I wrote this headline. Angrily.

I stumbled upon an article in The Drum today. The latest in a long, long line of think pieces about ChatGPT and what it means for marketers, and more specifically this time, the SEO industry. It's an article I largely agreed with, given that it favours human creativity over digital automation, but the main reason it struck a chord is - I just can't believe we're still having this conversation.

Back in 2010, I was a copywriter for a large media agency. We had a big SEO team and my job was to service that team with articles, blogs, landing pages, press releases and more (this was pre 'content' - don't get me started). For my first couple of years in that role, I had to fight my corner pretty hard in the 'quality vs quantity' debate with SEO colleagues who (as lovely as they were) weren't exactly creatives. They came round to my way of thinking eventually but, at that particular time, volume was king, not content. The formula was simple; Google likes sites with links, more links requires more words... 'Noel, please write some words'. No one cared what I was writing (though clients were getting edgy about how all this affected their brand), as long as occasionally I included 'best credit cards' or 'cheap iPhone 4 deals'.

By their own admission, all these SEOs knew the industry was changing fast and they would need to change with it. Or at least, pay someone like me so they didn't have to. In the past, they'd farmed out their copywriting to... god, I hate to think where... but it was becoming clear this low-cost, low value content wasn't cutting it anymore. The words needed to say more. As an agency, we had to be able to show an understanding of products and services, brand and sector, news and opinion. Stories needed an angle, so they could be 'sticky' or even 'shareable'. It wasn't enough to have links, now we needed likes, engagement, comments and creative campaigns that would lead to something called 'user generated content'. Yet in response, hardened SEOs continued to look for new ways to game Google, now that Google had changed the game. How, they wondered, can we continue to do what we have always done if search algorithms continue to become more... human?

The answer seemed straightforward to me. Employ humans with human skills to research and develop stories other humans will care about. Then you don't need to concern yourself with algorithms. If Google's end game is serving people content they want, shouldn't our job be the same? But as obvious as that was to me, suggesting as much seemed to illicit reactions from my senior colleagues I can only describe as '404 not found'. As an example, in 2012, having returned from some SEO conference, one such colleague proclaimed to have found the answer, and stood up in a meeting to excitedly share details of a new technology he'd seen demoed, which used a variety of commands, algorithms and existing blogs to churn out automated keyword-rich SEO 'articles'. I watched as he foamed at this 'game-changing' discovery and its ability to automate the writing process and, after letting go of my first thought ('mate, I'm sat right here'), I spoke up and offered my opinion: "I think you're wrong." He didn't, and the developer of this particular tool came in to do a presentation a few weeks later. I didn't attend, but I will say, it was the only visit he ever made.

The 'AI vs creativity' debate is complex. I don't necessarily hold with the argument that using original work to create something else is copyright infringement for example, any more than I think 'sampling is theft' or 'home taping is killing music'. People have always stole, borrowed or homaged other artists and I feel it's a vital part of how culture and creativity continue to evolve. I guess the issue comes when we automate those processes for profit or a 'quick fix'. And for me, it's here we should ask ourselves where the value is. Why do we make things? Why do we feel the need to communicate with one another? Why do we share ideas, opinions, perspectives or experiences? Does ChatGPT offer a short cut to any of this? And even if it did, why would we want it to?

I don't doubt ChatGPT will be useful for something eventually, but I don't believe it is creating text that sounds vaguely like a person wrote it. Some will argue that, as a new technology, it will only get better - but I'd say that's what they were telling me in 2012. No matter what happens with ChatGPT though, the human experience should always be the starting point for creative thinking. Whether you need to write a social media post, a marketing tagline, an academic essay or a full film script, what's the point if it doesn't have a little bit of you in it? Just because a software can replicate some version of what a human might create, doesn't automatically render what the human would create irrelevant. If anything, it makes it more important. The '404 not found' crew won't agree with me, but that's fine, I'll pick up with them again in another 10 years.

Written in response to ChatGPT v SEO: AI technology is spectacular. The content it generates? Not so much