How Good is AI Content?
If you manage a website or run a business, you may be wondering how good AI written content is. Platforms like ChatGPT are gaining popularity and websites everywhere are using the technology for low-cost content. But how good is AI content?
In this article I explore the good and bad aspects of AI writing and hopefully give you an idea about whether it is suitable for your website.
Let’s discover AI writing in detail.
What is AI Content?
Content is generated by ‘Artificial Intelligence’ software and if you are stuck for time or operating on a low budget, it can be a godsend.
The AI itself is not really intelligent, it has very specific limitations and AI can’t create new information. Instead, the AI software uses existing web-content and writing samples and then replicates it in a somewhat original way.
The technology is growing rapidly, and AI is becoming more sophisticated, making it difficult to discern sometimes whether articles are written by AI or humans.
Is AI Better than Human Content?
It depends. There are advantages AI has over humans and significant disadvantages.
The main advantage of AI writing is it will be error free, for example, if you use ChatGPT it will produce written text with perfect spelling and grammar.
Humans are not so perfect and even the best writers in the world will make mistakes occasionally.
The disadvantages of AI over human content are numerous.
The Content is Overly Formal
If you generate articles using AI, you will notice the writing is dry and extremely formal. AI loves using archaic phrases and words because these words are considered grammatically correct. For example, you will find AI content loves using the word ‘moreover’.
This formal and robotic way of writing is technically correct but is not enjoyable to read. Readers would much rather read engaging, dynamic content than dry but grammatically correct content.
The AI Content is Never Unique
AI can only generate information from the pool of information that goes into the algorithm. It is not sentient and has no way of identifying shortfalls in the information it uses.
Online, there is a lot of negative sentiment toward former President Donald Trump, making the pool of information AI uses weighted toward a negative written outcome. The AI itself can’t spot bias in the information it is processing and essentially regurgitates information from the data it has at hand.
As a result, AI information can be wildly inaccurate, or skewed politically because the data it relies on is wildly inaccurate. Essentially the AI can only ever be as good as the data it relies on.
The Content is non-Compliant
In the same way AI can’t detect bias, it can’t detect risk. If you are working in a regulated industry such as financial services, there are often strict content guidelines you must adhere to.
In the UK, that means content around financial products must be comprehensive and carefully outline any risks associated with a financial product you are selling.
AI has no understanding of financial products and therefore can’t identify the risks of those products. Most AI financial writing is overly dry (because it draws on existing dry financial content) and completely non-compliant.
How Good Are AI Checkers?
In general, you should be able to tell AI from human content because AI writes too correctly/perfectly. It will also be overly formal in structure and nature.
But, if you still can’t decide if something is created by AI or by humans, you may be tempted to use AI checkers.
Most AI checkers will look for errors in the content or the way the content is presented to identify whether the content is AI or human. Unfortunately, they are not accurate and sometimes an AI detector will decide a well written formal piece of content was created by AI when in fact it was written by a human.
Even the best AI detectors will misdiagnose 1 in 5 times.
AI Advantages
If you are operating in an unregulated environment and want to fill your website with plenty of content quickly, AI is a great tool.
ChatGPT is free to use and instead of paying for a human to write content you cut costs completely. It is also fast; AI can generate articles in minutes whereas a human will take much longer.
AI Disadvantages
AI content is not formatted for SEO so if you want to rank well on search engines you will need to amend any AI content to be optimised.
Even once you have added in keywords, meta descriptions, and headings etc, you will find AI content performs poorly against human content in search results. This is because search engines have weighted algorithms toward content humans enjoy reading. Your on-page time will be a significant factor when it comes to how high your content ranks.
The content produced by AI will never be unique either, this impacts both SEO and your ability to position your website as an authority on any given topic.
The Verdict
AI content is good for stuffing your website with lots of information quickly at a low cost.
It is, however, deeply flawed compared to even average quality human writers. It is especially bad if you are looking to grow your brand and website because humans don’t enjoy reading AI writing.
Human readers are more than happy to overlook typos, spelling mistakes or grammatical errors if the content flows well and provides unique insights to a given topic. Until AI technology evolves to a point where it has sentience, it will always trail human content significantly because it doesn’t have the ability to think about the content it is spitting out.