Why AI can’t replace your content writer

Written By Daisy Rogozinsky

Whatever your stance on AI – fearful, excited, confused – there’s no getting around the fact that it’s become an unavoidable part of modern work processes. And, for the most part, this is a fantastic development, as AI helps make a variety of tasks – from design to coding to writing – significantly more efficient. 

But before you go firing your content writer and relying exclusively on ChatGPT for all of your emails, blog posts, and social media captions, let’s take a second to pause and explore why – as great as it is – AI can’t completely take the place of your writing professionals. 

Reasons why AI can’t do it alone

1. AI tells lies

ChatGPT’s information is notoriously unreliable, with it being known to outright make up quotes, statistics, and facts. And the last thing your brand’s reputation needs is to be caught creating content with inaccurate information. If you want your audience to trust you or maybe even see you as a thought leader, you have to be able to stand by all of the information you’re putting out there, which you just can’t do when the source of your data is an AI model. 

2. AI’s voice is boring

One of the major functions of the content a business puts out there is brand building. Each video, blog, and social media post is another opportunity to strengthen your brand recognition by reinforcing the same brand identity through a consistent, distinct voice. Unfortunately, if you let AI do your writing, that voice is going to be rather plain, cold, and, well, AI-y. 

In fact, if you think you can get away with using AI to write your content without anybody noticing, think again. Just like any writer, ChatGPT has its own distinct quirks and mannerisms that make it easily identifiable. (Hint: It uses the word “intricate” more than any human I’ve ever met.) 

You can try to get AI to conform to your brand’s style guide, but it just isn’t very good at it at this point. It’s basically got three different voices it can output, and all of them sound robotic. 

3. Somebody’s got to wrangle AI

Look, I’m not telling you not to use AI. That would just be unwise and make you miss out on some major time savings. But even if you do want to rely on it heavily, some human has to work with it, writing effective prompts, fact-checking the information, formatting it, and (hopefully) heavily editing. While this might be a bit faster than writing exclusively from scratch, it still takes significant time that, as a busy professional, you probably don’t have time for. Who does? Your content writer. 

4. Google might penalize you 

Google’s SEO algorithms are up to date with modern times, and they know AI content is an unavoidable thing. Therefore, they won’t lower your rankings for using content generated by AI. But they do explicitly indicate that the content needs to be created for and reviewed by humans with familiarity with the topic at hand. So again, ChatGPT can’t be the only party on your content team. 

5. People crave the human touch

The internet has become a place full of bots, fake accounts, unreliable narrators, and, now, AI content. To be honest, it can be a bit exhausting, leaving users longing for authentic connection with other human beings, which is, after all, one of the main things that we’re here for. This means that one of the easiest things you can do to differentiate yourself from your competitors right now is to be a person. After all, there’s a reason why the heavily casual, face-first TikTok is today’s leading social media platform. Audiences crave fallible, genuine humanness. 

What to do instead of replacing your content writer

If you want to benefit from the time-saving nature of AI without falling victim to the pitfalls above, here are some tips to help you get the most out of an AI/human partnership.

1. Lean on AI’s strengths

AI shouldn’t be writing your blog posts front to back completely on its own. But you can still leverage its skills in other ways that will significantly benefit your marketing processes. We’d recommend:

  • Generating content ideas

  • Coming up with variations of existing content

  • Creating summaries and descriptions

2. Redirect human efforts

While a content writer’s time used to be 90% dedicated to writing, that’s no longer a fitting expectation. Today, you can expect your writers to put a large part of their time toward writing AI prompts, fact-checking AI facts, and editing AI-generated content. So, when you’re hiring content writers, feel free to ask them about whether they have the skills and experience for these tasks. 

3. Hire the right writers

While your writers should still be able to string together sentences in a readable, engaging way, there are some other skills that are now just as important for you to look out for. Namely: 

  • Creativity 

  • Editing skills

  • Ability to adapt to your brand’s voice

  • Critical thinking

  • Research and fact-checking

4. Thoroughly quality-check

When you’re reviewing a piece of content before publishing, do a quality check focused on answering the following questions:

  • Does this feel human?

  • Is this information trustworthy?

  • Is the voice distinctly identifiable as being my brand voice?

If you can answer yes to each of these questions, you’re in a good place.

Looking for a content writer with the skills to use AI wisely? Contact Word Wave today for a free consultation. 

Daisy Rogozinsky
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