The Abilities and Limitations of AI in Content Creation
April 12, 2024
Artificial intelligence (AI) has garnered a significant amount of public attention in recent times. Believe it or not, though, it’s not exactly a new thing. AI has been around for some time, although its use has only recently started catching on in mainstream, public applications.
Before tools such as ChatGPT emerged on the horizon, AI had been limited to specific uses within computing, data science, or programming. Nowadays, it seems there is nothing that AI cannot tackle.
But for all of its uses, AI also has its share of limitations. That is why understanding AI’s abilities and limitations, specifically within content creation, is a must.
The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Content Creation
The use of AI for creating content has been a topic of great discussion and debate.
On the one hand, supporters encourage the possibility of automated tools in content creation and generation, particularly marketing copy. This situation has led numerous companies to offer automated tools that can generate marketing text, product descriptions, or advertisements in mere seconds. These tools can reduce the time needed to generate marketing materials, saving cost and effort along the way.
However, detractors of AI content creation feel that utilizing automated tools to create content marketing pushes the boundaries of ethical practices. Critics state that AI content creation is misleading and often deceptive. In the best of cases, AI created content does not offer the best possible user experience that comes with great content marketing as created and generated by humans.
This debate is complex, making it difficult to adjudicate a winner.
The fact is that AI created content has its pros and cons.
Therefore, taking sides requires a deeper examination of the upside and downside of AI content creation in order to determine whether implementing AI in content marketing is worthwhile.
It should be noted that content writers may find AI quite useful in some circumstances.
Nevertheless, content writers and writing agencies must be aware that AI has considerable limitations.
Understanding these conditions can help content creators and writing agencies harness the power of AI without compromising the quality of their work and the user experience it generates.
The Abilities of Artificial Intelligence in Content Creation
When looking at what AI can accomplish, the following points underscore the power that AI can unleash within a content marketing context. This power can become a powerful means of saving time, effort, and cost, especially for smaller writing agencies or individual content creators.
Large-Scale AI Content Creation
The biggest issue surrounding the AI debate is AI created content.
Indeed, AI can produce large volumes of text in seconds or minutes. This feature is highly encouraging since it can save content writers significant amounts of time, allowing for faster turnaround times.
Consequently, content writers and writing agencies cannot ignore this remarkable upside. Reductions in production times mean that brands can get their products out to consumers faster, allowing them to recuperate costs and investments sooner.
Content Editing and Proofreading
AI provides powerful tools to aid content writers in content editing and proofreading.
AI-powered editing tools can scour large amounts of text to uncover mistakes, styling issues, and other language matters quickly and effectively. This feature allows content creators to whittle down the time needed to churn out highly polished content marketing materials.
Content Personalization
AI tools facilitate content personalization. For instance, AI algorithms can detect popular keywords and phrases that content writers can then incorporate into great content marketing.
This function allows writing agencies to produce material that’s relevant to a certain customer segment, giving brands an opportunity to reach their target market more effectively.
Data Analytics and Audience Insights
One of AI’s key features is data on audience insights and analytics. These data allow content writers to monitor the effectiveness of their marketing content.
As a result, content writers and writing agencies can tailor their content to suit specific customer needs and expectations.
Automated Social Media Posting
Social media marketing demands a consistent presence. This constant presence can become burdensome to human content writers as posting frequent content requires considerable time and attention.
Additionally, brands must invest in hiring multiple social media content creators.
AI can reduce many of these limitations by automating social media posting.
Human content writers can set up parameters so that AI tackles frequent content marketing posts.
Image and Video Optimization
AI has proven to become an ally in optimizing image and video materials by automating their metadata, tagging, and categorization.
In fact, AI has shown to be quite adept at inserting relevant keywords, leading to improved organization and discoverability of visual content.
SEO Optimization
The lifeline of great content marketing is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
AI provides robust SEO capabilities through the identification of relevant keywords, allowing content writers and writing agencies to review, edit, and optimize content to boost its searchability and search engine rankings.
Localization Services
A key feature of great content marketing is localization. Localization involves gearing content to specific geographical regions. In this regard, translation becomes a common barrier content writers must overcome.
AI has been shown to be quite effective in translating large volumes of text in minutes, helping writing agencies break through obstacles in localized content creation.
Predictive Analytics
Great content marketing strives to be one step ahead of the curve. Thus, utilizing AI predictive tools in content marketing allows content creators to visualize what trends may affect their target audience.
Predictive analysis helps writing agencies with their editorial calendars, focusing on topics and areas their target audience wants to see. In turn, predictive analysis can also become a potent force in adjusting branding strategies amid shifting customer needs and wants.
Content Monetization Strategies
One of the key goals of great content marketing is monetization. Monetization can occur when content such as blogs generates income: ads running within it or as sponsored posts, for example.
However, content monetization goes beyond merely getting paid for clicks. Content monetization strategies enable content writers to craft influential material based on audience behavior and opportunity identification, leading to sales and subscriptions, among other types of income generation.
On the whole, AI tools offer a number of key benefits that are hard to overlook. Content writers and writing agencies cannot pass up the chance to harness AI’s robust functions, especially when it comes to saving time, effort, and cost.
But like anything in life, AI has a downside. Therefore, understanding this downside requires deeper examination.
The Limitations of Artificial Intelligence in Content Creation
As great as AI can be in assisting writers in creating content, the reality is that it does have its limitations. As such, content writers and writing agencies must be aware of what AI cannot do, in spite of the remarkable things it can produce.
Here are 10 of the top thing things that AI cannot do (but humans can!):
1. Generate Original Content
The most evident limitation of AI is original creative content. At this stage in its development, AI cannot produce original content marketing materials.
AI is trained on algorithms and models that mimic existing content. As a result, AI created content tends to be generic, lacking the key features that make human-generated content unique.
2. Understand Cultural Context
AI-based language models lack the knowledge that comes with cultural understanding and sensitivity.
This lack of context may alienate certain users, leading content to miss reaching its intended audience.
This reason explains why AI content creation requires human intervention to ensure it meets the criteria needed to reach its intended audiences while avoiding cultural insensitivity.
3. Make Complex Editorial Decisions
AI is incapable of decision-making. For instance, AI tools cannot decide the right time for materials to be published or which content marketing pieces are most suitable based on literary merit, subjective criteria, or social relevance.
While AI may provide useful insights to aid decision-making processes, AI cannot replace human decision-making capabilities.
4. Tell Stories Intuitively
Given the fact that AI created content tends to be generic, its narratives lack the depth and connection that come from a compelling narrative that captures the essence of human experience and emotion.
This lack of depth may turn off users, given its blandness. And connecting with users is crucial in great content marketing, as users seek to find genuine emotions that go beyond mere lists of product features or information dumps.
5. Replace Investigative Journalism
At its core, AI does what it is told. This situation means that AI lacks the inquisitive nature of the human mind. Thus, AI cannot replace the nuanced investigative skills of human journalists and content writers as it cannot research data, conduct interviews, and manage ethical considerations in content generation.
While AI can produce vast amounts of content, it cannot discern what is relevant and what is not. It is still up to humans to determine if AI created content is relevant and useful for their specific purposes.
Unfortunately, AI content creation tends to be useless and irrelevant for investigative endeavors.
6. Understand Satire and Irony
AI can attempt to replicate unique human traits like irony and satire. However, it cannot intuitively incorporate such nuanced features of human communication.
Any sort of writing that relies upon interpreting cultural context and human experience is currently beyond AI’s scope.
While AI can reproduce existing content implementing this sort of tone and style, it cannot produce unique material interpreting the various contextual clues involved in the conversation.
Try as it might, AI is seemingly a long way away from being able to take inputs and use experience and interpretation to mold its responses.
7. Engage Emotionally
Like satire and irony, AI cannot incorporate emotional elements into its text. The explanation for this situation is simple: AI is not human and, therefore, does not have emotions.
AI also lacks the human experience that is essential in producing gripping works loaded with the emotional overtones needed to connect with readers at a personal level.
Think of an autobiography that captures the author’s thoughts and feelings throughout the most difficult parts of their lives. This effect is something that AI cannot replicate despite the most sophisticated language models.
8. Imitate Human Judgement in Ethical Dilemmas
Another core human characteristic is judgment. Human beings develop judgment skills as they hone their understanding of the world around them.
While AI can receive inputs feeding decision-making algorithms, the fact is that AI cannot hope to imitate human judgment, particularly in ethical dilemmas.
This situation means that AI is unable to explore ethical or moral issues with any sort of depth that a human being could.
9. Build Relationships
Great authors build relationships with their readers. Authors connect with readers to the point where readers see themselves as authors and vice-versa.
The question then becomes: Does AI have the sensitivity to build these relationships with readers?
Frankly, no.
AI does not have the sense to understand what might be going through a reader’s mind in order to produce material that resonates with them at a deeper level.
Perhaps sentient AI may one day be able to pull off something like that, but it's not quite there.
10. Produce Subjective Criticism
AI lacks any sort of subjective criticism as it is unable to formulate its own opinions on any topic.
AI models and algorithms are fed inputs and produce outcomes based on such inputs. This formulaic approach is efficient, but it cannot discern anything based on its own opinion.
Even when AI may be capable of processing millions of data points, it only produces an opinion based on an algorithm, not an informed opinion. When AI produces an “opinion,” it is nothing more than a reflection of the viewpoints expressed by AI’s programmers and builders.
A Final Thought
AI is one of the most powerful tools humankind has ever created. It can save a great deal of time and effort, especially in processing large volumes of data. As such, AI can help content writers and writing agencies reduce turnaround times, particularly with tasks such as proofreading and editing.
But when it comes to AI’s generative functions, AI is still light years away from mimicking anything close to human intuition and sensitivity.
While AI may be able to spit out voluminous information dumps, the writing style, content, and prose typically sound dry and generic.
Consequently, AI cannot replace the skills brought to the table by a competent human writer. Perhaps a sentient version of AI may be able to resemble human intuition. Nevertheless, this notion is nothing more than science fiction at this point.
Great content marketing continues to be the exclusive domain of human content writers.
