Before You Publish AI-Generated Content, You May Want to Read This First
So, you’ve clicked a button and have a bunch of AI-generated words representing content. Good to go?
The answer may be no, depending on what you hope to achieve and whether you feel fine rolling the dice on Google penalization and customer trust loss.
Google Is Done with Trash AI Content
For years, marketers have been using GenAI tools like Jasper and ChatGPT to quickly and cheaply game search engines with boatloads of robotic-sounding, keyword-jammed content of questionable value and readability. For this reason, Google announced core algorithmic changes on March 5, 2024, to tackle “spammy, low-quality content on Search.”
Though Google didn’t specifically mention AI in its announcement, tech magazines have clarified what Google’s core updates mean. Per Gizmodo, “Google says it will begin cracking down on AI-generated content created solely for the purpose of gaming its systems and ranking high in Google Search,” and according to Amsive’s senior SEO director Lily Ray in an interview with Wired, “It sounds like it’s going to be one of the biggest updates in the history of Google.”
What kind of crackdown is Google talking about?
According to Elizabeth Tucker (Google’s Director of Product Management), algorithmic changes “will collectively reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.”
This means that after May 5, 2024, using overtly AI content for the sole purpose of gaming Google search results may have the opposite SEO effect and carry a high chance of landing in the landfill country of search results pages.
(That’s not a great place.)
People Mistrust AI-Generated Content
“For a few hundred bucks,” writes Ahrefs’ Director of Content Marketing Ryan Law in a February 2024 blog, “you can hit the big red ‘publish’ button and use generative AI to write every article you’ve ever wanted to write,” and by virtue of cheapness and speed alone, some businesses enthuse about GenAI as the future of content marketing. Indeed, some individuals have gone so far as to suggest that AI may one day make human writers obsolete.
While that day may come, it doesn’t appear likely in the immediate future.
“High-profile experiments with replacing human writers,” notes journalist Mike Pearl in a Feb. 28, 2024, article for Mashable, “have gone badly. AI writers have proven to be error machines that create unreliable junk.”
As harsh as Pearl’s observations may sound, they’re also on point.
Most Marketers Find AI Content Is Not Good Enough to Publish
“Beyond the short-term dopamine hit of publishing a thousand articles at once,” writes Ryan Law,” for most businesses, the negatives of AI content will very quickly outweigh the positives.”
Among those cited by Law:
As one who regularly edits AI-generated content, I routinely encounter many of the same issues, plus others:
For these reasons and more, HubSpot’s 2023 AI Trends in Marketing report unsurprisingly found that although 48% of marketers now use AI tools for content creation, 96% of marketers say that AI content is not good enough on its own to publish.
“Generative AI can’t replace the skills of a professional writer,” says the report, “but it can create a helpful starting point,” meaning many businesses view AI content tools as collaborative tools and are aware of the company they keep.
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AI Content Involves Associations
AI can certainly help spark ideas or rough out content. Yet it’s up to you and your writing/editing skills as a human to ensure that any AI content meets your company’s style and supports your company’s reputation before it goes live—and reputation is the operative word here because AI content links to a quote that businesses love to use or paraphrase:
“Be wary of the company you keep for they are a reflection of who you are.”
This cautionary quote by author Kenneth G. Ortiz echoes the same cautionary words written centuries ago by Greek storyteller Aesop (Aesop’s Fables).
People tend to view others (rightly or wrongly) through the company they keep.
This association extends to things, and right now, businesses of all stripes are carefully considering their association with AI because of one main thing.
People from All Walks of Life Don’t Trust AI
As an example, the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer survey found that global trust in AI had dropped to 53% from 61% five years earlier, and it was lower in the U.S., where only 35% of Americans said they trusted AI (a 15-point drop from five years earlier).
If you’ve been following headlines, it’s not difficult to understand why.
A few examples relevant to content:
Such stories help explain why people mistrust AI, why this mistrust includes content, and how businesses risk paying a price by AI association if any content is overtly AI.
Because of such risks, Gartner recently predicted:
Some Businesses Are Distancing Themselves from AI Right Now
As an example, Reuters sent out an email on March 20, 2024, to assure subscribers that although AI may have lowered trust in the news (which was already struggling for public trust), “we take an approach that safeguards accuracy and fosters trust,” adding, “you can rely on Reuters to be your trusted content partner to help you bring the fact-checked, verified stories that matter to your audiences in 2024.”
So, you have a sense of the big picture.
As people increasingly become skeptical toward AI-generated content, many businesses are currently working to distance themselves from AI association to maintain customer trust.
In other words, editing AI-generated content involves more than the mechanical aspects of addressing common AI content issues, including:
Editing AI-generated content is ultimately about ensuring a correct distance from AI association to maintain and grow trust, unless you enjoy gambling.