Since AI-powered content generation tools have been all the rage as of late, many people wonder whether they’re any good and if they should incorporate them into their digital marketing strategy.

As impressive and polished as they’ve become, have AI content generators truly reached the point where their output is indistinguishable from the kind that professional writers can produce?

Will using one get you in trouble with the search engine algorithms?

And, above all, will your visitors know that you’re using one?

Find out all that and more as we take a deep dive into the complex matter of automating your content creation woes with the help of modern AI-driven technology!

What is AI content generation?

Not too long ago, using artificial intelligence (or AI for short) to automatically generate blog posts and articles for you to post was nothing but wishful thinking. But nowadays, these computer algorithms have become so polished and advanced that they started behaving almost exactly the same as a human would.

The idea is to train the AI algorithm with machine learning by having it analyze tons of already existing content and study how it’s constructed and what makes it work. Once calibrated, the AI algorithm can then produce completely original content that’s engaging and almost indistinguishable to the human eye.

In turn, this has led businesses to start harnessing its power to speed up the process of content generation that would traditionally be either:

- Lengthy (if you were to do it yourself)

Or…

- Expensive (outsourcing the task to a good writer can cost a pretty penny)

This exciting new opportunity promises to effectively eliminate both of these problems by speeding up the process and making it relatively inexpensive (although the majority of high quality AI-powered content generators are not completely free). Although the early attempts at making this dream a reality more or less failed to meet the expected standards, it’s quite impressive what a modern take on automated content generation can accomplish.

How does it work?

Rather than it being an ordinary lifeless computer script that follows directions and executes commands, AI algorithms are far more complex. It can be said they almost have a mind of their own and can make thoughtful decisions at lightning speed.

This is possible thanks to advanced components integrated into these algorithms:

- Machine learning

- Deep learning

- Natural language generation (or NLG for short)

The latter is of particular interest to us because it has the capacity to present computerized data in a human-like manner. Without making it seem too complicated, in essence, this can be accomplished with machine learning that analyzes the existing content and learns from it by looking for patterns, thus effectively emulating the way human writers express their thoughts.

The key here is letting it perfect its observations by feeding it a large sample size of content written by humans. To perfect the algorithm even more, human reviewers rate its output which is another valuable learning point. Eventually, it gets good enough to be able to churn out quality content like clockwork.

The key selling points of AI content generators

If all of this got you intrigued to try one out, you’ll be pleased to know there are several advantages to generating your content with the help of an AI-powered generator:

1. Generating quality content like clockwork

Content-based marketing works. In fact, it has remained an effective way to generate new sales and leads ever since the internet came to be. There is just one glaring issue: even if you’re good at it, writing great content takes an enormous amount of time. Since you have a business to run, how much time can you afford to allocate to writing articles?

Due to this, the vast majority of online entrepreneurs tend to find it easier to simply delegate the task to a competent writer… at least until modern AI content generators came to be. After all, who could resist inputting a couple of keywords, clicking a button, and kicking back to watch powerful AI algorithms do the work? With this method, you could have a shiny new article all done and written for you in a matter of seconds.

2. Having a Swiss Army Knife content tool at arm’s reach

Let’s face it: in your digital marketing efforts, you’ve probably had to produce content in several different formats. Whether it be articles, blog and news posts, courses, ebooks, social media posts, newsletters, or video scripts, it can be quite a challenge to be good at everything, particularly so if you don’t consider yourself a talented writer in the first place.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could let an automated AI tool handle it all for you? Even if the results are not 100% compatible with your vision of what kind of content you’d like to serve to your audience, you can always use the auto-generated content as a platform to apply your own tweaks, edits, and modifications. Although not completely automated, this is still likely to save you a ton of time in the content creation process.

3. Being creative on demand

The fact of the matter is, even professionals who work in the creative industry often struggle with having to be creative on demand. As any artist or creative individual will tell you, there are good days and bad days when it comes to productivity. Ever heard of the term writer’s block? It’s when you stare at the blank screen for hours on end, unable to come up with anything remotely useful, insightful, or entertaining.

Now imagine having a magic button that doesn’t suffer from this human limitation and can generate an infinite amount of content ideas you can use to find inspiration. All of a sudden, being creative at the snap of a finger can once again be within your reach. While you still have to do some of the work, using AI content generating tools can be an effective way to break through the hurdle.

4. Getting valuable market insights

If you want to retain your target audience’s attention, you’re going to have to feed it the kind of content it wants to see. Typically, this is something that speaks to their interests or provides a solution to problems they may be facing.

Traditionally, you’d either have to operate in your market to have a solid idea about what topics are typically discussed or do the heavy lifting of research yourself. But now, AI can do this for you – all it takes is providing a general keyword and it will pull up all the niche keywords without you having to lift a finger. And all of this in mere seconds!

Are there any issues with using AI-generated content?

AI content generators, although quite a formidable technology, are not without faults. These could potentially discourage you from using one altogether:

1. Poor understanding of emotional language

When consuming content, what is the thing that makes you “click” with it? Is it its informational aspect, the experience of learning something new? Or is it perhaps the way it's written, the flow of information that’s neatly tied up in the final form of its presentation? Perhaps it’s a combination of multiple factors?

It turns out that we, humans, are emotional creatures. Hence, we resonate with content that’s designed to appease our emotions, the kind that takes us on a proverbial journey. While AI algorithms are phenomenal at making logical deductions, they are not psychologists, nor are they entertainers. As such, they may have trouble taking human emotions into consideration. And as we all know, producing content that is “just” factually and grammatically correct may not be enough these days.

2. Some manual work may still be required

While there’s nothing stopping you from taking the content generated as is and publishing it on your blog, the question is: should you do it? Even the world’s most renowned poets, journalists, and writers rarely decide to publish the entirety of their creative output – since they have high standards, they would often rather publish 1000 words of amazing content rather than 5000 words of content that’s generic and subpar.

A similar principle applies to AI-generated content. Content that’s factually correct but not enticing hardly has the capacity to press all the right buttons with your audience – and that’s assuming you’re working with an industry-grade tool in the first place. In practice, low quality AI content generators may take more work to edit than it would take to write the entire article from scratch.

3. Can Google detect AI-generated content?

Another issue that often comes up with using AI content tools is that the content they generate may not be suitable for every occasion. Blog posts intended to be published on your main website to siphon organic SEO traffic are a great example of this.

Officially, publishing AI-generated content is against Google’s webmaster guidelines. Whether Google can actually detect the fact that you’re using automatically generated content is up for debate. Although some say it can, there’s no concrete evidence to back their claims.

If anything, there’s evidence that suggests the opposite may be true. There’s plenty of webmasters who have decided to get to the bottom of this mystery by running their own tests. And the results may shock you – they were able to get their blog posts ranked in the search engines just fine without incurring an algorithmic penalty in the process.

Is this future-proof, however? Most likely so. However, there’s still a small amount of risk associated with the decision of using AI-generated content exclusively and it’s on you whether to take the plunge or not.

How hard is it to use an AI content generation tool in practice? 

There’s no need to be a tech geek to learn how to operate one of these handy tools. Remember: you’re not going to be coding one from scratch, merely using one of the many AI-powered content generation tools available.

For this example, we’re going to be using Ocoya’s AI Copywriter to come up with an idea for your next blog post.

1. First, navigate to Ocoya’s main menu and find the Travis AI section in the sidebar on the left. Click it.

2. Next, scroll down the list of options until you find the one that says ‘Blog Concept’. While you’re at it, feel free to take a look at the others to see the rest of the cool things this tool can do for you.

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3. Finally, enter the name of the product or service that you’re selling, describe it in a brief couple of sentences, and click the big green ‘Generate’ button.

Voila! You’ll be showered with enough ideas to light your creative spark. If you want to generate ready-to-go content, the process is more or less the same, with the only difference being the function you select in step 2.

The verdict: is AI-generated content worth your time?

Make no mistake: in their current technological state, AI-powered content generators are as potent as it gets. They can get you over the hump when you’re not feeling particularly creative and they can help you churn out the content your target audience is craving for, all without costing an arm and a leg.

But here’s the kicker: whether you should use them or not depends on the intended purpose, the quality of the AI tool that you’re using, and also where you’re going to be posting the auto-generated content. For instance, some are worried about Google’s vengeful scorn, so they may only use it on social media (for the most part, the content posted there doesn’t get indexed anyway).

So the verdict is, it depends on all of the things discussed above. But the good news is, it doesn’t have to be a black-or-white decision. You may choose to use AI-generated content sparingly or perhaps only as a way to inspire you. If you don’t see an issue with doing some editing manually, it can indeed be a powerful way to revolutionize your content-based marketing campaigns in today and beyond.