In the context of content marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important as a tool for text creation. But what are the opportunities and risks of using AI in text creation?
With the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, access to automatically generated content through artificial intelligence (AI) was “democratized” on a grand scale. Apart from some platforms that served as middleware, texts had to be “programmed” or “prompted” by specialists. Companies such as Zalando have been generating their product descriptions using data-based AI for years.
Opportunities and risks when creating texts with artificial intelligence
AI text creation offers many advantages that companies and brands can take advantage of:
- Speed: One of the strengths of AI text creation is the ability to produce a high-quality draft within seconds or minutes. Add and change content points and then create a rough draft.
- Revise: Check the created text for spelling. Make suggestions for short sentences or simple language.
- Cost savings: The automatic generation of texts enables companies to save costs or create larger volumes of text.
- Research: Narrow down the topic with a short query and create an initial draft. Add, change and fact-check content points and then create a rough draft.
AI is a valuable support, especially if you suffer from the “blank page” syndrome. And sometimes she finds extraordinarily fitting and touching words – give her a hug. create.
Risks of AI text creation; where there is sun, there is also shadow. The following risks must be taken into account in order to prevent them:
- Quality: Texts created by AI are sometimes stylistically deadly dull, repetitive or completely miss the point. A good prompt or prompt development can help here. And there is no way around proofreading.
- Factually incorrect: Artificial intelligence does not (yet) check facts. You can ruin your reputation with false or outdated facts. Systems such as ChatGPT only provide a statistically expected result.
- Originality: Using AI to create text tends to result in less original and unique content. Make sure that your content is of high quality and offers added value.
- Content overkill: Who will read all these average texts? Content and advertising messages are already overwhelming many people today.
- Copyright: A topic that will become increasingly important in the near future. Copyright infringement is to be expected due to the learning data used for the AI results.
- Ethics and lack of regulation: There are currently no binding regulations or limits on the use of artificial intelligence. For example, the German Ethics Council only presented an opinion on the topic of “Humans and machines – challenges posed by artificial intelligence” in 2023, which is not binding.
Artificial intelligence is an unfortunate translation:
The term “artificial intelligence” first appeared in English in 1955, when John McCarthy used it to apply for funding for his 1956 conference at the Rockefeller Foundation. The main reason for using the term “artificial intelligence” was to avoid the terms “automata theory” and “cybernetics” so as not to have to invite Norbert Wiener, who was a luminary at the time. (Zimmerli, 2021)
Taken individually, “artificial” can certainly be translated as “artificial”. In contrast, “intelligence ” also means “information processing” in addition to “intelligence” , which would be much more appropriate in the present context. At this point, let us think of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, which focuses on information processing. If the term “artificial information processing” were used, the current inflated emotional reference to “AI” would be much deeper.
If the term “artificial information processing” were used, the current inflated emotional reference to “AI” would be much deeper.
No text without a briefing – even for artificial intelligence
If you have copywriters create content, you instruct them about the target group and the tone of voice, the structure as well as the context and style of the text.
The briefing also includes the objective to be achieved with the target group, any key words and keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) and the spelling and vocabulary to be used (German or Swiss German).