Have you heard about ChatGPT?
If you haven't it is a site that produces AI generated content. There is also Jasper, Google just introduced it's version: Bard (not yet available to the public) and a number of others.
Keep reading to the end to find out some scary things you'll want to avoid if you use AI to write for you.
Jasper has been around for a few years. Both Jasper and ChatGPT work off the same system GPT3.5. Jasper has always had a fee and ChatGPT was free initially (and still is with limitations).
If you haven't tested it yet, and you want to, go to Open.AI.
If you haven't heard about AI writing you might have seen the recent mass of AI generated images where everyone made themselves into super heroes all over social media, yes?
ChatGPT is big and using AI for generating art and writing is even bigger. It's not going away so you can either be like people who said those new-fangled automobiles 🚗 and electric lights 💡would never catch on or catch the wave of innovation. This email is designed to help you catch a small baby wave 🌊 of what appears like it might become a tsunami.
How, Why and What
How can you use AI writing for your business?
Right now, you can get ChatGPT for $20 a month. Jasper has various paid plans.
If you're going to use AI for writing for your business rather than a human writer, you should also invest in Grammarly or Quillbot as well as an AI checker (none of which are 100% accurate). And you'll still need a human (you?) to review, edit, and fact check.
Some have suggested that lawyers should use ChatGPT for legal documents. Or, non-lawyers should use it for legal docs and avoid hiring an attorney. 😨
Many businesses are thinking of using it to "crank out content" so they don't need to hire a writer for blog posts, ads, emails, and such.
If you want to use ChatGPT to create a blog post - here's how to do it the right way (more about this below):
Put in a prompt on the subject of the blog post
Have human review and edit
Run writing through OpenAI detector
Run through Quillbot or Grammarly
Run through OpenAI detector (yes again)
Run through Quillbot or Grammarly
Repeat until the result is below 15% AI detected
Have human review and edit again
Why would you want to use ChatGPT?
Right now most of the people using it are trying it:
to save time and money
because it's a cool "new" thing
so they can learn how to use it
or to create apps and prompts to sell to others who want to use it but don't want to spend the time learning how.
What should you avoid when using AI for writing?
When you read that people are suggesting others use it for their own legal docs, did your jaw drop? You're not alone. Imagine the problems with that!
Accuracy is an issue - or why you need to be sure you do it the right way.
You must fact check everything it produces. Even with something less dire than a legal issue, people have found that it isn't accurate. In fact, I read an article where one marketer asked ChatGPT to help set a business up on Google Business Page (lots of chatter about using it for marketing plans). 7 out of 10 things it told her to do were wrong and in violation of Google's T&Cs.
ChatGPT's training (meaning the code it was programed with) cut off was 2021 - therefore, while it is said to learn as people use it, it can't access information past that date.
UX is important and AI isn't the best with that
Some people claim that Google hates AI. It's true that in the past, AI produced writing did cause your site rank to lower. Google came out in January 2023 and said that is no longer the case. UX (user experience) is now paramount to Google for rankings which means you must ensure that anything written by AI (or humans) is UX focused. In order to do that, you'll need to more closely track certain GA (google analytics) to ensure you have the best UX possible. Working with a human writer helps with this, too.
Your site ranking should STILL be paramount
We're all aware today's economy is concerning. If you've shopped at a grocery store or eaten out you've seen the increase in prices. I've read reports from marketers testing AI for the writing on their sites to see how it impacted search engine rank. It is great, initially, but over a 9 month span one marketer saw his rankings TANK and found there was nothing he could do to recover. SEO (search engine optimization) has the 2nd highest ROI for any paid marketing. If you use AI to write your site content, and tank your site's SEO, you've blown all the money you've spent on it over years and will probably never recover.
Plagiarism still affects your site ranking. AI is crawling the web. That is how it gathers the writing it produces for you. Yes, it *says* it is original writing. Yes, you can do plagiarism checks. And AI checks. But keep in mind that if you don't have a human editing the AI produced content, it may show up remarkably similar to or the same as other content. (This is a huge issue for AI produced images right now, I've heard from creators whose work is being used - without permission - as backgrounds for AI images).
Many clients are requiring disclosure from writers, in their contracts, that they are NOT using AI. Decide what you'll require from your writer(s) but make sure whatever they produce is user focused, fact checked, and not word salad. 🥗
This email is long, I hope you don't mind if I share some insight from William who worked for two years on the team developing ChatGPT. He recently said he doesn't think AI is where it needs to be to replace human writers, and won't be for several years, if ever.
A few highlights from his expert opinion:
Human writing is still faster and better than AI
There is a decided lack of fact checking for AI and none of it provides sourcing information
SEO best practices aren't integrated well and probably never will be (AI is limited because it's coded by humans based on existing information so will always be a step - or more - behind any algorithm and SEO updates)
It struggles with making technical information easy to read
It's very repetitious (a complaint I've heard from multiple people, multiple times)
It can't produce writing in brand voice, tone or style. Some systems allow for uploading a custom code to train it (which is beyond most people's capability and adds additional cost for any business trying to do this - if it works)
Most of it's copy and CTAs are very generic (yes, he actually said that)
It doesn't allow you to fine control word counts which is very important for many publications
Make sure you and any writer you hire are on the same page about how much, or how little, AI will be used to produce any writing for your business.
TL;DR:
AI writing is here to stay and a good tool 🛠️ but not yet capable of replacing humans
If you're going to use it, you must also hire a human editor/fact checker
If you are most interested in saving money, and won't hire a human to edit/fact check be sure you don't use it in a way that tanks your SEO or your business may never recover