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Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454)

Woman and robot collaborating in an office to illustrate the question "Should AI create your content?"

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Artificial intelligence plays an ever-increasing role in marketing, e-commerce, and customer acquisition. Loads of companies and marketers use AI to plan, create, personalize, and measure their marketing activities. In general, that’s a good thing. AI can help you manage your marketing and customer acquisition more efficiently and effectively. So far, so good, right?

However, when it comes to content marketing — still one of the most important parts of your customer acquisition process — there’s a huge question we need to ask. And that is:

Should you use AI to create your content?

My answer is… well, it’s complicated.

Should you use AI to create your content? What is the proper role of artificial intelligence in content marketing? How can you put AI to work for your brand and business to drive customer acquisition? That’s the topic of this episode of Thinks Out Loud.

Want to learn more? Here are the show notes for you.

Should You Use AI to Create Your Content? (Thinks Out Loud Episode 454) — Headlines and Show Notes

Show Notes and Links

You might also enjoy this webinar I recently participated in with Miles Partnership that looked at "The Power of Generative AI and ChatGPT: What It Means for Tourism & Hospitality" here:

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Transcript: Should You Use AI to Create Your Content?

Welcome to Thinks Out Loud. I’m Tim Peter. Anyone who’s listened to this show for any amount of time knows that I still think content is king. When it comes to using digital for customer acquisition, content remains your company’s 24 by 7 by 365 salesperson and your company’s 24 by 7 by 365 customer service rep.

Even in an age when you and your competitors can churn out massive amounts of content cheaply and quickly using AI, all the evidence suggests that helpful content that answers your customers’ questions and meets their needs is one of the single most effective sales and marketing tools in your arsenal. That simply has not changed. And that’s undoubtedly why the question I’m asked most often these days is, should I use AI to create content?

My answer, no, you shouldn’t.

Well, thanks for listening.

Okay, obviously I’m joking, at least to a point. The answer is more complicated than just a simple yes or no. What’s more important than just that yes or no, though, gets at the core of why content marketing matters for your business, for your customers, and your community overall.

This is episode 454 of the Thinks Out Loud podcast, and today we’re exploring whether you should use AI to generate your content for your company. Let’s dive in.

Alright, my earlier jokes aside, should you use AI to create your company’s content? Truthfully, that’s a more complicated question than it sounds. It’s going to take me a moment to unpack the various pieces inherent in that discussion. But in case anyone’s confused by my ultimate answer, I want to give as clear an answer as I can right now: No, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100% of your content.

I’m going to say that again, you should not use AI to create 100% of your content.

Notice though, that I said "100 % of your content." And there are a few reasons why that’s so.

First and importantly, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100 % of your content because at least in the US, a recent report from the U.S. Copyright Office, "concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements." The report continues by saying "this can include situations where a human authored work is perceptible in an AI output or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts."

In other words, even if you’re crafting the most brilliant prompt, once you type that genius prompt into an AI system of any kind, then copy and paste its output, as is, without any further modification by a human being, then that work is not protected by copyright.

If you’re looking to create brand assets that matter, whether they’re copy or logos or artwork or what have you, letting an AI do all the work is a losing game. Full stop. That alone probably is enough to suggest why you don’t want to rely solely on AI to create your content.

If that’s not enough of a reason, pay attention to what the brilliant SEO expert Lily Ray noted in a blog post outlining what Google said in a recent meeting with search marketers. She wrote,

”Google also further clarified that the use of generative AI for content creation isn’t inherently a problem. What matters is the intent and purpose behind the content. If it’s published primarily to generate SEO traffic, especially at scale, it may be considered a violation, but using AI to support a repurpose high quality original content is still fair game."

A couple of years ago, Google’s John Mueller talked about the problems with automating content creation, stating bluntly that, and this is again a quote, "programmatic SEO is often a fancy manner for spam."

So Google’s being pretty clear how they feel about this. Lily followed up her earlier observation, adding this insightful comment, “This isn’t entirely surprising given that Google is also simultaneously encouraging publishers to use its large language model, Gemini."

Google is talking out of both sides of their mouth a bit here, but their overall point actually makes sense. If you’re creating lots of automated AI generated content, which for our purposes, I’m going to call, let’s say, "crap," you’re not helping anyone and they’re not going to reward you with strong placement in the search results. So again, AI output all by itself is no bueno.

When I say "No, you shouldn’t use AI to create 100 % of your content," that’s what I’m talking about.

There’s one sentence I want to highlight from Lily’s blog post though: "What matters is the intent and purpose behind the content." Think about that for a moment. "The intent and purpose behind the content." Google and the US Copyright Office come at the problem of AI content creation from different perspectives — One related to search, the other, well, copyright — and arrive essentially at the same place. They’re asking, "What are you trying to achieve? What purpose are you looking to serve? Who are you trying to serve? Are you trying to game the system, whether it’s search or copyright? Are you trying to game the system, search and or copyright? Are you trying to generate massive amounts of content solely for the purpose of generating massive amounts of content? Are you trying to pump out colossal amounts of crap? If yes, why would anyone want that? Why would anyone give that any recognition ever? Who does this help?"

If your answer is no one, you’re beginning to think about the problem the right way.

Additionally, if everyone is using AI to create their content, regardless of copyright implications, regardless of search implications, how does your content stand apart? If anyone can generate exactly the same quality and character of content, why would anyone ever choose yours over your competitors? It’s not just that your customers won’t benefit, though that’s true. It’s likely that your business won’t either.

Instead, let’s think about why you’re creating content in the first place.

Too many folks have learned that the right reason to create content is because search and social quote unquote require content. You’ve got to feed the beast, right? I mean, we’ve all done it. I post something to LinkedIn a couple of times per week. My team adds another post or two on our company page. I record a podcast just like this one more or less every week. I’ve often quoted the story from Tina Fey’s book BossyPants to clients where she talks about the first time as head writer of Saturday Night Live when she thought the show wasn’t ready and was told by executive producer, Lorne Michaels, "Tina, we don’t do the show because it’s ready. We do the show because it’s 11:30 on Saturday night."

There is merit in holding yourself accountable for a certain level of output. So yes, I can be as guilty as anyone of feeding the beast.

But while I’m conscious of the algorithm, I try to make sure I’m not ruled solely by it. Don’t forget that the algorithm also rewards content that people engage with, that people enjoy, that they find useful, that exhibits quality. And sure, yeah, that they find provocative. I personally made a decision a long time ago that we wouldn’t be provocative for its own sake. We’re certainly not afraid to tip over sacred cows. We also don’t just do it for engagement farming reasons.

People who know me know that I was trained as a musician. Legendary pianist Herbie Hancock likes to tell a story that affected me deeply when I was a young musician. He was playing accompaniment behind a soloist in Miles Davis’ band — comping in the vernacular, right? He’s playing behind the soloist. And Miles came over, placed his hands on Herbie’s, and asked him what in the world he was doing. You Miles was not a fan. And Herbie replied, "I wasn’t sure what to play." To which Miles replied, "If you don’t know what to play, don’t play nothing." I’m very sorry for the bad Miles Davis impersonation, by the way. It’s kind of a legal requirement when telling stories about him that you mimic his voice a little bit. "Don’t play nothing," though, is a perfectly acceptable approach at least some of the time for your business.

One of the reasons I’m such a fan of content calendars is not because you’ve got to fill in every box every day. Instead, it’s because they help you see where gaps exist and then choose to create content — or not — as it benefits your business. It’s not great when you leave a square on the calendar blank by mistake, but it’s perfectly acceptable — And sometimes a genuinely great idea — to be quiet on purpose.

The purpose of the calendar isn’t to create Lorne Michaels "11:30 on Saturday night" urgency. The planning is the purpose. If you have something worth saying, say it. If not, heed Miles Davis’s admonition and "don’t play nothing."

If you do have something worth saying, then it’s absolutely okay to use AI as part of your toolkit for creating that content. These tools exist for a reason. You’d be silly not to use them sometimes. ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini or Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Ocoya, SocialBee, Jasper, Copy.AI and a whole host of other tools that I don’t have the time or memory to mention play a huge role in helping you plan, create, review, schedule, customize, post, and measure the effectiveness of your content. Those are all legitimately valid uses of artificial intelligence in content creation.

I often use AI to brainstorm ideas for our content calendar. I’ll then craft an outline and use AI to review it for missing pieces. I’ll have the AI review my writing to find logical errors or obvious gaps in my thinking. And yeah, sometimes I’ll use AI to draft or clean up a social post when I need some inspiration. Yes, sometimes we’ve also used AI to create images, a practice we’re moving away from because of the copyright implications.

This isn’t a case of either AI or nothing. My team and I always have and always will exercise editorial judgment over the final output. Every word you read or hear is written by a human being, is crafted by a human being, even if those human beings sometimes benefit from review or polish from an AI. We’re working to build a connection between our customers and, well, me, a human being.

Even in large companies, you can, and increasingly must, put a human face on your messages, on your brand, on your content. Your customers want to interact with real, live people, with other human beings. It’s critical in an age of artificial intelligence that you show genuine humanity.

So yes, you can and probably should use AI to participate in the content creation process. But be very clear about the role that AI plays. More importantly, be even clearer about the role you and your team, the human beings play. It’s okay to use AI in the process, but it’s you, your company, and your brand’s name and face that’s on the final output. You, your company, and your brand is who your customers want to hear from, not some generic machine. You can use the tools. Turning the entire process over to the tools though only produces outputs and results that don’t help anyone.

To sum up, should you use AI to create content? No, not really. You ultimately are who must create the content. It’s you who your customers want to hear from and your who customers want to buy from. Anything else doesn’t benefit your customers or your business.

Show Wrap-Up and Credits

Now, looking at the clock on the wall, we are out of time for this week.

I’m willing to bet that you might know someone who would benefit from what we’ve talked about today. Are you thinking of someone? Why not send them a link to the episode? Let them know what you think, too.

You can also find the show notes for this episode, episode 454, and an archive of all our past episodes, by going to timpeter.com/podcast. Again, that’s timpeter.com/podcast.

And, of course, be sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. This show wouldn’t happen without you. We’ll be back with a new episode next week. And until then, please be well.

Be safe and as the saying goes, be excellent to each other. Can’t wait to talk with you soon. Take care.

Tim Peter is the founder and president of Tim Peter & Associates. You can learn more about our company's strategy and digital marketing consulting services here or about Tim here.

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