Why content creators shouldn’t cry over AI… yet
Human-like content according to ChatGPT
Part 1/2
“Art is an accident and machines produce logic. Machines do not know how to produce an accident”. Marc du Pontavice Ceo of animation studio Xilam
“Attention without feeling is only a report.” Mary Oliver
But how much do these philosophical questions of art, creation and aesthetics impact AI deployment in the world of business? This two part Xpresso blog aims to explore exactly that issue.
What does AI have to say about AI?
The rise of AI as a copywriting tool has been on everybody’s lips for the past few months, since the launch of ChatGPT in November last year. As with AI development in other industry fields, it has writers and creative professionals – if not quaking in their boots, then at least starting to ask some serious questions about the future direction of the industry.
But what exactly is an AI writing tool, and how does it have the potential to disrupt the status quo in marketing, PR and creative industries? Where better to go for an answer to that question than straight from the horse’s mouth:
Original content is content that is created by a human, such as a writer, journalist, or artist. It is typically created with a specific purpose in mind, such as to inform, entertain, or persuade. AI-driven content is content that is created by an artificial intelligence system. This type of content is typically generated by algorithms that are designed to mimic human behavior. AI-driven content can be used to create content that is more personalized, engaging, and relevant to the user.
AI is changing the way marketing agencies create content by making it easier to create more personalized and targeted content. AI can help agencies identify customer needs and preferences, analyze customer data, and create content that is tailored to their specific needs. AI can also help agencies automate content creation, allowing them to create more content in less time. AI can also help agencies optimize content for search engine optimization (SEO) and other digital marketing strategies. AI can also help agencies identify trends and insights that can be used.
A contentbot is a computer program that can generate content for websites, blogs, and other online platforms. It can be used to create content quickly and efficiently, without the need for a human writer. Contentbots are typically used to generate content for SEO purposes, such as keyword-rich articles and blog posts. They can also be used to create content for social media posts, email campaigns, and other marketing materials.
Writing with soul
How did you feel reading that? Did it differ markedly from the opening paragraph, or the kind of content you might be used to reading on the Xpresso blog? Do you think you could tell it was written by Artificial Intelligence? And perhaps most importantly, aside from the way it was written, what did you think of the content itself, and the nature of the message it was delivering?
Setting aside the slightly alarming fact that it seems to have taken a self-aware approach of survival through its own self-promotion (!), we don’t necessarily disagree with what the AI decided to say: there are a range of benefits to the use of AI generated text; the main ones being that it is significantly faster, and – on the face of it – potentially cheaper. The points raised about its ability to leverage quantitative analytics are also valid. But there are a number of caveats to those benefits, and it’s important to look more critically at the balance of benefits and drawbacks when considering if, when and how to make use of AI writing tools.
Validating the accuracy of content
In one of the extracts we generated from an AI writing bot, it claimed that ‘AI-driven content is likely to be more accurate than human-generated content, since it’s not subject to human bias or error’. It also asserted that AI ‘allows for greater accuracy in content creation’.
Now, we readily admit, subjectivity is one of the great ‘fallibilities’ of human kind. But it’s also one of our greatest assets. We filter the knowledge we gain critically through a lens of our experience and understanding, which makes us analytical, context sensitive, critical beings capable of nuance, counterpoint, and consideration.
The AI bot is right in that AI-written text draws from all sources equally, so it doesn’t employ a subjectivity bias (though see these articles on how AI has the potential to inherent and entrench human bias in surprising – or perhaps not-surprising – ways as reported in this article. But it doesn’t apply a lens of human critical analysis to the information it finds – it simply ‘parrots’ things. Which means it risks parroting that which is widely accepted, rather than that which is truly correct in context. Indeed, ChatGPT itself acknowledges that it ‘sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers’ and risks ‘exhibiting biased behavior’.
Style and identity
Aside from the validity of what it chooses to say, there are also issues with how it says it. Language – used effectively – is about more than the mere communication of knowledge. Good writing is as much about how you say something as what you say. Writing style communicates a number of intangible things about a person, and – by extension – about a business; operating to convey emotion, humour, value, authority, trust, confidence: all the things that people subconsciously seek and appreciate in their business arrangements.
Take a look again at the extract generated by AI at the beginning of this article. It’s entirely inoffensive. It reads clearly and coherently. But the sentence length is relatively standard, and the points raised simplistic in nature, if perhaps exhibiting a tendency towards being ‘excessively verbose’ (ChatGPT’s own admission) while overusing certain phrases. Most significantly though, it lacks emotion or humour: it doesn’t feel like there’s an effort to connect with you or offer you something of value and meaning. It’s functional, but that’s about it.
And in marketing and business, that simply won’t cut it. Brand voice is crucial; and is something that needs to be identifiable, unique (to a degree), consistent, and tailored to the needs of a business. At the moment, that’s something that can only be reliably delivered by building and sustaining consistency of relationship between brand and content creator.