I want to start off by apologizing for that clickbaity title! To make it up to you, here’s the answer upfront — long story short, no, artificial intelligence (AI) won’t replace writers. In the near future at least. However, AI writing tools have caught my attention for a while now. Their claim to generate different content formats (like blog posts, landing pages, social media posts and more!) with minimal human intervention is pretty amazing.
What can be said of the quality of this AI-generated content, however? That’s the real question.
I hope the next few paragraphs reassure my fellow writers and content strategists that your jobs aren’t at stake. There are some obvious reasons why AI writing tools and software aren’t advanced enough for audience consumption today. What’s more, AI’s not stealing your job, it can actually enhance it!
Before we get started, here’s a quick look into how AI writing tools work.
AI-powered copywriting tools need to receive a topic and some keywords on which your business wants to build content. Once these words are inputted into the tool, the AI writing software collects relevant data from millions of websites. It then uses standard punctuation, grammatical rules and sentence structuring to create content. Based on your requirement of content format, word count etc., it builds a content piece for you. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and deep learning, the writing tool does its best to create a content piece that has a “human-like” flow to it.
However, while AI is progressing at a rapid pace, it’s still incapable of creating high-quality content currently.
Here’s why AI copywriting can’t replace the real deal (content writers)
1. Low creativity and authenticity
Even if the AI writing tool you use has the ability to customize tone of voice, it’s incapable of creating genuine content.
Imagine you’re trying to write a creative blog post to pitch your company’s shoe range. An AI writing tool will search millions of articles to piece together vague anecdotes about shoes as per your tone of voice and word count. However, the article may not have any reference to your business, your USP, your product features and your customer needs.
In other words, there’s no authenticity to the content created using AI, and without authenticity, there’s no creativity. A huge aspect to creative writing is including genuine stories that are relevant to your readers. Because AI tools lack creativity and authenticity, any content created by them might need heavy re-working by content writers in order to be useful for your marketing needs.
2. Can’t beat SEO!
To increase your page traffic and sales, search engine optimization (SEO) plays a huge role in getting your website rankings up. A key aspect of ranking is keyword research and including backlinks in your content (to build trust and authority in your business’ expertise).
Both keyword research and backlinking require human intervention because your content marketers understand your customers much better than a writing tool ever will. Your content team will be much more effective at figuring out which keywords/phrases a potential customer may use, than any AI software.
Today, many content writers are adept at SEO and when they write web copy for you, they often factor in the necessary requirements. When it comes to SEO, humans are more effective than AI.
3. Unable to build audio & video content
Audio and video will continue to be the most consumable content formats across major demographics in the decades to come. While AI can make a decent attempt at social media copy or even articles to some extent, writing scripts for audio and video is a completely different ballgame!
Both audio and video content rely heavily on their ability to engage target audiences. They may include viral content, memes, inside jokes or trendy catch phrases to connect with their customer base. Because AI tools are unable to factor in these softer aspects of content writing, they struggle with audio and video (AV) content heavily.
In the future, video and audio will only get more popular, with most businesses opting for these content formats over more traditional options. Content writers will continue to be heavily involved in building AV content for larger audience consumption.
4. Difficult to add emotion
Emotion, vulnerability and compassion in content is appreciated heavily today. Humans enjoy telling and listening to stories, and storytelling is crucial because of its ability to resonate across audience groups.
However, AI is incapable of creating content that understands complex human sentiments and emotions. Which is probably why content created by a writing tool can feel “off” in some way. That’s because all AI can do is re-use existing data and add a natural language flow, which can’t emulate human writing completely.
For now, emotion is best left to the writers!
5. AI can’t do content strategy
Content strategy isn’t just about building content. It’s about creating powerful, interconnected stories that resonate with your readers and help you build a more credible brand, product and business.
So, other than writing, it also involves customer research, content plans and goals across different content formats, while always thinking about the larger picture w.r.t your marketing.
AI writing tools cannot look through your existing content, what your audience’s expectations are, and build fresh copy that bridges the gap. For content strategy, you need content marketers, strategists and writers (in other words, humans)!
Where artificial intelligence CAN help in content writing
Three words (and a conjunction) — Raw data and research. While most AI writing tools can’t create perfect content pieces for you, they can go through millions of pages to identify relevant content for your selected topic/keywords. Much faster than a human eye.
This research and raw data collection can be immensely time-saving when you’re looking to create a piece of content quickly. While you worry about the storytelling, creativity and authenticity of your piece, AI can take care of the research.
I’d love to know your thoughts on AI writing tools. Have you used any? What were your first impressions? Come chat with me in the comments section! :)
