You may have read our article about AI tools that help your marketing efforts and thought: wouldn’t it be great if I could use an AI tool to write my content? It would mean no more work for me, or no need to pay others for this task. Indeed, many business owners and marketers ask the same question these days. But here’s the reality: AI cannot replace content writers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Does Not Replicate Human Thinking and Creativity
First of all, let us understand what artificial intelligence (AI) is. It is a machine built by humans and trained by humans to mimic human intelligence. AI can learn foreign languages and perform complex mathematical calculations. It can solve logical problems and provide realistic forecasts for different scenarios.
But AI does not think for itself. It does not have feelings and life experiences. It does not understand non-verbal inputs. It couldn’t say if it is discussing with another AI or a human being.
Can AI Help Content Writers?
Some content writers fear that AI will take their jobs. Others believe that AI is a partner they can rely on in their work. The latter are not wrong. AI can generate basic content to be used as reference for structuring one’s idea and plan for an article.
It can deal with repetitive tasks – such as generating meta descriptions and ALT text for images, which do not require a lot of creativity. Meanwhile, the writer can focus on the main content body, using their talent and experience.
Why AI Cannot Replace Content Writers
Now we have reached the core of this topic – reasons why you should not let AI create your content. Here are the most pertinent reasons:
1. AI Does Not Grasp Language Subtleties
A simple word can change the meaning of the entire sentence. From serious and formal, it becomes comedic or sarcastic. But AI does not understand that. For a machine all the synonyms accepted in a dictionary mean exactly the same thing. AI can generate a text like “These accoutrements are adequate for the office, while the meaning is that a 3-piece suite is a great choice for business people.
And this is just the first – and huge – reason why AI cannot replace content writers.
2. AI Does Not Understand Strategy
Our constant recommendations for business owners are to have a content strategy, focus on pillar topics and create a hub-and-spoke structure for their website pages dealing with key topics.
A content writer will understand perfectly what you mean and deliver quality content that meets these criteria. AI won’t be able to grasp these ideas. It will continue to output generic content that rephrases the same concepts with different words.
3. AI Does Not Understand Your Brand Voice
Ask AI to create content for a law firm, a supermarket and a spa. The tone of voice will be the same for all of them. Sure, it will provide reasonably accurate information (more on this later), but it does not know what makes each business unique.
From the first reading of AI generated content you will feel that something is off. It does not sound like your brand. It’s not similar to the way you greet customers in emails and start your social media posts. Thus, AI cannot replace content writers if you want to have a brand voice and not sound like a robot (pun intended).
4. AI Does Not Fact Check
AI knows what humans taught it. It cannot grasp the concept of lying, fake news and manipulation through inaccurate or incomplete information. It just accepts information as is and includes it in the content it generates.
And this is something dangerous – and a key reason why AI cannot replace content writers. Your content may contain false or misleading information. If your business falls into the YMYL Google category, this will lead to severe penalties for your website.
5. AI Does Not Understand and Replicate Human Emotions
Most B2C content relies on creating emotions. Consumers must understand that they have a problem and that a product can solve it. Or they must yearn to have a product to look better, feel better, be better than the Joneses, etc.
Thus, emotion plays a huge role in the strategy for creating marketing and sales content. Here’s the problem with AI – it does not understand emotions. It cannot create texts that appeal to human emotions. Everything it can do is generating matter of fact statements, which do not create any connection between the brand and the reader.
6. AI Does Not Have Empathy
The sales funnel relies on empathising with the consumer. They start from not knowing anything about your business and end up trusting it enough to make a purchase. But this can be achieved only by creating content tailored for each of the three stages of the funnel:
- Top of the funnel
- Middle of the funnel
- Bottom of the funnel.
AI doesn’t understand how people relate to a brand at any of these stages. The content it produces will sound the same, offering the same arguments. There is no attempt of removing a person’s objections to getting more involved with a brand. Thus, AI generated content can have only one result: failure.
7. Google Does Not Like AI Content
If nothing else convinces you, then this should. Google has started monitoring all new content in English, looking for any instance where content is not designed to be helpful, but to attract clicks. This is a veiled reference to AI-generated content.
We can expect that these efforts will become even more intense and focused and will spread to other languages, as well. Thus, you should not give up working with content writers and transferring writing tasks to AI.
Conclusion
There are many reasons why AI cannot replace content writers. But the bottom line is that you cannot trust an entity designed to mimic human mind to come up with the same rich ideas that a true human being can express. The little money you save today will cost you a lot in terms of customers that leave your business and loss of brand identity.