AI content creation is more possible than ever with a slew of powerful and relatively affordable tools. Like never before, the Average Joe can use artificial intelligence to produce content for his blog, website, social media profile and more – and it’s crazy easy. But creating content with AI isn’t all rosy. I’m concerned that lots of people are misusing AI and making one or more of these mistakes.
Not proofreading the content the AI creates.
I’ve not used a ton of artificial intelligence tools in my content creation yet, but I’ve used enough to know that it’s important to check over what you create because you might not agree with it, or there may be errors.
I work in IT by day, and I’ll be the first to tell you – computers are not infallible. They can and do make mistakes. While AI tools are impressive, they aren’t immune to errors.
Whether you’re using Jasper, Jenni, or any other AI tool, make sure you thoroughly read the output you generate.
Assuming that the created content is high quality.
This kinda goes with the first point, but I wanted to expand on it a bit more. AI content creation is cool, but its “coolness” doesn’t negate the fact that it can – and does – sometimes lead to content that is just “meh” in quality.
For example, I love using Jasper AI to generate some ideas for posts for my blog and for Medium. It’s a neat tool. But some of what the AI spits out is just… not what I would have chosen. Don’t assume that the AI you use is going to generate usable content every time. It’s important to thoroughly check it over and make sure it’s up to the standard you want.
Not fact checking the AI’s content.
Because of how AI content generation works, you may sometimes wind up with something that’s just factually incorrect. To understand this, it’s useful to know a bit about how many AI content generation tools work. In the case of OpenAI’s GPT-3 (or Generative Pre-trained Transformer), you’re using a system that was trained on gigabytes of human-created content. Is all of that content factually correct? Of course not.
If you’re using AI to generate long form text (though I typically recommend against that sort of use as a rule) make sure to check its claims and make sure that what you’re saying is actually true.
Relying on AI content creation for all of your material.
This is one of my biggest concerns with the wave of AI content creation tools now on the market.
Look, I know creating posts and other kinds of material with artificial intelligence is neat and all, but relying on it too much is a mistake. I love being able to use Jasper to generate a few ideas for blog posts, but that doesn’t mean I should rely on it.
A few days ago, on Medium, I saw someone suggesting that one particular AI tool could be used to generate posts for Medium. I think that’s a mistake in the long and short terms, but my concern is that people will start using tools like that and in such a way that they are reliant on AI to create all of their content. My concern is that they’ll lose the ability to be creative or think for themselves.
Is that the direction we’re headed? I hope not.
AI can do some neat things, and I do recommend checking out whatever AI content creation tool you choose, but remember that it’s just a tool and shouldn’t become the whole of your content creation strategy.
Don’t get lazy. Creativity is something that’s essential to the human experience, and we shouldn’t let machines take that away from us or replace us in it.
Using AI to generate all of a post or article.
Some AI writing tools are capable of writing blog posts or articles pretty much on their own. And while this may seem cool, I think it’s lazy.
It’s one thing to use AI to come up with ideas or even to find the best wording for a few sentences, but it’s another thing entirely to use it to create whole posts that you then publish as if they were your own work.
I have lots of problems with that kind of strategy and cannot in good conscience recommend anyone do that. I think it’s cheating, and I think it’s insulting to the many real human writers who work hard to write content people actually want to read.
If you must use AI to write a blog post, please make sure you at least edit it substantially so that it’s actually written with your own words and not w computer’s. But better yet, use AI to come up with ideas and then write with your own words from the start.
Forgetting to sound (and be) human.
As neat as AI writing is, it’s still not human – nor can it ever be, really. Sure, it may imitate a human, and it might even convince a majority of people that it is. But it’s important to remember that even the best AI-generated content is just that: content created by a computer. Communication is a human game, and even though a computer may play by some of the rules, it’s still not human.
When you’re writing, you need to be sure to be human.
Why do people like Shakespeare? Or Dickinson? Or Thoreau? Each has his or her own style – their own brand of humanity. That’s what sticks with people, not electrons bouncing around a CPU.
While an AI can generate some pretty convincingly human-sounding material, be sure not to lose the human voice that makes content worth reading.
Not taking the time to experiment with different outputs.
As I said above, I’ve been using Jasper to generate some ideas, and I like it. But one thing I’ve found is that it’s necessary to experiment. Sometimes, I don’t like what it generates, and I need to tweak it a bit to get the results I want. I find that if I make small changes, I get a completely different result. Sometimes for better. Sometimes for worse.
But taking time to experiment with various inputs is often worth it, and if you don’t, you could be cheating yourself out of some great AI-generated ideas.
One final note on AI content creation.
AI is cool, and I think it has a lot of potential for many sectors. Writing and content generation aren’t exceptions. But it’s important to remember what AI is. It’s just a tool. My fear is that many people will begin to rely solely on artificial intelligence to do the heavy lifting for them and that they’ll get lazy when creating content. Would that work? I don’t know. But I can’t imagine that it would work well long term.
I think it’s important to consider the moral implications of using AI to write, and we should be asking ourselves some questions. I don’t know if there is a right or wrong answer in this case, but at the end of the day, let’s remember what AI is: just a tool.
I can’t speak for anyone other than myself, of course, but I don’t want to spend my time reading or listening to content that’s just the product of some computer. I want to hear from real people. Real men and women with real thoughts and real stances on issues. A computer is no substitute for that. Artificial intelligence can help your content creation efforts, but it should never take over them.