It was recently announced that CNET and Buzzfeed will be investing in AI-generated content to produce articles and quizzes for its users. We are also seeing the rollout of AI in search engines with announcements from Google releasing its own AI Bard and the major partnership between ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing. This begs the question, what are the risks for brands and content producers using AI in their content marketing efforts?
Potential impact and risk of using AI to generate content
- Drop in reach: As the internet is flooded with more content, as has happened over the past decade, we may see reach/rankings drop and penalties given out for AI created content. As search engines detect AI content better this would be worth monitoring with human vs AI produced content. It has already been stated in Google’s Content Guidelines to ‘Consider creating a new, useful service that no other site offers.’ You could also write an original piece of research.
- Regulation: There may be legal and regulatory hurdles to overcome using AI for content creation. As we have seen with influencers announcing when they are being paid to sponsor a product, we may see this enforcement by big tech to do the same with brands producing AI content.
- Lack of creativity: AI algorithms can only generate content based on data and patterns they have been trained on, which can limit the creativity and originality of the content produced.
- Lack of human touch: The use of AI for content creation can result in a lack of personalisation and human touch, making it difficult for companies to build meaningful relationships with their customers.
- AI going wrong: Embarrassingly during a public demo, Google’s solution to conversational AI Bard provided an inaccurate response to a question which highlights the challenges big tech is having in the AI race and the accuracy of information without the spot check of a mere mortal.
Our take on using AI as a marketing agency
Back to the agency world, at M3 value transparency with our clients and although we haven’t built AI into our processes yet, we believe in the importance of highlighting these risks if we are to use such techniques and tools.
As an agency, we have certainly been impressed with the use of AI in copywriting, ad creation and other marketing activities. Although we do see some red flags and issues starting to be raised. There are already tools that predict the likelihood that content has been generated by AI so we’re likely to see content flagged and penalised by Search Engines and other big tech companies. This highlights a risk for Buzzfeed and its advertisers alike.
If you would like to see how we approach content marketing, do get in touch and see how we can support your business.
