AI. It’s everywhere these days- personalising your social media feed, opening your phone by recognising your face, producing your Google search results, navigating your way to work via maps, and so much more.
There is one implementation of AI, or artificial intelligence, to give it its full name, that is becoming an increasing worry for writers and creatives.
A type of AI that has the ability to generate human-like text and words based on a few inputted prompts.
There has been an increasing use of chatbots, such as Chat GPT since it was introduced back in 2022, that use this type of AI, threatening the role of very human writers (like me) and our industry.
But, despite the sophisticated technology that AI uses to generate content, can it really beat the creativity of a human writer? Is the quality of the produced content really just as good?
This might be a topic that is merely a matter of perspective, but in this article we will look deeper into AI and author’s creativity, and what they both mean going forwards.
What is AI Content?
By definition, AI-generated content refers to any sort of creative material that is produced by the automation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. This can be images, text, videos, anything like that.
AI systems create content by learning algorithms to parrot how a human would create it, but without their direct intervention. The types of content that they can create are really endless- from blog posts and social media captions to articles, emails and product descriptions.
Most people probably won’t know this- but the concept of artificial intelligence has actually been around since the 1950’s and it has been slowly developing into what we experience today. Actual content creating AI, however, is a very recent venture and one that definitely has not reached its full capacity yet.
Why Do People Use AI to Generate Content?
The use of AI for writing is appealing on the surface, even I, as a writer, can see that. This is especially so if you need something done quickly, or if you don’t have the resources to do it yourself.
A significant amount of content can be created by AI tools, and in a much faster time than a human who had to research, write, edit could do it. It is also much cheaper than paying someone to write something for you, or even employing someone to join your business in a writing capacity.
Also, the downside of being human: writer’s block. We’ve all been there, but AI has no such thing, so you can be given suggestions to help guide you through a piece of writing, which could be just what you need.
So really, I do get it. These days everyone wants to do things efficiently, and cheaply.
So when there is a piece of software that can write your product descriptions, blog posts, social media captions etc for you- why would you want to spend time doing it yourself?
Or even pay someone (like SEO Impact) to do it for you?
One word: creativity.
Is AI Content Creative?
Creativity is defined as “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something”, thus suggesting that really, only human beings have the capacity to be creative. Does software? In my opinion, no.
Whilst AI has the ability to come up with text, there are just some things that human writers do that it simply can’t.
Content that is written by humans is content that has developed from the creativity, experiences, opinions, expertise, tone of voice and thought processes of that specific individual.
Everyone has their own style of writing, their own humor, their own little nuances that simply cannot be replicated by a piece of software.
AI-generated content, on the other hand, is developed from artificial intelligence algorithms- it is a machine and generates the content without any human involvement.
There is nothing personal going into the creation of these words- no personal stories, anecdotes, experiences, just relevant text.
The emotional understanding of AI is another problem when it comes to creativity- AI greatly lacks this, naturally, seen as it is not human, and therefore the likelihood of it being able to produce content that actually connects with readers and audiences on an emotional level isn’t very high.
From a business perspective too, you want to create content that engages with your audience, and engages them, resonates with them, reflects your brand’s tone of voice, something that is probably most effectively done by a human writer over anything that is AI generated.
In saying that, however, we do need to think of the ways that AI can enhance the creative process too. By inputting some prompts into an AI software, you are provided with ideas and further prompts that you may not have thought of, and can use in your writing/creative project.
Using AI in this way is not as a means of replacing the human entirely, but rather using it as a tool to aid the creative process.
In essence, AI in itself cannot be measured against a human when it comes to creativity. Being creative is a human trait and the work of a machine cannot even come close to replicating it entirely- aiding it, yes they can, but nothing more.
Why Your Business Needs Human-Written Content
I spoke to some local small business owners, who all write their own content- newsletters, social media posts etc about whether they cared if their content was AI generated. They all said yes, they would mind.
Despite the efficiency and ease of generating their content by using AI software, these particular business owners are wary of losing certain things if they began to use AI generated content instead of writing things themselves, or even paying a writer to do it for them.
These are things like their business’s tone of voice, the personal touches they add in their content, the way they speak to their audience, so basically, the creative parts of their content.
The things that humans do when crafting content is unmatched by any machine: the time to get the written content perfect, and then, of course, the optimisation that comes with it too are all things are required to create content that truly reflects a brand’s tone of voice, their ethos and engages their audience in a way that will lead to conversions for their business.
There is also the question of reliability: well-written and high performing content takes a lot of focused research, the discovery of eligible sources etc to make sure that their content is accurate and that the business presents itself as a reliable source of information.
Without this, people are not interested in the content. AI content is merely generated, so how much can what it writes be trusted? Or what if you want to check the credibility of the information it has come up with?
The same can be said for the question of plagiarism- a lot of people who don’t use AI generated content for their businesses don’t only think that is lacks the creative flair they want from it, but they also worry that the content that is being generated for them is plagiarising content that is already out there.
You don’t have this problem with human-written content, so can be assured that your business content is not only well-written, but also reliable and plagiarism-free.
Should Writers be Worried about AI Beating Their Creativity?
As we can see, there are countless things that human writers do to produce creative content that just can’t be replicated by a piece of software. Human content thrives off of creativity, ideas, personal and brand flairs, and any kind of AI software would struggle to replicate in the exact same way.
Whilst the panic is understandable, lots of business owners would still rather have content produced by a human to ensure it is creative and reliable, and would rather leave the AI to the other things it does in our day to day lives.
Any good content writer will understand their worth, and just how important the creative process is when writing content for their business/ for other people’s businesses, and how hard it is to replicate even another human’s creative work, let alone for a machine to replicate it.
Read also: Content Writing Tips for Beginners
Also, bear in mind that these AI content generators still actually need a human’s input in order to produce the content. It is a human’s job to come up with appropriate prompts to enter into the software so that their content can be written, and that in itself takes a level of creativity and brain power.
Conclusion
With the emergence of more and more sophisticated AI content technology, it is easy to see why writers and other content producers would be worried at the seemingly huge influx of business owners using these softwares to create their content.
But, as any good content writer will know, there is a certain level of creativity and flair that comes into writing top notch content, and the skills required to do these things can only be achieved by a human.
No software can compete with human emotions, or the creative spark of a brain, and though it might produce some excellently written words, the passion and creativeness behind the words will never match.
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