Risks of an AI Content Strategy: How to Protect Your Content Marketing

Since the rise of AI early last year, there seems to be one million and one tools out there claiming that they can write your content for you. Need a blog? No problem, AI can do that. Trying to write and publish a book? There’s an AI tool for that too. Just need a simple social media caption? AI’s got you covered.

Or does it?

We all want to work smarter, not harder, but does AI actually achieve this goal when it comes to content? While AI can be a powerful tool for many things, you may want to avoid solely relying on an AI content strategy.

Now, you may be asking, “How can AI hurt your content marketing? Can you use AI at all with content?” Luckily, we’re here to answer those questions for you today!

6 Ways Relying on AI Can Harm Your Content

There are several risks to relying on AI content. We’ll cover the most common issues we’ve seen over the past year.

1. Mind the Voice

Your brand’s voice is unique to you and your company. Your voice is how you communicate with your audience and relate to them to help showcase your product or service. You’ve likely worked hard on your content’s voice to accurately display your company’s personality and remain consistent across platforms.

Unfortunately, AI is not and cannot be an expert in your voice. There’s a reason some writers and readers claim they can detect AI-written content as soon as they see it—it all ends up being a little similar and a little bland. The last thing you want for your content is generic-sounding writing that’s devoid of human connection. You want your audience to experience the heart and voice behind your work, which is something AI has yet to do well.

2. A Known Trust Breaker

What if I told you almost 50% of people say they would not trust a brand that used AI-generated content? What if I told you that another 38% said they were unsure if they could trust a brand that used AI for content?

Well, that’s exactly what this study found.

That leaves only 14% of customers who would continue to trust you if you used AI to write content, which isn’t a big number. No one wants to lose loyal customers or diminish their audience base, but according to this study, using AI for content hurts your trust with audiences and may even cause them to take their business elsewhere.

3. AI Isn’t as Smart as You’d Hope

We’ve all been told that AI is the future and smarter than us humans, right? While that still may be the case in the year 3024, right now in 2024, AI doesn’t seem to always live up to its name of “Artificial Intelligence.”

Take the following example. I asked one of the most popular AI tools, ChatGPT, to tell me how many r’s are in the word strawberry. It confidently told me there are two r’s. When I asked it to spell out the word strawberry and count the r’s, it spelled the word correctly but continued to insist there were only two r’s.

While this may seem like a funny example, it speaks to a deeper issue with AI—not only is it not always correct, but sometimes, it’s confidently wrong. The number of r’s in strawberry is an obvious mistake, but what if you’re asking for technical content with niche research? It may tell you something wrong confidently, and if you’re not familiar with the subject, you may not know to double-check. This can lead to a dangerous yet unknowing spread of misinformation in your content.

4. Google Is Wary of AI Content

I’m sure you’ve noticed in recent months that your Google queries have a new result on the SERP—an AI summary of the answer to your question. While there’s been debate about how accurate these answers are and how Google decides which sites to use in this snippet, it also seems Google isn’t fully confident with AI-generated content. Right now, Google states that you can use AI for content, but it must be high quality and avoid spam. This is subject to change, and AI may not always be up to date on the best SEO practices to follow in content, hurting your ranking.

5. It May Be More Work

Why use AI in the first place for content? Likely, your answer was to save time and work. If AI can take one more thing off your plate, why not utilize it? However, consider all the issues we’ve already discussed: misinformation, lack of a distinct voice, missing SEO best practices, and so on and so forth. If you have to go back and fix all these issues, did you really save any time or effort? You may actually spend more time fixing AI content than you would have spent if you wrote it yourself from the beginning.

6. Legal & Bias Concerns

One factor that has not yet been fully settled is the legal concerns with AI content. All AI is trained on already available data sources, which can include copyrighted materials. By using AI for content, you could risk the AI producing something that is a copyright infringement. Furthermore, if you ever plan to copyright your content, you may not be able to if it is AI-generated.

In a similar vein, AI tends to lean on a bias depending on what material it is trained on. This can be something as simple as confirmation bias, but it can be as serious as gender or even racial biases. If this bias gets into your content, you could risk not only alienating your audience but may even be at risk for legal discrimination if you’re not careful.

How Can I Utilize an AI Content Strategy?

After all the items we just covered together, you may be wondering if there’s any way you can utilize AI in your content strategy. The answer is yes! There are ways to use AI in your content without causing harm to your marketing strategy.

Back in 2023, PHOS took a moment to step back and consider our AI content strategy and policy. What we decided is that AI makes for a great assistant, not a generator. Let’s go over some examples of what that means:

• Brainstorming: Have you ever needed to come up with fresh, new ideas but don’t know where to start? As a writer or creative, we’ve all been there. Sometimes, you just need someone to get the ball rolling in order to get the creative ideas flowing. AI can be a great brainstorming tool! It can present you with some ideas to get you started.
• Research: I know I stated earlier that AI’s research can be inaccurate at times, but like brainstorming, it can give you a starting point on where to look. Rather than blindly trusting what the AI tells you, ask the AI for links to sources on a topic. Then read them yourself. You still have to do the work to make sure the sources are accurate and relevant, but you can save time scrolling through Google, trying to find the perfect source.
• Editing: You may be using AI for your content, and you don’t even know it. Grammarly, one of the most popular editing/spellcheck tools out there, is actually powered by AI. Other editing plugins or apps also work by using AI. We think this is a great use of AI and helps keep content error-free!
• Create an Outline: Whether you’re working off a transcript, a source, or just need an idea for structure, AI can help you create an outline for your content. You may find you’ll want to move some things around or remove or add sections, but AI makes a great assistant in helping you decide an ideal structure for your content.
• Rephrase Content: Say you’ve just finished a blog or a website page, and there’s just one paragraph or sentence you feel like isn’t working. You’re not sure why, but you just know there’s a better way to say it. AI can help you find a new way to phrase it. We’ve found that AI tends to work best when it’s given human content to work off of. Plus, you can ask it to rephrase it a few different ways and pick and choose the best wordings it gives you!

Some other ways we use it in content are competitor analysis, taking notes, formulating calls to action, and other assistant tasks. All of our content is still fully developed, edited, and designed by humans, but a little robot assistance doesn’t hurt!

Let PHOS Navigate Your Content Marketing for You!

With AI, the world of content marketing is constantly changing. What was true last year no longer applies this year, and we’re sure next year we’ll say the same. If you need a helping hand to navigate through content marketing, PHOS is more than happy to be your guide! Whether you require a robust content strategy or prefer someone write your content completely, our content marketing services help you effectively engage your audience and optimize for search engines. Discover how our content marketing can transform your results today!