulation. Writing is about communication and building relationships. AI can help writers and marketers do this. It also has the potential to make marketing into an equation where marketer or writer mechanically inputs words to trigger a response.
Yes, we want our writing to inspire our audience to act, but isn’t there a danger if we adopt the mind of AI, rather than using AI to enhance our relationships?
Writers Should Embrace AI
Despite the potential dangers of AI, writers and marketers should embrace it. For writers and marketers, the potential for AI to simplify the effort creating relevant, useful, and engaging copy is a win-win-win for writers, marketers, and customers.
Writers who use the data and insight offered can deliver higher quality copy, increasing the value of their services, meaning higher earning potential.
Marketers will know what they need and want in their copy, meaning better results and an ability to focus on more valuable copy projects.
Customers will benefit from better, more informed writing that will help them achieve their goals faster, find what they’re looking for more easily, and develop more meaningful relationships with the companies they choose to do business with.
It’s a win for everyone and especially for writers. AI won’t replace writers; it will just make them better.