When you hear the phrase “artificial intelligence” (AI), you might imagine sentient machines determined to take over the world. In reality, AI has become a useful tool many of us use every day – think Siri or Alexa. AI in content marketing has also become widespread.
This technology has benefits and drawbacks, both of which can be significant. A late 2020 survey from
Gartner shows that 41% of respondents reported increased revenue after incorporating AI tools into their marketing campaigns. Another 38% added more personalization to their content with AI, which led to better customer satisfaction.
While AI can produce some impressive content, if used too extensively, the lack of humanity in the pieces you write is likely to be extremely noticeable.
If you’ve been thinking about using AI in your content, this is the article for you. We will explore the history of AI in content marketing, how content writers can use it today, and why humans will never be replaced by AI.
A Quick History of AI
Artificial intelligence used to be something relegated to science fiction. Fans of the genre could watch a human-like robot explore the final frontier in Star Trek (Data) or kill off its human overlords in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Hal). But, in the real world, AI is used as a versatile tool across many industries.
Over the last century, the theories around AI, or artificial intelligence, have evolved wildly. In fact, the term “artificial intelligence” was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956. Additionally, scientist and mathematician, Alan Turing, created what we know today as the Turing Test in the 1950s.
This series of questions is used to determine if a computer is capable of human-like thinking. These days, many researchers disregard the Turing Test today because it is too simple and has too many limitations. Then, in the 1960s, the United States Department of Defense started investing in artificial intelligence research.
Since then, AI has expanded to nearly every industry around the world and continues to evolve rapidly. When used correctly, artificial intelligence is an impressive and versatile tool. It is capable of making our lives easier, regardless of how it gets shown off in movies or television.
Source: https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/history-artificial-intelligence/
In recent years, we have seen incredible feats of AI from IBM’s Watson besting Jeopardy champions to Google’s AI reading lips better than professionals. AI has also become adept at predicting the future with MIT’s AI predicating actions two seconds before they happen.
With innovations like these, finding ways to use this advanced technology in content marketing is a no-brainer. There’s even been a big breakthrough in the use of AI in marketing with the evolution of “big data.” Now that computers can store massive amounts of information, machine learning and AI capabilities have skyrocketed.
These advancements are great for AI in content marketing because they can allow for more in-depth research and assistance while creating content.
Types of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is used in much of the technology we interact with every day. AI is generally split into three categories based on capabilities:
- Narrow AI: Also known as Weak AI, Narrow AI is typically limited to one task with predefined functions, for example, Alexa, Siri, or Google Translate.
- General AI: Also known as Strong AI, General AI can learn and perform many tasks that humans are capable of, such as driving a car, creating a digital painting, or writing a novel.
- Super AI: Super AI has surpassed human capabilities and can make rational decisions. Human beings have yet to create super AI.
How AI is Used in Content Marketing
When used well, AI can be a powerful tool for content marketing and even offer a competitive advantage. As the amount of data we produce continues to grow, AI is a necessary tool to stay on top of informational changes. Moreover, AI has the potential to revolutionize content writing, providing automated assistance and enhancing productivity in creating compelling and engaging content.
Here are some of the most useful ways to use AI in content marketing.
Personalized Content
Reading content that feels like it was created for you can make anyone feel special. In fact, one study by McKinsey shows that 71% of consumers expect personalization in their interactions with businesses, and 66% of them feel frustrated when they don’t get it.
Using AI when you automate some forms of content can help you keep things personalized at a larger scale. Doing this ensures that you avoid being overwhelmed with frustrated customers that leave you for a business with more of a personalized touch.
Personalized content is most evident in email marketing. Click through a small handful of promotional emails in your inbox. How many of them include your name in the header? Or reference an item you looked at on a company’s website but did not buy?
Source: Email from BuzzSumo
Streaming services like Netflix use AI to personalize your home page with recommended content based on what you have previously watched and liked.
Personalized content can help increase customer engagement and revenue with minimal human interaction needed.
Automated Content
Some large-scale news agencies like Washington Post, Fox, and Yahoo have started using AI to generate articles for the latest news updates. AI can instantly learn the information it needs and produce an article covering the topic.
This software won’t necessarily replace journalists or writers, but companies use the tools to share stories more quickly as they happen. They are then able to free up employees for other tasks and avoid the loss of hours and the expense needed to have a human write the content with a very short turnaround time.
Data-Driven Insights
Computers can take in and understand vast quantities of information in small fragments of time. This data -devouring behavior is helpful in learning new insights about your customers. What might take your marketing team weeks of analyzing, an AI-powered system can get through in minutes.
With these powerful insights, you can create more useful and personalized content that your leads and customers want to see.
Improved User Experiences
One innovative AI-powered tool that has become ubiquitous across the internet is chatbots. These systems use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to mimic human conversation. Today, they are commonly used as a customer support channel.
While chatbots are not a complete substitute for human help, they are a great way to fill in the gaps and offer customers some self-service options since chatbots never sleep or take a day off. Chatbots can help customers solve simple solutions by linking to FAQ databases.
You can also use the information you collect from your chatbots to drive content marketing decisions. For example, if customers frequently use your chatbots to ask the same question, this could be an excellent topic to cover in a blog or to add to an educational database.
Content Generation
Perhaps one of the best uses of AI in content marketing is the ability to save vast amounts of time with content generation tools. Instead of taking hours to choose blog topics, find relevant keywords, create a content strategy, and schedule social media posts, AI can do all of that in a small fraction of time.
With the time saved by not having to do these tasks, content marketers can focus more of their energy on the creative side of things, a place AI hasn’t fully entered.
How Does AI Generate Content?
When artificial intelligence generates new content, it examines already existing content to put together something new. Advanced algorithms like Natural Language Generation (NLG), NLP, machine learning, and deep learning collect data and look for patterns. Then, they generate something new, yet similar enough to what already exists.
Here are three content examples:
Text Generation
AI text generation is straightforward and works with the following steps:
- Input your desired topic along with any other required information.
- The AI will gather and analyze relevant information from its database and the internet to create a subset of data.
- The AI processes the subset using NLP.
- The AI uses NLG to create unique content with the most useful and reliable information.
One of the key benefits of AI-generated text is that it learns and improves every time it generates content. In addition, the more data it has to draw from, the better the content will be.
Deepfake Videos
Deepfake videos are a relatively new area in AI technology. This advanced technology can replace a person’s face or generate a new face for someone in a video.
While this technology is popularly used for comedic purposes in many YouTube videos, it can be used for marketing purposes, too.
You could use the technology to add more personalization to your content. For example, if a customer wanted to see what a model’s makeup would look like on their skin tone, deepfake technology can adjust the video to match the viewer.
Images
In recent years, AI-generated image technology has exploded. Many people enjoy playing with these tools to see some of the wild images AI technology creates. While some images look more like a Salvador Dali painting, others are incredibly realistic and have the potential to be a new source of images for online content.
Take this image for example. It has an image input of “a bowl of soup as a planet in the universe as digital art.” Looks pretty good.
Source: https://openai.com/dall-e-2/#demos
Some of the most popular AI image generators include:
- DALL-E 2
- Stable Diffusion
- Nightcafe AI
- Craiyon
- Midjourney
Why AI Can’t Replace Human-Created Content
With so many advancements and admittedly impressive results, it might seem like AI is quickly on its way to replacing human content creation. Thankfully for many of us in the marketing industry, this is not true.
Here are 6 reasons why humans will never be completely replaced by AI for content creation:
1. AI Does Not Have Emotional Intelligence
While some AI technology can interpret and even mimic human emotions, that does not mean AI has emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to control, express, and be aware of your and others’ emotions. It also involves handling interpersonal relationships and being empathetic.
As social animals, humans require emotional interactions to be happy and healthy. We communicate our emotions not only through body language and our words but through the release of hormones. This is something AI cannot replicate. That means content written by a person can better connect with your audience, and that’s the heart of creative marketing.
2. AI is Limited to Its Data Inputs
AI is fully based on the information it receives. While that information is vast, it is also limited. Computers have basic memory and storage limitations. Once that limit is reached, it requires new hardware to get more data and cannot adapt to this situation.
While humans tend to forget things, our brains never reach full capacity. We are capable of adapting, gathering new information at will, and improvising to new situations. These are behaviors that AI is not currently capable of.
3. AI Lacks Soft Skills
Soft skills are things like teamwork, creative thinking, interpersonal skills, and critical thinking. They are highly valued in the workplace. While AI attempts to mimic these skills with NLP technology, most humans can tell the difference when interacting with AI-powered technology.
4. AI is Powered by Humans
Artificial intelligence exists solely because of human intelligence. Humans create the code that powers AI, and they are in control of the hardware AI “lives” on. As AI technology continues to advance, those advancements are made by humans.
There is no evidence that AI will ever overtake human intelligence or capabilities since it is fully designed and operated by humans.
5. AI Has Limited Creativity
While AI technology can generate content. That content is based on everything that has come before it. It can only generate creative ideas based on things that already exist. This forces AI to stay within certain parameters – the antithesis of true creativity.
Humans, on the other hand, excel at generating creative, one-of-a-kind ideas. While we can gain inspiration from others, we like to try new things and solve problems, sometimes with little to no outside help.
6. AI Complements Human Capabilities, Instead of Replacing Them
While some human roles are undeniably being replaced by AI technology, that technology is creating new human opportunities at the same time. This is true in the marketing industry as well as other industries.
According to the World Economic Forum, 85 million human jobs will be replaced by machines or AI by 2025. In that same time, this shift will create 97 million new roles for humans.
With data like this, it is clear we can use AI technology to complement human creativity and create better, more informative, and more engaging content for everyone.
Get Great Content from Human Writers at Express Writers
While there is no denying the power, versatility, and benefits of Artificial Intelligence for content marketing, we still need the human touch.
At Express Writers, we are entirely staffed by humans who create great content. Our writers will never rely on AI to generate their content. Instead, we teach them tools to help them craft 100% unique content.
If you want content created exclusively by humans, contact Express Writers today.
