AI Is Not Going To Replace Writers Anytime Soon But The Future Might Be Closer Than You Think – Forbes

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Is AI for content creation over-hyped or will all writers eventually be replaced by bots? Businesses dont necessarily need more content, they need better content that actually performs.

AI is doing a lot to help streamline content marketing and management for companies across the board. You can get things researched, prepped, edited, and published in minutes (as opposed to days or weeks).

The problem is that while AI can automate time-consuming publishing tasks and help predict what people want to read, it can't really write that well yet.

Today, AI still relies heavily on stringing together concepts or facts into some semi-coherent ramble, but it can't massage the phrasing or other intangibles that get customers to stand up and take notice.

AIs underlying technologies in the area of content creation currently include Microsofts Turing Natural Language Generation (T-NLG) boasting 17 billion parameters and OpenAIs Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 technology (GPT-3), which has 175 billion machine learning parameters.

In September 2020, Microsoft announced it had licensed access to GPT-3s technology for its exclusive use, which offers a clue as to where this fast-growing industry is heading.

In this interview, Wordable CEO and Founder & CEO of Codeless, Brad Smith outlines AIs current limitations for content creation, tells us how best to leverage its capabilities, and looks at where we are headed in the not-too-distant future.

Key problems with content AI todayarbage in. Garbage out.

Smith says the biggest problem with AI right now is its overreliance on patterns and the probability of certain words or phrases showing up next to each other when you reference certain topics.

This means that currently, it can only take a mediocre pass at factual, information-based content. But even then it struggles to actually understand anything its saying. It is merely taking whats already out there on certain topics and then playing a Robocop version of the word game Mad Libs, he explains.

AI cant string together long, persuasive text.

Most good content builds on itself, says Smith. So you might lay the groundwork for an argument in the first section, and then come back later to build on top of that readers new understanding in the fourth section or paragraph.

The trouble with AI is that it cant reference itself in that way, says Smith. Its knowledge of a few topics are completely isolated from each other, so it cant connect the dots that your reader would importantly be expecting to see.

Smith says that these two issues alone would completely rule out AI-based uses for a significant amount of online content.

AI cant do audio or video

He also goes on to point out that AI cant do audio or video, nor write scripts for this type of media, which is how most people will consume digital media in the next few decades, but thats another topic for another day, says Smith.

AI cant do subjective

Most content online isnt objective, but subjective. Comparing alternatives, or providing a few recommendations, each with its own pros and cons.

Unless AI is basically robotically plagiarizing other content already on this subject, it cant compare alternatives like this or provide additional context as to why one argument might or might not be legitimate.

Wordable CEO and Founder & CEO of Codeless, Brad Smith

AI cant do emotion

And AI cant do emotion, such as style, jargon, inside jokes, meta-references, anecdotes, and storytelling. All the things that get someone to stop dead in their tracks, take notice of what theyre reading, and actually want to continue reading the full thing. At the end of the day, people are still emotional human beings, hardwired via their centuries-old lizard brains to use feelings to convince themself of logical decisions, and not vice-versa.

Where can AI help with content creation?Research and prep

Given that most long-form content (1,000-2,000 words) takes 4-5 hours on average to write, with maybe half of that for research and prep, Smith says that AI can be a huge help.

AI and its underlying content technologies can help shortcut this dramatically, providing ideas for how an article should look, or what subtopics to mention, within seconds versus hours.

Pattern-matching works well for SEO

While pattern matching can create content like a Robocop version of Mad Libs, Smith says that AI-based research thats heavily based on pattern-matching can help structure something for strong SEO.

Search engines like Google only exist to help searchers find answers to their queries. To do that, a lot of content they show tends to be fairly formulaic, where the top 10 results might all mention certain subtopics, semantic ideas, questions theyre answering.

First drafts in specific cases

Smith explains that in some very specific cases, AI might be able to provide short-form, basic fact-based content thats passable for a first draft. Again, youll still want writers and editors to actually review it, polish it, edit, or add on. And again this might save you significant time and money, especially if you can work with AI to vet or manually approve an outline before the AI attempts to write it out.

So while bots might not be replacing writers anytime soon, AI for content creation is developing rapidly. Given that GPT-3 launched just a couple of months later than T-NLG with 10 times the capacity of its rival, it will be interesting to see what happens next. Preliminary tests, on only 80 subjects showed only 48% success in distinguishing short stories written by people from those created by AI.

Smiths key advice is: when using underlying technologies for content, ensure you keep humans involved at various stages of the process.

Of course, you still need experts and humans to vet, filter, tweak, and throw out things to make sure its legit. Nevertheless, used correctly, AI can potentially be a huge timesaver, and will no doubt feature heavily in the future of content creation.

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AI Is Not Going To Replace Writers Anytime Soon But The Future Might Be Closer Than You Think - Forbes