Macy is a marketing writer with over five years of experience creating content for dozens of industries including food and beverage, home services, and education. She also specializes in creating SEO and PPC content. Her work has been featured by Search Engine Journal, HubSpot, Entrepreneur, Clutch, and more. In her free time, Macy enjoys trying new crafts and reading comic books.
When you think about marketing tasks, what is one of the most time-consuming tasks to complete? If you’re like most people, you’ll say: Content marketing.
AI tools like ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Jasper.ai shine with possibilities for improving your content creation time. After all, these tools can generate entire pieces of content from a simple prompt. It sounds like the time-saving solution you need, right?
Well, as the saying goes — if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. While AI tools seem like the silver bullet solution you’ve been seeking, there are a lot of dangers of AI copy you might not know.
This guide will break down everything you want to know about AI-generated content, including:
We’ll include statistics, data, and case studies that show the risk of AI copy to help you understand what will happen if you rely too heavily on it.
Is AI copy good for SEO?
Before we dive in, let’s start by saying this: Google does not ban the use of AI-generated content.
So, what does Google say?
Keep in mind, though, that just because Google doesn’t ban it doesn’t mean it endorses it either. What it does endorse is high-quality content that users want.
But how does AI content work with SEO and what impact does it have on your performance in search results?
Here are some reasons why AI-generated content isn’t good for SEO:
One of the pillars of a successful SEO strategy is creating evergreen content that performs well over time. Creating high-quality content enables your business to drive valuable traffic to your website.
So, how does AI-generated content fit into this?
One of the biggest problems with AI content is that it doesn’t perform well over time. Many companies that rely on AI content produce it with no oversight or human influence. They copy and paste and publish it on their website.
And since these tools can produce dozens of pages of content within minutes, many businesses think it’s a great way to boost website traffic.
Here’s the thing: The “boost” you get from AI content doesn’t last long.
See the case study on Bonsai Mary, a website filled with AI-generated content that saw its organic traffic decrease by 95% after Google’s core update in March.
AI content is not always helpful, reliable content
Is AI content good for SEO? Not really, because it’s not always helpful, reliable content.
Here’s what Danny Sullivan, a Google Search Liaison, says about AI content:
As Sullivan puts it, AI content isn’t inherently bad, it’s content that’s written for search engines rather than users that’s bad.
Google’s guidelines back up that notion:
The problem with AI content is that it’s not created for the benefit of humans. When you ask an AI tool to generate content for you, it spits out information related to what you ask. It doesn’t consider the reader or your audience when crafting or formatting the content.
AI tools don’t use metaphors, examples, anecdotes, or stories to connect with readers. Those elements are often what help to make content, well, helpful. That, and the human ability to synthesize information and present it understandably.
Here’s a prime example: When you asked ChatGPT, “How do I build an investment portfolio,” it delivers a lot of good, basic information to help you understand how to build the portfolio.
Let’s specifically look at what it says about asset allocation:
If you’re new to investing, this information provides little guidance on how you should divide up your investments. Now, compare that to one of the top-ranking, human-written articles on the same topic:
This article gives example scenarios of how you could invest based on your risk tolerance. It provides more context for the reader because a human writer understands that an example helps readers better understand what to do.
So when it comes to AI vs. human copy, AI content often falls short in truly being “helpful” to the reader, especially when comparing it to human-written content.
AI content doesn’t consider the user experience
Content should focus on your audience and deliver digestible information. What’s wrong with AI-generated content is that it doesn’t consider the user experience.
While user experience as a whole isn’t a direct ranking factor, the experience you provide does impact your performance in search results. After all, Google focuses on putting the user first, which means it wants to deliver pages that provide the best, and most relevant, experience for website visitors.
AI content doesn’t factor in the user experience when generated. It doesn’t look at search intent to see what’s ranking or consider how to plan, structure, and format the page to give users a good experience.
Humans do that.
So, if you copy and paste AI-generated content onto your website without giving it a second thought, you won’t see the results you desire. You’ll lose out to competitors with human writers who create content to match search intent and make users happy.
AI content falls short of meeting E-E-A-T
One of the dangers of AI-generated content is that it doesn’t quite align with Google’s E-E-A-T standard. E-E-A-T stands for:
Experience
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
These are the hallmarks of what makes good, rankable content. As Google states:
So, what does that mean?
For content to rank well, it needs to showcase your business’s experience and authority in your field and your knowledge of the industry topic(s) you cover. You also need to be a trustworthy source of information in your industry, which often comes from continuously producing helpful content.
So, what’s wrong with AI-generated content?
Two of the biggest problems regard authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Being an authoritative and trustworthy source of information means providing in-depth explanations and sharing your knowledge about the industry. AI tools don’t work in your industry, so they’re limited to the information from their databases.
As a result, your content won’t showcase your knowledge and experience, which leads to your website being less authoritative and trustworthy.
Casual, a financial planning app, is a prime example of what happens when you produce AI content without human experience and expertise integrated into the pages. After Google’s November core update to address E-E-A-T, the website saw a 99.3% decrease in traffic.
Google has spam policies to prevent people from manipulating search engines through shady tactics. Here are two spam policies that make the risks of AI copy much greater:
Scaled content abuse policy
One of the most important spam policies to consider when thinking about generating AI content is Google’s scaled content abuse policy.
Essentially, scaled content abuse occurs when people generate dozens of unoriginal, low-value pages that manipulate search rankings and don’t help users.
This example of scaled content abuse, provided by Google, is an important one to note:
“Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users.”
One of the dangers of AI-generated content is the thinness of the content. Generative AI tools will provide information about a topic, but they offer little to no value for the user. It’s generally the bare bones of a topic without examples or in-depth explanations.
Not to mention, search results rank pages well that do more than just answer the original query.
For example, going back to the “how to build an investment portfolio” query, many of the top-ranking pages provide additional sections of information, like the definition of an investment portfolio and types of portfolios.
Generative AI tools don’t produce content that provides that whole-picture perspective — that’s why the content is thin.
As a result, if you copy and paste AI content right from the generative AI tool, you aren’t adding value to the content. Therefore, you risk it being flagged as spam and getting de-indexed.
Scraped content policy
Another spam policy to watch with AI-generated content is Google’s scraped content policy.
This policy involves websites taking content “scraped” from other reputable websites and publishing it without adding any additional value.
At its core, this is what generative AI tools do. They scrape other websites to produce answers to users’ questions. So, if you take that content at face value and do nothing to add value to it, you risk violating Google’s spam policy, which ultimately hurts your performance in search results.
AI content isn’t competitive
So, is AI content good for SEO? Not if you want to outrank your competition.
As you know, search engine results pages (SERPs) are highly competitive. You need to offer unique insights or presentations of information to help your page stand out from others.
The problem with AI-generated content is that it doesn’t provide new insights. AI tools can’t create new perspectives, which means they just repeat already existing information.
If you only publish AI-generated content on your website, you’re not bringing anything new to the table — no new insights, perspectives, or ways of explaining a topic.
So, why would Google’s algorithm have your page outrank your competition, if your competitors provide new information and insights? The answer is, it won’t.
A lawn care website created AI content on their website, but didn’t offer any new ideas or perspectives — it was all regurgitated information. As a result, the website saw minimal traffic, eventually seeing a 100% decrease in monthly traffic.
When you see a title like the “dangers of artificial intelligence copy,” you may think it’s all bad, but that’s not true. There are pros and cons to using AI tools for your content marketing.
Let’s look at each:
Pros of using AI for content
Using AI to generate content does offer some benefits. Let’s break down some of those benefits:
Pro: AI helps improve efficiency
In today’s world, the goal is to do more, faster. Artificial intelligence tools fit right into that mantra.
Using AI tools for content marketing helps improve your business’s efficiency. You can complete tasks faster, like researching information or generating keywords. Instead of spending time sifting through page after page of research, you can have an AI tool like ChatGPT spit out all the information in a matter of seconds.
So, there’s no denying that AI tools provide a better turnaround with information and help you speed up your content marketing process.
Pro: AI content is cost-effective
Every business looks for ways to cut costs so you can maximize profits. One of the benefits of AI for content creation is that it’s cost-effective. Many AI content tools are free to use, which makes them a budget-friendly option for businesses that want to ramp up their content creation efforts.
Since AI tools can pump out a lot of content at a low or no cost, AI is a budget-friendly option for companies wanting to produce more content at a lower cost.
Pro: AI tools help generate ideas
Since content creation requires continuous publishing and sharing of ideas, it can feel like a heavy burden trying to generate new ideas all the time. AI tools are great to use when you feel stuck.
You can use AI tools to search for new topics you haven’t covered yet. It makes it easy to find new industry topics, keywords, and more.
Pro: AI tools collate research information in one place
One of the most time-consuming tasks of content creation is conducting research. Creating good content means reading through different sources, understanding the information, and synthesizing the research.
Using an AI tool makes it easy to grab all the information at once. You can ask these tools for information about a topic, and it will produce the information you need. It makes AI tools a one-stop-shop for background information.
Cons of AI-generated content
So, what are the dangers of AI-generated content? Let’s dive into some cons of relying on AI for generating content:
Con: Inaccurate information and quality control issues
Before AI tools can spit out the information you want to know, they need training. AI companies train these tools using data around the web. These tools will use thousands of information sources and data points to produce the right information when people ask for it.
The problem is that AI tools are only as good as the data they’re trained on. If AI tools are trained on poor data or a small pool of data, they won’t produce the best information. There’s also a chance it’ll be inaccurate.
As they say: Just because it’s on the Internet, doesn’t mean it’s true.
There are always online sources that aren’t accurate or purposely provide misinformation. As a result, there’s always a risk that AI tools can spew out bad or incorrect information.
That means, if you use these tools to create content, you risk producing poor content, especially if there’s no human intervention. Poor content won’t help you rank in search results or build confidence with your audience that you’re a trusted source of information.
Con: AI content can have bias
As mentioned prior, AI tools need information and data to train them to generate responses. So, who decides what information and data is used to train these tools? People.
People have biases, agendas, and motivations that skew their actions. While many people who train AI tools try to do so objectively, there is still room for bias in training. That means one of the risks of AI copy is generating content that has biased information.
If you use AI tools without oversight and fact-checking, you risk publishing inaccurate information on your website. It can damage your credibility and cause people to question your authority in your industry.
It also leads to another problem…
Con: AI tools can cause misinformation generation
One of the dangers of AI-generated content is misinformation generation. Think about it like this:
AI tools already have biases, whether they’re subliminal or obvious. Businesses take the content generated from these tools at face value and publish it on their websites. AI developers want to keep their tools up to date, so they continuously train their tools on new information.
So now, the biased information published on these websites becomes part of the data pool.
As a result, the accuracy of information starts to degrade. It leads to continuous publication and circulation of inaccurate information. And if businesses continue to use these tools to create content with no oversight, the information produced in the responses will get less accurate over time.
That creates a vicious cycle of misinformation generation.
As a result, you take on the risk of AI-generated content being inaccurate, which, again, leads to damaging your reputation and credibility in your industry.
At worst, it can lead to legal consequences.
Con: Using AI tools means sacrificing quality of content
One of the dangers of AI-generated content is the subpar quality. To build yourself as a trusted industry authority, you need to deliver high-quality and informative content.
So, why can’t AI tools do that for you?
The issue with AI content is that it lacks emotion or style. All AI tools can do is gather information and spit it back out. As you might expect, it produces robotic content with no style, unique insights, or anything that makes high-quality content.
Since Google wants to deliver high-quality content to searchers, you’ll miss the mark with AI-generated content.
Con: AI tools can hallucinate information
A growing problem with artificial intelligence copy is hallucinations. Here’s how that process works:
AI tools train on data
AI tools analyze this data to understand patterns and make predictions
If using biased information for training, AI tools learn the wrong patterns
AI tools spout incorrect predictions, known as hallucinations
AI tools train on data
AI tools analyze this data to understand patterns and make predictions
If using biased information for training, AI tools learn the wrong patterns
The AI tools spout incorrect predictions, known as hallucinations.
Hallucinations come in various formats, from made-up quotes attributed to real people to spewing out data that doesn’t exist. It’s one of the biggest dangers of AI-generated content that can have serious, real-world consequences.
If you rely solely on AI tools like ChatGPT to produce content for you, you run the risk of generating a response that includes hallucinated content.
If you aren’t careful with overseeing the responses these AI tools produce, you risk getting yourself in serious hot water by publishing false information. That puts your brand, reputation, and business at risk.
Con: AI tools recycle content
One of the biggest misunderstandings about AI tools is that they can generate new ideas that help you stand out in your industry. AI tools aren’t capable of generating “new” ideas. These tools regurgitate information that already exists on the web and deliver that information in their responses.
Though AI tools can hallucinate, they can’t generate new ideas. Many people have the misconception that AI tools can analyze information and develop a new, unheard-of conclusion.
If you rely solely on AI-generated content, you won’t create original content for your website. Your content will become a reiteration of what’s already on the web, which doesn’t give you an edge over your competitors. Your content won’t contain unique insights or anecdotes if you take it straight from an AI tool.
Con: AI content can lead to legal issues
As mentioned in the case of the New York lawyers above, there are inherent risks of AI copy. The problem with AI content goes beyond hallucinating — there are other legal issues with using these generative AI tools to create content.
Many AI tools train on copyrighted material and sources. Suppose the company that owns the AI tool didn’t get explicit permission to train their tool with that information. In that case, it creates legal issues — especially if the information isn’t properly cited on your page.
In fact, The New York Timesfiled a lawsuit against OpenAI for illegally using articles from their website to train the AI tool. Their lawsuit joins one from authors like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R.R. Martin, who filed a joint suit against OpenAI for illegally using their works to train the tool.
The issue isn’t just that the information these generative AI tools use is copyrighted and used without permission. The bigger problem is that the information they return to users is often plagiarized.
Copyleaks, a plagiarism detection software company, found that 60% of ChatGPT’s responses contained some form of plagiarism. The report also found that:
46% of responses contained paraphrased text
45% of responses contained identical text from a source
27% of responses contained minor changes from the original source
If you rely on generative AI tools to generate content for you, you run the risk of including plagiarized or unsourced content on your website. That can lead to reputational damage on search engines, or legal action if the person whose work was plagiarized chooses to pursue it.
The moral of the story is: You become responsible for the content you use from AI tools.
Con: AI content requires oversight and quality control
Companies train AI tools on different sets of data and information. As a result, these tools can often mix up or produce incorrect information. So, you can’t take the information at face value and publish it on your website.
You still need to oversee and vet the information these tools produce, which requires time and skill.
Con: AI content lacks brand voice and personality
Aside from legal issues, there are other problems with AI content. One of the biggest issues with AI content is that it lacks a brand voice and personality.
Your brand voice helps communicate your company’s values to your audience. When you generate and take content straight from a generative AI tool, it lacks your business’s unique branding to help it stand out from your competition.
In addition to brand voice, another problem with AI content is that it lacks personality. When you look at AI vs. human copy, the biggest difference is that humans implement their personality into the content they create.
Human writers each have individual personalities and can make content unique through their phrasing, examples, and connections to the readers.
Many human writers use metaphors and similes to help people connect and understand complicated topics. AI doesn’t think that way — it just presents the information and facts without making connections through literary devices or examples.
The human connection, though, gets people to buy into your content. When human writers use literary devices, personal experiences, and examples to connect to readers, it makes people more engaged with your content and see the value. AI can’t replicate and understand the human experience — it only provides information.
Not to mention, the style of writing from AI tools is rigid. The sentence structure is redundant, and it reads very robotic and monotonous. Taking this content at face value won’t provide a stylistic, branded, and authentic presentation of your content.
Con: People have negative perceptions of AI use
So, what’s wrong with AI-generated content? Well, many people are still skeptical about artificial intelligence in general — that can create problems for your brand.
In fact, 52% of Americans say they feel more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI — up from 38% in 2022.
As artificial intelligence permeates into different aspects of people’s lives, there’s more hesitancy and pushback about using the technology.
So, what does that mean for your content marketing efforts?
There are two scenarios that happen with AI-generated content:
Scenario #1: You don’t disclose you’re using AI content to prevent pushback
Okay, so you might be thinking…maybe I just won’t tell my audience that the content on my website was generated with AI. They’ll never know, and I can keep using AI tools to make content.
That seems like a safe bet, right?
The problem with this approach is it’s a quick way to break trust with your audience if they discover that you used AI and didn’t disclose it. Sports Illustrated is a prime example of what happens when you aren’t honest about how you use AI.
So if you opt not to disclose using AI for content, you risk your audience finding out anyway and damaging your company’s reputation.
Scenario #2: You disclose you’re publishing AI content
Maybe now you’re thinking to yourself, okay, I’ll just disclose that pages were generated using AI. While this is the better route for these two scenarios, it still comes with potential pushback from your audience.
If people have a negative perception of AI, they may not want to read your content when they see it was generated with artificial intelligence. You’ll also have people who don’t believe generative AI is accurate, so they may turn to an alternative source instead.
Real-world case studies of AI content: How AI content impacts businesses
Since the inception of AI-generated content, many people have experimented with using these tools to generate content for their websites.
Many of these websites were negatively impacted by Google’s core updates, which continually work to weed out spammy or unhelpful content.
Here are some real-world case studies that show how using AI content impacted businesses.
Case Study #1: Bonsai Mary
Jesse Cunningham, an SEO expert and SEO YouTuber, experimented with the effects of creating AI-generated content. He created a website called Bonsai Mary that shares “helpful” information about all things houseplants.
The website saw a steep drop in traffic after Google’s core update in March 2024.
All the content on the website was generated using AI tools with no human influence or oversight. The website experienced tons of growth, starting in December 2023, but the growth was short-lived.
After Google’s core update in March 2024, which refined the algorithm to weed out spammy, low-quality content, the website saw a 95% decrease in traffic.
The Bonsai Mary website is an example of how AI-generated content doesn’t drive sustainable results over time.
Case Study #2: Casual.app
In 2021, Casual worked with Byword, an AI-powered article generation tool, to create content for their website. The company spent six months adding thousands of pages to the website.
The results seemed really promising. Casual started to steadily climb up in search results and saw a strong increase in traffic.
That was before Google adjusted its algorithm to address the quality and validity of AI content.
So, where does the website stand today?
When Google dropped its November 2023 core update that addressed updates regarding E-E-A-T, Casual’s website experienced a massive drop. Their website saw a 99.3% decrease in monthly traffic after the core update.
So, why such a sudden drop in traffic? Casual had a lot of AI-generated content on their website, which, as mentioned before, falls short in terms of E-E-A-T. When Google released the update to focus on this high-quality, expert-backed content, Casual’s website took a hit because its content didn’t have that.
Casual.app is a great example of how AI content falls short of E-E-A-T, which is crucial for ranking in search results.
Case Study #3: A lawn care website
Nearly all the articles on a lawn care’s website were created with AI tools with no human oversight or alterations.
After Google’s core updates in the past year, the website has continually dropped in terms of traffic and keywords. The September 2023 core update, which addressed the helpfulness of content, caused a continual drop in the website’s performance. In the end, this lawn care website saw a 100% decrease in organic traffic.
Additionally, the website saw a drop in keywords it was ranking for.
As a result, one of the biggest AI-generated content risks is that you’ll create content that doesn’t rank well in search results, for relevant keywords, or drive traffic and qualified leads. This lawn care website is a prime example of how just because you create AI content and put it on your website doesn’t mean it’ll rank and drive traffic.
Case study #4: JPost Advisor
JPost Advisor is a subdirectory filled with AI affiliate content. The content in this subdirectory focuses on sharing listicles of consumer products recommendations, ranging from fiber supplements to electric kettles.
JPost Advisor saw a significant increase in traffic from creating AI-generated content.
After Google’s March core update, though, JPost saw a dramatic drop in traffic — a 99.8% decrease in traffic. Many of their pages got de-indexed by Google and no longer rank.
So, why did this subdirectory take a massive hit?
With the March 2024 core update, one of the focuses was on reducing site reputation abuse. This factor addressed websites that have great content, but also host low-quality content provided by third-parties wanting to capitalize on the host website’s strong reputation.
The JPost Advisor subdirectory does exactly that — it hosts third-party content that doesn’t have anything to do with the news they normally cover. As a result, Google de-ranked that section of their website and the articles housed underneath it.
JPost Advisor serves as a great example of how AI content can be viewed as spammy and as an opportunity to game search result rankings, which ultimately results in lower rankings.
Case Study #5: Pixelfy.me
Pixelfy.me is another example of a website that took a hit after Google’s core update in March. Their guide section looks similar to JPost Advisor — it’s filled with AI-generated content that covers lists of the best products, ranging from hot tub kits to storage bins.
Pixelfy.me saw great success with their AI-generated content, until Google’s core update launched in March. The website saw a 99.7% decrease in traffic as a result of the update to the algorithm.
Pixelfy.me’s guide pages took a big hit after the update — but why?
A big problem with the AI-generated content is that it isn’t helpful, reliable content. For example, the page has an article about the top 5 flutes. The problem, however, is that the entire article focuses on champagne flutes and not the instrument, despite the beginning of the content indicating it would be about the instrument.
If someone was looking for the best flute (instrument), this article would be far from helpful.
The lack of oversight and helpful, original content caused Pixelfy.me’s rankings to drop, proving that AI content isn’t sustainable for long-term ranking.
How to use AI responsibly for content
There are a lot of risks with AI copy, but that doesn’t mean you have to be absolved from using AI in your content creation process. While it’s not recommended that you rely on AI-generated content, you can use AI tools to help speed up aspects of your content creation process.
Instead of using AI tools to generate content, consider using them to generate keyword ideas. Finding relevant keywords for your website can be a challenging task, especially if you don’t know where to start looking.
You can use generative AI tools to help you find relevant terms for your website. These tools can spit out dozens of relevant keywords for your business.
It’s a quick and easy way to find keyword topics so that you can create new content for your website.
If you’re stuck trying to find related keywords, generative AI tools can help you find related keywords with ease.
Generative AI tools are a great option for helping you identify relevant terms. If you have a starting keyword but want to find more related keywords to integrate into your page, generative AI tools can help you find related keywords.
Keyword generation is a great use case for generative AI tools that can help speed up the keyword research part of your process.
2. Idea brainstorming
One of the biggest challenges with content creation is coming up with new ideas. Sometimes it can feel difficult to find new topics to address, especially if you already have a lot of content created on your website. That’s where generative AI tools can help.
You can ask generative AI tools questions about topics related to your industry and get some fresh ideas. For example, when you ask TeamAI to generate a list of blog topics around crocheting stitches, it provides a topic and brief description to help you get started.
Using AI tools to generate content ideas is a great option if you feel stuck trying to come up with your next topic.
3. Content clustering
While it’s not recommended to use AI tools to generate content, you should use them to help you come up with content clusters. A content cluster is a group of interconnected, related pages on your website. These pages have a main topic of focus that branches out into smaller, related topics.
For example, let’s say you wanted to create numerous pages on your website dedicated to helping beginner crocheters. All you have to do is ask a generative AI tool like TeamAI to create a content cluster around crocheting for beginners, and it’ll give you a breakdown of topics and subtopics to cover.
As you can see, TeamAI provided great topics to cover, including the benefits of crocheting, how to read patterns, and more. All these topics fit great for someone trying to provide beginners with the information they need to crochet.
Generative AI tools benefit your content planning process greatly. These tools will help you cut down time in the planning aspects of your content marketing strategy.
4. Content outlining
Okay, so it’s risky to use AI to create content, but what about outlining? Generative AI tools can be a great alternative if you find you spend too much time trying to outline content. You can ask a generative AI tool to do it for you.
Within seconds, you’ll have a comprehensive outline and structure for your piece.
Keep in mind that this outline is just a starting point. You’ll still want to look at the search landscape for your keyword and see what the top-ranking pages look like, how they’re formatted, and their length.
For example, if you see that the top three ranking pages are on the shorter side, you may need to trim out some of the information the generative AI tool provides. At the same time, using a generative AI tool can help you identify areas of content that your competitors aren’t covering that could give you an edge.
If you want to use generative AI tools as part of your content process, try using them to outline content for your website.
5. Clarification
When creating content, you may run into snags where you aren’t sure what something is, forget what something means, or are confused about a subtopic.
Instead of spending time scouring the web for clarification, you can use an AI tool to help clarify it for you. It can even be something as simple as clarifying the difference between “affect” and “effect.”
Generative AI tools are great for helping with these clarification moments that may not seem like they cost a lot of time but do add up as you write.
6. Proofreading
Once you create your content, you must proofread it to find mistakes. While many modern word processors find, correct, and suggest problems with ease, they can’t catch everything. Generative AI can help with proofreading your content to identify grammar, spelling, and syntax errors.
Using a generative AI tool saves your team time because they can focus on editing content for comprehension and meaning, rather than getting bogged down with grammatical corrections.
Why human-written content is best for your business
Since there are numerous risks of AI copy, it’s best to continue creating human-written content. Human-written content offers a lot of benefits for your business, including:
Let’s talk more about the benefits of having human-generated content:
1. Originality of content
Well-known risks of AI copy are plagiarism and regurgitating information, but human-written content helps you avoid that problem. When people create content for your website, it’s originally crafted and executed to make it unique for your site.
When writers craft content, the core information will be similar to other pages on the web. The originality comes from how the writer chooses to present the information, the formatting, and the examples used on the page.
If you gave two writers the same topic and asked them to write a blog post, you would get two blog posts with the same basic information, but they would present the information differently.
Creating original content is what Google wants. As mentioned earlier, Google’s guidelines state, “Those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality people-first content.” Human writers will create the original content you need to stay competitive in search results.
2. Building connections with readers
A big part of seeing success in Google search results is creating people-first content — that means creating content for readers, not bots that crawl pages. When looking at AI vs. human copy, you’ll find that human writers are better at creating people-first content.
Why? Because writers build connections with readers.
Expert insights from
Trevin ShireyVice President of Marketing
“It’s easy to see the allure and time savings of AI-generated content and forget about the importance of building trust and human connection in your copy. The content on your website isn’t just a checkbox you need to have…it’s an opportunity to showcase your business’s expertise, personality, and uniqueness. Settling for AI-generated content lets you check off the “add content to website” box but makes you miss out on so many things that matter in marketing.”
When you generate AI content, there’s no emotion or feeling behind it. These tools don’t have feelings and don’t know how to connect to the human experience. They’re good for sharing factual information, but not the best at making the information resonate with an audience.
Human writers know how to make connections with readers. Writers use stories and examples to help explain information and enable readers to connect with what they’re sharing. Human writers know about life experiences and can use common experiences to connect with readers and explain difficult topics.
Take financial literacy, for example. Topics surrounding money, like investing, budgeting, and taxes, are challenging topics for people to understand and come with a lot of stress. They want to get advice from pages that show understanding and use examples to make sense of complicated topics.
There’s a lot of value in connecting with readers, too. When your content resonates with someone, they’re more likely to read it and engage with it. Not to mention, it also helps them better connect with your brand when your content appeals to them.
So, by relying on human-written content, you’ll connect with more readers and get them engaged with your business.
3. Increased quality of content that performs better in search results
When comparing AI vs. human copy, one big difference you’ll notice is the quality of content. Though generative AI tools can spit out content fast, they don’t know what content ranks or performs well. These tools just provide information related to the user’s question.
Human writers have analytical skills that help them determine what your content should look like for a certain query. They visit the top-ranking pages for your target keyword and determine what information is needed to help your page rank.
Not to mention, humans can also identify gaps and opportunities where your content can outshine your competition — AI tools don’t do that. Humans have reasoning skills and experience that help them make these determinations.
Additionally, people writing content for your industry often have knowledge or experience working in it. They know the terminology, the market, and the background of it. That helps elevate the quality of your content because they have the background experience or knowledge to back up the writing.
AI tools take everything at face value. They pull information from their resources, which can include old resources, to generate responses. You may get outdated information from AI tools that a human writer would know is outdated just from researching or working in the industry.
All of these aspects combined make for better performance in search results.
Here’s a great comparison: Let’s look at an AI-generated article targeting the keyword “garage storage racks” compared to a human-written one ranking in the top 10 for that keyword.
The AI-generated content, for one, has a long-winded Amazon product title as the title for the product listed.
Compare that to the human-generated article, which qualifies each shelf with a “best for” title.
A human writer knows that people are likely to scan through the page, so they use the “best for” titles to draw attention to a specific section. If someone was looking for a budget-friendly shelving option, this title would draw the reader in.
The same can’t be said about the AI-generated article.
In addition, the human-generated article focuses on including the information people need to know, like price, dimensions, and weight capacity. All this information is presented in an easy-to-read table.
The AI-generated article doesn’t include this important information for readers.
So, how do these two pages compare with organic traffic and performance in search engines?
The AI-generated page has seen no traffic growth for the page — the little, minuscule traffic it had dropped after Google’s March Core Update.
Now compare that to the human-written page.
This page overall performs better than the AI-generated content. It naturally ebbs and flows in performance, as human content does with Google’s changing algorithm.
So, as you can see, the human-generated content performs better overall in search engines than the AI-generated content.
4. Integrated business branding
An important part of marketing your business online is your branding. Helping your audience get familiar with your brand is crucial for earning new leads that turn into customers. One of the problems with AI content is that it doesn’t integrate your business’s branding — but humans do.
Every business has a writing style unique to their brand. Some brands take a more playful approach with their content, while others take a serious, straightforward approach. AI tools can’t replicate that type of tone and branding.
Human writers can implement your brand’s unique style in their writing to help it fit your website. They know what style, phrasing, and language to use to make it fit your brand and provide a more cohesive, branded experience.
5. More flexibility with writing
Have you heard people say, “You need to make content for every part of the marketing funnel?” The reality is that different parts of your marketing funnel need to meet different audience needs.
Someone who’s at the top of the funnel and just discovering your business doesn’t need the same type of information that someone at the bottom of your funnel needs. The information, style and language change when you write content for different parts of your funnel.
When you have human writers, you get more flexibility with writing style.
AI tools don’t have the flexibility of a human writer. They’re programmed to write a certain way and create content that, as mentioned previously, doesn’t have any style or emotion. It’s difficult to create content that adapts to different parts of the sales funnel.
Human writers know how to adjust content to meet the needs of people at different stages of the funnel. People can write a fun, easy-going blog or a focused, sales service page. You get more flexibility in style, length, and presentation with human writers.
6. More variety in writing
A big benefit of human writing is that humans vary the way they write. Even if a person writes 10 listicle articles, not every listicle will look the same. Humans naturally vary the way they write, from the format to the topic.
One of the biggest problems with AI content, that isn’t a problem with human writers, is variety. AI tools often provide information in the same style, sentence structure, and language. There’s limited variety when you use these tools.
You can see a prime example of this on Pixelfy.me’s website. All the pages in their guide section are generated with AI tools.
When you scroll through their guide page and click on different articles, you can see they’re all very similarly structured. They all are a list of top 5 products and every article includes a picture of the product, a pro and con list, and a product description.
There’s no variety to the content because it was generated with AI tools. This lack of variety can make your website look spammy to visitors.
With human writers, you won’t have that problem. Every writer has a different style and approach to how they write a piece of content, which helps with the variety of your website. As we mentioned earlier, if you give two people the same topic, they won’t produce the exact same article!
When you have a diverse audience, you want to have a varied style of writing and presenting information. Human writers allow you to meet that need and provide your audience with a better experience.
The future of AI in content marketing
The dangers of AI copy won’t go away anytime soon. Even though it seems like using AI is an easy way to produce content fast, it won’t provide sustainable results in the future.
While Google isn’t against companies using AI to create content, it is continually adjusting the algorithm to favor original, people-first content.
In 2022, Google filed a patent for determining what they called an information gain score. Information gain is a measure of how unique your content is from other pages ranking in search. While it’s not in place yet, Google may opt to use this score in the future to further help the algorithm promote valuable, helpful content.
Unfortunately, AI-generated content falls short of being valuable, helpful content.
So, how can AI be a part of your content strategy and still help you rank in search results?
The common misconception is that AI is meant to replace human writers. Truthfully, its purpose is to aid human writers. AI tools should be viewed as a supplement to a strong content strategy — not a replacement.
AI tools can help you speed up tedious tasks, like keyword research or outlining, to allow your writers to focus more time on crafting top-notch content. These tools can be the perfect addition to any writer’s tool belt to help them refine their writing process.
Just remember — one expertly crafted, researched, and written content piece will do more for your business than 10 AI-generated articles with no oversight. Your content quality drives the success of your performance in search engines.
So, in the end, it’s best to let humans continue to create compelling, helpful, and reliable content if you want your business to continue growing online.
Get human-written copy from industry experts at WebFX
Quality content takes time, and sometimes you don’t have that. That’s why investing in professional website copywriting services is the happy medium you need to get professional, high-quality content for your website.
We have a team of 100+ specialized content writers who know how to craft content that drives qualified traffic to your website. We’ve worked in 200+ industries, so our team knows how to create content for dozens of industries.
Not to mention, all copy is reviewed by one of our certified industry experts. That means you’ll get factual and accurate content for your website.
With over 28 years of experience in digital marketing, we know what it takes to create content that grows businesses.
Craft a tailored online marketing strategy! Utilize our free Internet marketing calculator for a custom plan based on your location, reach, timeframe, and budget.
Craft a tailored online marketing strategy! Utilize our free Internet marketing calculator for a custom plan based on your location, reach, timeframe, and budget.
Macy is a marketing writer with over five years of experience creating content for dozens of industries including food and beverage, home services, and education. She also specializes in creating SEO and PPC content. Her work has been featured by Search Engine Journal, HubSpot, Entrepreneur, Clutch, and more. In her free time, Macy enjoys trying new crafts and reading comic books.
