AI-Generated Content: The Dangers of Overreliance

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools in content production are rapidly increasing. However, over-reliance on these technologies can pose some serious drawbacks.

This week, I want to emphasize why content production with AI should be handled carefully.

In the past weeks, I mentioned attending an online course called Fundamentals of Generative Artificial Intelligence. I took the course to learn the working principles of LLM (Large Language Models) supported artificial intelligence tools, especially ChatGPT, and to become aware of the ethical and moral responsibilities I should pay attention to when using these tools.

After attending the course, I concluded that we should not trust the outputs of these tools 100 per cent, and I took it upon myself to warn you. I realized that writing using these tools, in particular, is not a good idea, even if you write the best prompt in the world.

These tools write based on the data sets they are taught, considering statistical probabilities. ChatGPT may fascinate you when you write about a subject you know nothing about, but it creates an article based on the information and statistical calculations it has learned. They do the same to thousands of people like you.

LLMs encode language as tokens. Tokens can be words or parts of words. For example, in GPT-3, the English word “the” takes 262 as a determiner, and “cat” takes 464. LLMs are not information retrieval systems, nor are they deterministic. Instead, they produce random outputs based on a probability distribution. Advanced search engines such as Google can easily decipher the patterns in the articles produced by these tools and reduce the value of the pages containing that content.

It would be more logical to use these tools not to write an article from scratch but to create a content structure, summarize and analyze existing articles, and identify the most critical points. For example, this is how I analyze the articles I choose when creating this newsletter. I don’t have to read them all one by one.

Below, I have examined the drawbacks of a content production process overly dependent on these tools.

Brand Consistency and Tone of Voice

AI-generated content often fails to reflect your brand’s unique tone of voice and values. AI models learn from large data sets and, therefore, can lack specificity. For example, as a brand, you may want to highlight things your customers value—supply chain transparency, carbon footprint, etc. AI-generated content may fail to capture these subtle nuances, weakening your brand identity and decreasing customer loyalty.

Repeated and Incorrect Information

AI tools cannot generate new knowledge; it simply rearranges existing information. It is expressly limited by the quality of the datasets on which AI models are trained. Additionally, AI can sometimes produce erroneous information called “hallucinations.” It can damage your brand’s credibility and lead to misinformation among your users. Google’s algorithm updates have become even better at detecting duplicate and unoriginal content. Therefore, AI-generated content may have adverse effects on search engine results.

EEAT Principles

Google’s EEAT (Expertise, Competency, Credibility and Experience) principles play an essential role in evaluating the quality of content. AI-generated content often falls short of meeting these principles. Expertise and reliability rely on the human touch and in-depth knowledge. AI-generated content cannot provide this depth and unique perspective.

AI tools can be helpful for specific tasks, but over-reliance on content production can harm your brand’s tone of voice, credibility, and authenticity. By using AI carefully and limitedly in your content strategy, you should focus on delivering the most valuable and authentic information for your users. It’s best to view AI as a tool to increase efficiency and automate repetitive tasks.

My recommendations:

1. Produce Your Content: Use AI as an auxiliary tool, but produce the main content yourself.
2. Maintain Your Brand Voice: Tailor AI-generated content to fit your brand voice.
3. Prioritize Quality: Produce content that complies with Google’s EEAT principles.
4. Conduct Regular Moderation: Regularly review AI-generated content and correct it as necessary.

With this approach, you can maintain your brand’s credibility and authenticity while leveraging the potential of AI. Creating a GPT accompanied by a spelling or style guide can produce good results if you want artificial intelligence to deliver content. I tried this on my GPTs and found it produced excellent results. For example, you can make much higher quality content by teaching a PDF file containing the spelling rules of the Turkish Language Association to your GPT. Of course, it should be published on your site after being reviewed by an expert. To humanize AI-generated content, you can use ContentGO’s AI + Human service or SurferSEO’s newly released AI Humanizer tool, which you can try for free.