Initial Thoughts on AI Content Creation After An Afternoon
Given the recent hype around ChatGPT and AI content creation I figured I’d take an afternoon and play around with what’s possible. As a bit of a joke for myself one of the prompts I used within the tool was “Write a blog article on AI content Creation.”
Initial Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence Creating Written Content
What strikes me is how quickly the idea of robots typing content on your behalf is normalized. Within 3 minutes I had about 3,000 words on 3 different topics to go through and start the copy editing process.
After copying the text created by ChatGPT into a Google Doc it hit me how much automation is already involved in the content creation process. For example, Grammarly kicked in and suggested edits for readability, grammar, and spelling; a combination of Dall-E and Canva was used to create the cover art concept and get the proper dimensions.
As the son of an English teacher, and someone with a writing degree, the text that ChatGPT spits out reads a bit choppy and verbose, a lot like the college term papers the students clearly want to seem intelligent on but couldn’t care less about the subject matter.
In fact, Grammarly’s suggestions were mostly related to conciseness which means even in the beginning stages we’ve managed to recreate the struggles of every English teacher in terms of what is theoretically correct (Grammarly) and the way people actually write (ChatGPT algorithm’s training materials).
I’m happy to report that there were fewer suggestions by the tools on the content that I wrote than the robots, but this small win is most likely short-lived as accuracy will improve over time.
Where It Seems Strong
Introductions and Closings - The first thing that impressed me was the quality of the introductory paragraphs for the six blogs I had it write (two blogs on each of the three topics so I could see how it changed each time). There is absolutely a formula to those paragraphs so it makes sense that even the early robots can do well here.
Formatting - Between the two attempts on the three topics, there was usually a fully paragraphed version and a version using bullet points. As a reader, I like the visual breakup of the bullets but as an editor, I like having both options to look at or add to.
Headers - Basically a subset of formatting but as someone who has spent the better part of 13 years analyzing and selecting headers for blogs and webpages I would only double-check the SEO viability of what the AI wrote. But this is not any different from any SEO content process I’ve used with human writers.
Where I’m Left Wanting
Length - It was pretty apparent that the writing length was limited to between 500-600 words. Even when I changed the prompts from “a blog” to “a 1,000-word blog.” I even went as high as “a 5,000-word article,” but the content always abruptly ended between 500-600 words.
Writing Style - Like I previously mentioned ChatGPT wrote like a choppy undergrad, and I found my editor instincts wanting to mark up the page with “Why?” “So What?,” and “Elaborate on this idea!” It would be awesome if eventually, you’d be able to have an article written “In the Style of” a well-known author or essayist like you are with painters with Dall-E.
Tone of Voice - Right now the tone of the articles is very safe. It is very much statements of fact and surface-level explanations. I find myself wanting some color commentary to draw me into the content or bring home a particular point with a personal anecdote.
I am not sure how you’d go about changing or developing these things but I am looking forward to playing around with the new technology and seeing what the implications are for other elements of marketing and communications.
