Artificial intelligence, AI, has been cropping up in the news over the past few years but never more so than in the last few months with the launch of OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT. Using the most advanced language modelling, ChatGPT will give you an answer to any question, and can even be used to plan holidays or explain pieces of Javascript code. There have been AI copywriters and text generators before, but the latest generation so far appears to be more advanced and coherent than ever before.
As with all new technology, it’s tempting to leap on board and start using it straight away. While AI seems like it could provide many solutions to digital marketing, there are definite pros and cons to using AI generated content to consider before getting stuck in.
The pros of using AI generated content
SPEED
As marketers, we’re excited about the possibility that AI opens up for us to be able to quickly create new content on a regular basis, that would otherwise take hours of copywriting time. As dentists and practitioners too, you will be able to use this technology to write blog posts and create new content for your website without the need to spend valuable time re-drafting and editing.
COST EFFECTIVE
You can access many AI generators for free or a small subscription cost, saving you hundreds on copywriter fees. Of course, it’s always worth paying for expertly researched and written content, but for a smaller business, this can be a great place to start.
SEO FRIENDLY
If you’ve heard about SEO and know that it’s important but you’re not sure where to start with optimising your content, you can use an AI tool to help. By asking the tool for SEO-optimised content you’re guaranteed to receive a block of copy that is already Google-friendly, and it may help you learn for the future too. This comes with the caveat that Google will penalise any pages which it thinks have been created purely for SEO purposes, so you should always review, edit, and personalise your content before posting. Google will also notice any suspicious activity, such as hundreds of new pages being added at once, so be careful not to take any risks that could actually end up harming your rankings.
NO WRITERS BLOCK
Any writer will tell you that getting started is the hardest part, and staring at a blank screen can be frustrating and a waste of time. AI can take that away and even if you just use it as a starting point, at least you will have started.
The cons of using AI generated content
PLAGIARISM AND FALSE FACTS
There have been many examples so far of AI generating either plagiarised (copied) content or simply making up information that for all appearances seems to be true. AI pulls its content from all over the web but doesn’t provide references or citations, so you can’t trust everything it creates. You should always fact-check and cross-reference any information and make sure it’s coming from accredited and trusted sources.
BE AWARE OF GOOGLE
There’s no evidence that Google penalises high-quality, AI generated web pages, but it is constantly updating its algorithms for ranking content and has recently added an extra E to its quality rating guidelines. These are summarised as EEAT and stand for:
Experience / Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness
The new E stands for Experience – in Google’s words, “there are some situations where really what you value most is content produced by someone who has first-hand, life experience on the topic at hand”. Your content needs to be relevant and trustworthy, so it’s sensible to use it only as a starting point, and make sure to add in your own experience and personality.
INCONSISTENT QUALITY
When you start generating AI content you may find that you’re seeing different levels of quality in the output. This is because the amount of information available varies depending on the topic. So if you want AI to generate a blog post on a specific niche of periodontics, the output may be of lower quality than for a more popular topic, such as Invisalign.
HUMAN INPUT IS STILL IMPORTANT
All of the above points are summarised in this final point; it’s vital that any content created using AI is treated as a first draft, an initial starting point that can then be edited, amended, and adapted to your own needs. At the very least, proofread before putting anything live, to make sure that it reads well and coherently, and is relevant to your audience.
To summarise, the advancement of new AI writing tools is an exciting development and there is lots of potential for its use in creating new content. It can be a great starting point to save time and money for your practice. However, it doesn’t remove the need for a pair of human eyes to review, edit and personalise your content to make sure it is relevant and useful for your audience.
