The undoubtable hot topic of the moment is ChatGPT. Heralded as the world’s next big disruptor, Harvard Business Review declared that we’re entering a new era of AI, while other leading experts suggest that ChatGPT has the potential to dethrone Google and become the planet’s most used search engine.
But what exactly is it? Business news platform ZDNET defines it as “a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with a chatbot.” This new conversational AI interface built on the GPT-3 large language model is attracting nearly 40 million users per day, and has the capability of performing a variety of tasks including answering research questions, translating languages, composing songs, and generating computer code. Actor Ryan Reynolds even used the language model to write his latest commercial for Mint Mobile.
According to a recent study, 73% of marketing experts in the Word Finder poll believe ChatGPT will increase our efficiency, automate tasks (68%) and help perform data analysis (63%). So, this all begs the question: are the robots really taking over, and if they do, will content creators become obsolete? Before you completely rethink your career, you’ll be happy to know that ChatGPT is not without limitations. As with any emerging AI technology, ChatGPT has a number of glaring weaknesses that can impact your content’s performance, prejudice, truthfulness and accuracy. Join Wordsmith to find out the key reasons why the content creator’s role is here to stay.
1. Google Bots are on the fence
In 2022, Google announced that content generated by language processing tools would be considered automatically generated thus violating their webmaster guidelines and be treated as ‘spam’. However, in the last couple of months, they’re reclarified this statement and concluded that AI generated content will be targeted negatively when it comes to search-ranking purposes. This means, if you create online content using ChatGPT it may damage your SEO. Some claim this is because ChatGPT’s software competes with Google, so there’s a possibility Google might continue to penalise AI generated content solely to maintain its competitive advantage in the marketplace.
For marketers considering replacing freelancers and content creators with the seemingly cost-effective ChatGPT should tread carefully, as their content could be completely removed from Google’s search results – meaning your brand will not be getting the visibility it deserves.
Megan Ruszkowski, VP of Marketing and Sales Development at CoreSite delves a little deeper explaining, “Google’s history provides a lesson: Quality is more effective than quantity. If there’s a sea of AI-generated content that sounds and looks pretty much the same, human-generated content should be more valuable and more effective in SEO, just as keyword stuffing failed and content that offers mediocre expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness ranks low (see Google’s E-A-T Principle).” She continues, “For my team, one answer is clear. We will continue to develop content using a combination of original thought, understanding our company’s differentiators, sweat equity, collaboration and authenticity.”
2. Original Thought Is Still Needed
For decades, copywriters and content creators have been hired by businesses with the primary objective to sell their products, or services, by creating exciting, attention-grabbing text that resonates with their audiences. To truly stand out from the crowd, the adverts, slogans and marketing campaigns need to have original thought, something that ChatGPT isn’t capable of. Everything that the language processing tool creates is taken from knowledge that already exists online. It simply reorders information that’s already available, making it seem like it’s brand new.
ChatGPT can’t produce complex or nuanced answers to queries, it isn’t capable of novel thinking, as it doesn’t have access to all of the knowledge humans do. If you have specific niche topics that you want to create copy for, ChatGPT may not be able to give a fully rounded answer. Why? Because the language processing tool is currently limited to data from before 2021, so the information it pulls from databases will not be up-to-date and reflect the most recent developments or changes in certain fields. But when you hire a niche copywriter, you can rest assured that they have expert knowledge in their fields and have the ability and resources to pull information together that’s up-to-date and relevant for your consumers.
3. ChatGPT Content Can Potentially Be Biased
This leads us onto the next reason. ChatGPT is trained to scan large sets of text data, so the answers you may receive could contain certain biases and prejudices based on the copy it is fed. This can lead the AI technology to generate content that’s unintentionally biased and discriminatory, so it is essential that if marketers are going to use ChatGPT that they approve the copy before they publish as this could potentially damage your brand’s reputation beyond repair.
One of the most glaring drawbacks of ChatGPT is that this tool isn’t capable of deciphering between correct and incorrect information. The app itself even admits: “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Fixing this issue is challenging, as: (1) during training, there’s currently no source of truth; (2) training the model to be more cautious causes it to decline questions that it can answer correctly; and (3) supervised training misleads the model because the ideal answer depends on what the model knows, rather than what the human demonstrator knows.” According to a poll by CodeInterview, only 54% of marketers believe that AI is biased. So if you chose to use ChatGPT, you should go through its output with a fine-toothed comb and double-check every source is credible before you publish the end deliverable. Also, it’s worth noting that you should never share proprietary or personal data when asking ChatGPT to generate answers, as this will become part of the OpenAI system that’s readily available for public viewing.
4. The technology Lacks Common Sense and Emotional Intelligence
ChatGPT does not possess human-level common sense. VP, Principal Forrester Analyst, Jay Pattisall even went as far to say that the outputs of ChatGPT “are coherent nonsense by producing material either deliberately or accidently inaccurate”. He explains that because of this, marketer’s need “increased levels of fact-checking, proofing, and editing previously not required. Sure, the software can produce volumes of text, images, or audio at breakneck speed. But marketing and agency executives need to carefully review and vet each piece of AI-produced content for its appropriateness and quality.”
The language processing tool also lacks emotional intelligence. While it may look as if it can generate content that seems empathetic, it does not have the same capacity to detect subtle emotional cues in writing or create appropriate content that reflects complex emotional situations like a human does. This means the content it supplies might be hit and miss with your target audience. Amidst a global recession, emotions are heightened, and consumers are demanding content that solves their unique problems and needs in the current climate. They don’t want content that simply adds to the noise – remember it’s always been about quality, not quantity. No one wants to read fluff pieces that have no depth.
5. Customers still prefer content with a human touch
Let’s face it, ChatGPT can’t replace the human touch (at least, not yet). Increasingly over the last decade, we’ve seen the negatives and positions between campaign AI automation and human-driven approaches, but the human touch continues to wins every time. Why? Because content creators can convey meaning, empathy, personality and brand voice in an authentic and genuine way – something AI cannot currently compete with. Jia Wertz, filmmaker and the Founder of Studio 15, comments, “Job descriptions will definitely change, but there will always be jobs for humans.” She goes on to say that ChatGPT is actually a positive tool for content creators. If they embrace it correctly, ChatGPT will primarily be used to “focus on mundane, manual tasks, while workers will transition into jobs that require more deep critical thinking and empathy.”
AI technology is incapable of substituting the artful creativity and human connectivity necessary to win the hearts and minds of consumers in today’s society. However, ChatGPT may be able to speed up the idea generation process and assist in identifying elements that could make copy more entertaining or engaging. A good copywriter may choose to use ChatGPT to come up with snippet sentences, short straplines, and effective calls-to-action while underpinning their work with well-researched slogans, messaging, and wordplay. However, make no mistake, for this relationship between content creator and ChatGPT to work effectively, critical thinking, creativity and strategic decision-making, will still remain solely within the content creator’s remit.
It may be too early in the game to fully grasp how AI and ChatGPT will work alongside content creators, but one thing is for certain – it will not replace the need for great copywriters who have mastered the skill of making words dance and consumers feel. Technology always has a way of eclipsing itself. The floppy disc was replaced by the flash drive, the desktop replaced by the iPad and iPhone. But while this endless cycle continues, there remains one constant - the human touch. A real connection between a brand’s copywriter and its consumers, human to human, has and always will be irreplaceable.