Artificial intelligence (AI) has started to transform many processes over the past few years and we believe content marketing will be no exception. With AI-powered tools, businesses are creating value more efficiently and at a faster pace than ever before. For example, in transportation AI is being used for route optimization and predictive maintenance. In Healthcare, AI-powered tools are being used for medical diagnosis, drug development, and patient monitoring. The common thread in all of these examples is of AI (used here to describe software that uses machine learning to become more useful) as an assistant helping us more than as a replacement of us. For all of the anxiety that has bubbled up since the release of ChatGPT, it’s important to recognize that the modes of production of any product or service has many steps in it. While one step in the value chain becomes partially or fully automated, there are many other steps that require managerial, strategic, customer-facing, and creative talent. For every example of technology fully automating a task, there are countless others of technology we have adopted to improve work and life.
For all of the anxiety that has bubbled up since the release of ChatGPT, it’s important to recognize that the modes of production of any product or service has many steps in it. While one step in the value chain becomes partially or fully automated, there are many other steps that require managerial, strategic, customer-facing, and creative talent.
In creative work, such as writing, ChatGPT has impressed many users by its ability to quickly generate responses to prompts or queries and rightly so. One particularly enthusiastic user is the high school student. Much of the writing assignments students are assigned have to do with reading, research, and summarization. In all of these areas, ChatGPT is a pretty good tool, with some important limitations. ChatGPT can synthesize lengthy articles into a few paragraphs, find key points in a book, summarize important events of history and generate responses to questions. Because ChatGPT uses data created by all of us and already online, from sources such as Wikipedia, it is acting as a search engine albeit a more intelligent one that doesn’t just present links but information. However, the summarization ChatGPT provides may not actually be correct, this is called hallucinating by computer scientists who work on AI. So the conscientious student (the one that is not just interested in copy and paste) still has to read the books and articles and check the facts, but it’s a faster way to get started and a valuable improvement over other methods of research.
Unlike high school students, creative professionals are generally expected to produce original and unique work that, while informed by the past, does not simply summarize and reconstitute it. A marketing professional that proposes messaging and copy for a new SaaS product that recycles the old Salesforce “no software” moniker would (hopefully) be laughed out of the room. Creativity that simply recycles without adding value is quickly revealed as lacking in credibility.
We believe that by combining AI-powered tools with human creativity, businesses can create content that’s both efficiently produced and distinctive. We’re excited by the possibilities of AI-assisted content development to evolve marketing for our clients. However, the limitations need to be understood and addressed to ensure brand value is not destroyed through indiscriminate use of AI.
Limitations of AI-Assist in Content Creation
While developers of AI tools promise to help improve efficiency, these tools are not currently able to capture the color, nuance, and personality that makes great content. AI tools still very much rely on human creativity. For example, PromptBase is a marketplace where designers (known as AI whisperers) can sell their creations along with descriptions (known as prompts) which developers will use to “train” AI systems to understand what users are looking for when they type, for example, “succulents in the sun.”
From our experience, an AI-powered tool is good at automating busy work but fails with tasks that require a degree of creativity, judgment, or emotional intelligence, and it performs poorly in picking up on nuances or context because they are typically programmed to follow a set of rules or algorithms. This can result in content that feels flat, repetitive, or disconnected from the audience. In addition, AI is only as good as the data it is trained on, so biases or errors in the data can lead to biased or inaccurate content. We’ve seen several examples of AI tools generating erroneous summaries of articles, plays, historical events, and other content.
From our experience, an AI-powered tool is good at automating busy work but fails with tasks that require a degree of creativity, judgment, or emotional intelligence.
AI algorithms are designed to identify patterns and make predictions based on data, but they lack the ability to interpret information in the way that humans do. For example, while an AI-powered tool may be able to identify certain patterns in a dataset, it will struggle to understand the underlying meaning or context of that data.
Similarly, an AI-powered tool will struggle with tasks that require originality or emotional intelligence because it lacks the ability to think outside the box it is programmed to operate in or to be sufficiently programmed to understand context-sensitive emotions.
How AI-Assist Helps Writers Create
While AI can help to automate certain tasks and improve efficiency, writers still play a crucial role in content creation. Writers bring creativity, emotion, project and editorial management to the process, and they help to ensure that the content resonates with its intended audience–no tool, however smart, can really understand human reaction. Perhaps most crucially, writers understand the bigger picture of why the content is being created and in what context the content will exist.
Perhaps most crucially, writers understand the bigger picture of why the content is being created and in what context the content will exist.
It seems to us that AI-powered tools are most useful when we start looking at the constituent parts of a writing assignment. This is why we’re excited to offer AI-Assisted Content. Our service combines the power of AI with the creativity and expertise of our team of content creators to produce high-quality content that engages and inspires.
With AI-Assist, we’re able to analyze data, generate ideas, and optimize content with greater efficiency and accuracy than ever before. However, we recognize that AI can only take us so far. Our team of content creators works alongside the AI algorithms to ensure that the content is not only optimized for search engines and social media, but also meets the client brand’s unique voice and tone.
Our content creators add color, nuance, and personality to the content, making it more relatable and engaging to the audience. They are able to take the insights generated by AI and use their creativity and expertise to turn those insights into compelling stories and messages that speak to the audience.
Hand crafted content with AI-Assist offers the best of both worlds. The speed and accuracy of AI-powered tools are combined with the creativity and expertise of writers to produce content that is both efficient and engaging. Our clients can be confident that content we create will reflect their brand’s values and personality, while also being optimized for maximum reach and impact.
Examples of AI Content Creation
There are many real-world examples of companies that have successfully integrated AI algorithms in their content creation process. According to an AI tool we used for research while writing this article, IBM Watson is being used to generate content for The Washington Post, allowing journalists to focus on more complex stories. WaPo has seen benefits such as increased efficiency, improved personalization, and reduced costs as a result of using AI and human-assist. The same AI tool revealed that the Associated Press is using AI-powered systems to generate stories on topics like finance and sports. And Spotify is using user generated listening activity to create personalized playlists. Where content is merely an update of the day’s stock performance or game results, AI tools work beautifully. (Note: We have no way of verifying the information the AI tool gave us, so any inaccuracy shows the limitations of AI today.)
Best practices for AI-Assisted Content Creation
Our search for efficiency while delivering the creativity that our clients expect, has led us to several practices we are designing, testing, and following.
- Selecting the Right Tool
First, it’s important to select the right tools and technologies that align with the business’s goals and objectives. In addition to the trial version of ChatGPT, there are already many AI tools that offer content assistance, however, not all of them are of equal quality. We carefully evaluate and select the best tools for the specific needs of each client, ensuring that they provide accurate and reliable insights.
- Clarifying Objectives and KPIs
Once the tools are selected, we define clear objectives and KPIs to measure success. This helps to ensure that the content created through AI-powered tools is aligned with the overall marketing strategy and business goals. We work closely with our clients to define these objectives and KPIs, ensuring that they are achievable, measurable, and aligned with the client’s business objectives.
- Workflows to Optimize Writer-AI Partnership
Once the objectives and KPIs are established, we establish workflows that optimize the human-machine partnership. This means defining the roles and responsibilities of both the AI-powered tools and the content creators, and ensuring that they work seamlessly together to achieve the desired results. For example, the AI-powered tools will be responsible for analyzing data and generating content ideas, while the writers are responsible for refining those ideas and turning them into compelling stories that resonate with the target audience.
- Quality Control to Remove Bias and Errors
To ensure that data quality is maintained and biases or inaccuracies are avoided, we have strict quality control measures in place. This includes regularly reviewing the data and content generated by the AI-powered tools, and ensuring that it is accurate, relevant, and aligned with the client’s brand and objectives. Our team of writers also carefully review and edit the content generated by the AI-powered tools to ensure that it is of the highest quality and free of bias.
Overall, the workflow for content creation with AI-assist involves careful selection of the right tools and technologies, clear definition of objectives and KPIs, optimized workflows that leverage the strengths of both machines and content creators, and strict quality control measures to ensure accuracy, relevance, and alignment with the client’s brand and objectives.
We are all embarked on an exciting journey with new AI tools like ChatGPT. At StoryAZ, we are dedicated to experimenting with AI to produce the best content for our clients.