AI is the hot new thing right now because we seen to have collectively decided on speedrunning tech trends. One tech author recently astutely pointed out on Twitter that he’s seen people change their LinkedIn bio from “expert” in social media, to crypto, to Web3, to metaverse, to AI, all in the span of two years.
ChatGPT has completely taken over tech discourse and garnered significant mainstream attention. For the uninitiated the short version is that ChatGPT is a sophisticated artificial intelligence chatbot created by OpenAI in December. You can ask it questions or make requests and it will provide answers based on compiled data. So for example, if you ask ChatGPT for a recipe on how to make apple pie, you’ll promptly receive exactly that.
As expected, many are talking up the potential business uses of AI. As interesting as ChatGPT is I’ve always been a believer in engaging the brakes and examining new technology critically. The technology is nascent and there are very clear limitations to it, which is why I would encourage everyone to not get too caught up in the hype. As impressive as it is to make a few queries and get a detailed, grammatically correct and organized response, the more time you spend playing around with ChatGPT the glamour starts to wear off as you discover the limitations.
If you plug in some different keywords asking for business blog posts on similar topics you’ll notice a problem: The writing is fairly stale and predictable, lacking the nuance or substance you would expect from the type of long-form content that tends to do well in the eyes of Google. Those often aren’t the kind of blog posts people may want representing their brands, or that that Google sees as providing “value” to users.
Even if you deliberately ask ChatGPT to take an existing blog post and make it professional with sources or adding a few jokes to make it more personable, it’s clearly written by a bot rather than a person. I generated a blog post on dermatology as a case study, asking for several sources, and the sources either turned out to be out of date or just misinterpreted. So it’s not a catch-all solution.
Of course, plenty of companies and marketing firms do this already; they pump out some very standard 600-word blog posts over several weeks, then lose interest because this stuff is time-consuming and doesn’t generate the desired results or traffic. It’s a cost-benefit analysis that often doesn’t pan out. There’s no shortcut to using content to rank higher in search engines – you have to commit to it over months or years and there’s no guarantee.
AI is “the hot thing” right now and like any trend, it could evolve into something more substantial or it could fizzle out the way video marketing infamously did. Like any trend there are people who latch onto it to sell false bills of goods, which is why I predict that we’re on the cusp of another wave of marketing snake oil salesmen offering a “guaranteed way” to get to the top of Google search results to small business owners who don’t know any better.
In practice this will just amount to the companies that make these promises inputting keywords into ChatGPT, generating tons of cookie-cutter blog posts, and either taking credit for improving search results wrongly (because this doesn’t work!), or shrugging when it doesn’t work and saying “Well, we’ll just post more.”
It was around this time that I had an idea. What if I asked ChatGPT itself why you shouldn’t use it to simply generate and copy/paste business blogs? ChatGPT won’t give you advice or answers on anything illegal, but would ChatGPT acknowledge its own limitations?
Sure enough, it did. I input the following query and let’s let ChatGPT speak for itself: “Write a blog post on why you shouldn’t use chatgpt for business blogs”
As an AI language model, ChatGPT can be a useful tool for generating text on a variety of topics, including business blogs. However, there are several reasons why using ChatGPT for your business blog may not be the best idea.
- Lack of Personal Touch: One of the main drawbacks of using ChatGPT for business blogs is the lack of a personal touch. As an AI language model, ChatGPT can generate text that is well-structured and grammatically correct, but it can’t provide the personal insights and perspectives that come with a human writer. This can lead to a lack of authenticity in your blog content and could potentially harm your brand’s reputation.
- Limited Contextual Understanding: Another issue with using ChatGPT for business blogs is that it lacks the ability to understand the specific context and audience of your blog. ChatGPT can only generate text based on the information it was trained on, so it may not be able to tailor the content to the specific needs and interests of your target audience.
- Inaccurate Information: ChatGPT was trained on a large corpus of text, but there is no guarantee that the information it generates is accurate or up-to-date. This can be particularly problematic for business blogs, where accurate information is crucial for building trust and credibility with your audience.
- Lack of Creativity: Finally, using ChatGPT for your business blog may limit your creativity and ability to generate unique, high-quality content. ChatGPT can generate text quickly, but it is limited by the information it was trained on, so it may not be able to produce truly original content that stands out from your competitors.
In conclusion, while ChatGPT can be a useful tool for generating text on a variety of topics, it may not be the best choice for your business blog. A human writer with a deep understanding of your brand, target audience, and industry can provide the personal touch, context, accuracy, and creativity that are essential for creating high-quality, engaging blog content.
The hilarious part about this is while the verbiage is fairly basic, these are actually fantastic examples of why you shouldn’t use ChatGPT or any other AI-powered software as a crutch or a “replacement” for human writing, and are some of the same points I mentioned in my own writing above.
This doesn’t even cover the fact that Google has already committed to penalizing AI content. As I’ve said before, no person or company is smarter than Google or its algorithm, and anybody who claims to “intricately understand” Google’s algorithm is either lying to you or about to be sued.
AI and its ability to generate content has the potential to be a very useful tool. That doesn’t mean that it’s The Thing You Need To Invest In Right Now Or Your Business Will Go Bankrupt. So let’s do our best to not fall for the hype this time. Do what works for your business, not what some paid op-ed columnist with a stake in an AI startup is telling you that you “need” to do.
Update, 2/5/2023: Literally a day after I posted this, The Verge published an article on how “hustle culture” scammers are promising to “unlock passive income.” It’s already begun, folks!