Crystal Clear Communications Blog

Since AI became easy and accessible through ChatGPT, it’s led many of my clients to ask: Is it okay to use AI to create content?

The answer: To create content; no. To make sure you haven’t left anything out of your content; yes.

As my colleague Harry Semerjian, Principal at Infinium Marketing Group, puts it, “Last year, when AI became a hot topic, Google said, AI content is great, use it, have fun with it. It will help you provide more clear, concise, and accurate information.”

“So, marketers did. And guess what happened? Unique content and thought leadership fell sharply, and instead, viewers received the same regurgitated content everywhere.”

In addition to annoying your target audience, using AI to create content also now annoys Google.

“Google has now changed their tune,” says Semerjian. “Starting soon, sites with unique content will rate much higher than sites that use AI to create content.”

This means your search engine results will drop over time if you continue to use AI to generate content.

In fact, a recent blog on Search Engine Journal states:

• Google is working on crawling fewer pages and reducing data consumption.
• Improving content quality is vital to ensuring efficient crawling and indexing.

(Cited from Search Engine Journal, “Google’s Crawling Priorities: Insights From Analyst Gary Illyes.”)

But how does Google know if content is AI-generated?

“I’m not sure what tool they use, but many people now use Undetectable.ai to check if content is AI-generated,” says Semerjian. “But our team tested that site and it said that our human-generated content was generated by AI.”

I found that statement scary, so I pasted three of my original blogs into Undetectable.ai. The result? It said that two were human-generated and that one was generated by AI. Clearly, AI tools are not yet perfect.

What does all of this mean for marketers? It means that if you want to engage your audience and keep your search engine rankings up, don’t use AI to generate content.

I want to make it clear that I am not against AI. I am for responsible use of AI. I’ve seen amazing AI use cases in healthcare and other industries that can increase efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve experiences.

How do I, as a marketer, use AI responsibly? I use AI to make sure I’m on top of the latest marketing trends and summarize what’s out there for me. I know other marketers who use AI once they’ve finished a draft to make sure they haven’t left anything out.

But when it comes to publishing content, I believe those words should come from a person, not a computer.

Have questions about marketing and communications? Get answers weekly or email me at ariana@crystalclearcomms.com.