We are in an age of automation and artificial intelligence, where businesses are turning to AI content generators as a cost-effective solution to content creation. We all understand that content is king to ranking high on a SERP. More and more articles, content, and research are being done with generative AI with successful and negative consequences.
While AI generation can produce high volumes of content within seconds, human content writers bring unique ideas, creativity, and a nuanced understanding of your business policies that machines cannot replicate. This article will explore the differences, pros, and cons of generative AI and human content writers to help you understand how to benefit from both.
What are AI content generators?
Generative AI are computer programs that use algorithms to produce content. They can create a high volume of expressible and readable content in seconds. This content is based on keywords, long-tail keywords, and ideas for any article you want to add to your site. They then use machine learning algorithms to put this information together in a coherent manner.
Machine learning is a growing branch of AI that uses data and algorithms to imitate how humans learn to improve its accuracy gradually. This industry received $37 billion of funding in the United States alone in 2019 to improve its application and accessibility. Generators are trained to use machine learning to analyze millions of articles posted to the internet to gain a better understanding of language and its real-world uses. You can tailor this content according to your audience, tone, and voice by using AI content generators.
How can AI be utilized to personalize and optimize content for better SEO performance?
AI content has seen such a rise in the last year that Google is cracking down and lowering ranks on these profiles and generated articles. The buzzwords commonly generated by AI pop up much more frequently in content than natural human vocabulary and flag Google’s machine learning algorithms to the presence of AI. In lieu of using AI to generate content, you will be better served to use it to examine data you’ve gathered or content you’ve written.
The best uses of generative AI is in
- Analysis – Identifying key insights and patterns within large data sets.
- Conceptualization – Research and refine information on diverse and intricate subjects, present alternative perspectives, offer suggestions during brainstorming, develop content outlines, and define project scopes.
- Editing – Checking for spelling, grammar, consistency, and other errors.
- Summarizing – Condensing lengthy documents, reports, or meeting notes.
- Support – providing real-time Q&A assistance to aid in employee skill development, resolving common issues, and overcoming software roadblocks.
Questions to ask AI to refine results
To make the most of AI you need to ask the right questions. These questions will help you improve the content creation process and boost productivity.
- “How can we adapt our content strategy to align with evolving algorithm changes on platforms like Google and social networks?”
- “What are the most effective ways to integrate ChatGPT into our team’s workflow to maximize productivity and creativity?”
- “How can AI assist in aggregating and synthesizing performance data from various analytics tools to uncover actionable insights?”
- “What are the key audience trends and behavior patterns that our current analysis might be overlooking?”
- “How can we leverage AI to learn from past content and improve future output, ensuring consistency in tone and style?”
- “Which areas of our optimization efforts should we prioritize based on the insights provided by AI?”
- “How can AI support in guiding our research efforts to ensure comprehensive analysis and minimize oversights?”
- “What additional insights or perspectives can AI provide to enhance our understanding of complex topics or challenges?”
- “How can we streamline the process of refining content with AI’s assistance while maintaining authenticity and accuracy?”
- “What strategies can we implement to continuously improve AI’s understanding of our unique voice and preferences?”
Safety measures to implement when using AI
Before implementing any type of generative AI into your work process, we recommend implementing a series of checks and balances to avoid false information. At a minimum, be sure to address the following.
Governance Standards: Define content guidelines that align with your organizational policies and brand standards. Include procedures for fact-checking.
Brand Training: Train AI tools with a series of questions and specific answers on your brand’s strategy and style guidelines. Provide samples of content for consistency with your brand’s tone and voice.
Prompt Library: Share successful prompts among your team to maintain consistent content quality and messaging standards.
Verify Information: Establish a process to fact-check content generated by AI to avoid publishing incorrect or misleading information. This includes both internal and external communications.
Mitigate Bias: Be aware of biases in AI tools, including cultural, gender, and racial biases. If the AI model is trained on biased data, it can inadvertently replicate these biases in its outputs. Biases can stem from algorithmic choices, feature selection, or how variables are weighted. Develop strategies to identify and mitigate these biases to maintain ethical content creation.
Avoid Overreliance: Do not solely rely on AI for critical tasks like copywriting. Recognize its limitations in producing quality content and maintain human oversight.
Pros of AI-generated Content
Speed
One of the main advantages of using AI content generators is speed. AI content generators can generate a large number of accurate and well-written articles in a matter of minutes or seconds, saving time, effort, and money. 54% of executives say that productivity in the workplace has increased with AI implementation. This makes them ideal for businesses needing to deliver significant content quantities regularly. These can include informative sites that cover industry trends, the latest research, and new technologies.
Cost-effective
AI content generators are relatively cheap compared to hiring human content writers. They are helpful for businesses that require high volumes of content on a tight budget. These programs are updated regularly to ensure fresh and unique content without additional expense. Most AI content generators offer limited free content based on word count. Additional text is available for monthly or yearly subscription fees.
Scalability
AI content generators can scale according to the needs of your business. Whether you require a few articles per month or hundreds per day, an AI generator can meet your requirements. Whether you are service or product-based, AI generators are used for more than content. They are predominantly used for customer engagement – chatbots and predictive behavior analysis. This scalability makes it easy to adjust your content production according to your business size.
Consistency
Content produced by AI generators is typically consistent and accurate. They produce high-quality content free from spelling or grammar errors and biases. This lets you deliver quality content to your customers that is easy to read and understand.
Cons to AI-generated Content
Lack of creativity
One of the significant disadvantages of AI content generators is their lack of creativity. While they can generate high volumes of articles very quickly, the content created tends to be formulaic and generic, lacking the uniqueness and originality of human-generated content. This is important as this can make the content feel emotionless and dull, leading to decreased engagement by readers.
Limited understanding
Although AI content generators can analyze vast amounts of data, they do not have the intuition of a human regarding language, idioms, and contextual understanding. This can lead to flat and lifeless content instead of creating an emotional connection with readers. Accurate information is great, but connecting words to the emotional ties your reader experiences about your topic is another beast entirely.
Cannot replace human touch
AI content generators cannot replicate the human connection from authentic storytelling or personal experiences. Human-generated content is generally more engaging and has more impact on your readers. This kind of emotional connection is what differentiates content that thrills and content that gets forgotten. You want your readers to move further into your sales funnel, and the best way to do that is to connect with their emotions about your content topics.
Trained on existing content
AI content generators are trained on pre-existing content, which can lead to repetitiveness and unintentional plagiarism. This, in turn, can lead to duplicate content, which can hurt your website’s search engine ranking, leading to less traffic. AI software can locate plagiarized sources with 87% accuracy, but that doesn’t automatically deter these generators from using existing content.
Accurate information cannot be overstated. AI pulls information from multiple online sources (including fake news and popular user-generated posts). This can be problematic, especially if you use a chatbot AI to provide immediate information from your website to users. Air Canada recently ran into legal trouble with the content its chatbot provided a user about its bereavement travel terms.
Essentially, a customer asked if they could request a bereavement refund after they purchased a ticket as long as they provided proper documentation to support the refund. The chatbot said yes and gave a time limit of 90 days. However, Air Canada refused due to an existing policy where it cannot refund travel costs after a flight is booked and argued that it cannot be held responsible for its chatbot recommendation.
In the Air Canada issue, the chatbot pulled general information from Air Canada’s existing bereavement policy page and pieced together an answer to suit the customer’s need, even if it was wrong. Exercise extreme caution when utilizing these AI features because they do not understand nuance or specific scenarios and easily (and often) provide partial truths.
Human Content Writers
Human content writers bring their personal flair, unique ideas, and creativity to the table when it comes to content creation. Human-written content is tailored to target specific audiences and is more memorable and intimate than machine-generated content. While there are many ways to write content, we follow 8 steps to create engaging content for any industry.
Pros to human content writing
Creativity
One of the major advantages of human-written content is creativity. Human content writers have unique experiences that lend to creativity and the introduction of new and exciting ideas. This creates content that is engaging and memorable. The ingenuity of human-generated content stands out from the generic content produced by AI generators.
Personalized content
Human content writers can tailor content according to specific audience preferences, tone, and voice. They deeply understand the subject matter and are conversational in niche topics that AI content generators might miss. This personalization lends authenticity to their content and follows Google’s E-A-T content guidelines.
Ability to understand context
Human writers can understand context, idioms, and cultural nuances, making for more meaningful and impactful content. This kind of emotional depth is difficult to replicate with a computer program. Part of our 8-step process involves deeply analyzing our ideal audience and what speaks to them about our topic. This includes their concerns, steps they have taken, and ways our topic can best serve them now and in the future.
Originality
Human writers can create original content that has never been seen before, free from the repetitive tendencies associated with AI content generators. They understand that details matter and many angles to a discussion warrant attention. This leads to more engaging and interesting articles that can engage readers better.
Cons to human content writing
Time-consuming
Human content writers may take time to produce high-quality content, which can hinder businesses that must produce large amounts of content in a timely fashion. Working with a large team of content writers can help speed the content development process up, but this also comes with a higher cost.
Expensive
Human content writers may take time to produce high-quality content, which can hinder businesses that must produce large amounts of content in a timely fashion. Working with a large team of content writers can help speed the content development process up, but this also comes with a higher cost.
Human error
Human writers make mistakes. Everyone does it at some point. Some of the issues include typos, grammatical errors, and subjective opinions, which can affect the quality of the content. First, second, and even third drafts of an article will have some type of error which is where AI generators, spell check, and grammar assistants really shine.
Limited scalability
Scaling human content writers can require significant effort and resources. Whether you want to increase your click-through rate, get more visibility on the SERP, or improve your conversion rates, you need an experienced team. Hiring a team of full-time writers can be costly while working with freelancers can be hard to manage. This leads to inconsistency in content quality over time.
Have your cake and eat it too - use both AI and human content creation
Choosing between AI content generators and human content writers ultimately comes down to your specific business needs, goals, and target audience. While AI content generators may be more cost-effective for producing large volumes of content, human content writers are still essential for producing creative, original, and personalized content. Human content writers are ideal for businesses requiring personalized, high-quality content that engages their audience.
Overall, a successful content strategy often involves using both tools to achieve optimal results. By combining machine learning with human creativity, your business will be best positioned to reach your target audience, achieve your goals, and succeed in an increasingly competitive market.
Keep your content fresh with the eyes of an SEO expert team
My Website Spot has been at the front of the Google landscape since 2005 and has a dedicated team well-versed in applying AI SEO technologies. AI content generators should be a writing assistant, not a SEO content solution. We have seven reasons to hire an SEO expert in 2023 and relax in your investment to better your SERP ranking. Our team is well-versed in all things SEO and content that will get you noticed. Drop us a line, and we’ll help you find your spot at the top of the rankings.
