If you have been on the internet this past year, you would have surely heard of AI. You may have even used it at work, without knowing that the tool you are using is AI-powered.
AI has seen massive growth in the past few years. In fact, the global AI market revenue is estimated to be at 27.37 billion dollars in 2023 and is expected to reach a staggering 107.54 billion by 2028. AI is now interwoven with various industries and sectors, but most visibly in the field of marketing.
With the fast rise of AI, it’s inevitable that it will reshape the way digital content is created. These changes can be both exciting and challenging, particularly for content creators.
In this article, we’ll explore how AI is used in different aspects of content creation, as well as what it means for the future of the industry.
AI in Written Content
AI has a huge impact on the world of written content. It revolutionized various industries, from marketing to ad copywriting to journalism. Content writers can now use AI-powered tools to streamline research, come up with ideas, automate the editing process, as well as optimize for SEO — all of which can improve the content creation process.
One of the most commonly known writing tools is ChatGPT. Released in 2022, this AI text generator can respond to questions or prompts in a very human-like way. ChatGPT can be used in different ways — from summarizing TV show plots, generating HTML code, creating social media captions, to writing YouTube scripts.
ChatGPT can also be used for research. You can ask it to give a different perspective on a topic or give an argument about why your point is wrong. This can be something as simple as “Why do people dislike Hawaiian pizza?” to know why people view the ending of “Catcher in the Rye” as bad.
With its versatility and multitude of uses, more and more marketers have been turning to ChatGPT for their content marketing needs. A study by SimilarWeb has shown that the website had over 1.5 billion visits in September 2023 alone.
Of course, ChatGPT is not the only AI writing tool available. There’s also Rytr, an AI writing assistant that is geared towards creating content for marketers and copywriters. It excels at creating product descriptions, ad copies, blog articles, taglines, headlines, as well as email newsletters. Aside from generating content, Rytr can also help creators improve their content itself, by automatically rewording, editing, or shortening their input.
And speaking of content improvement, you are probably aware of Grammarly. Grammarly is another popular AI-powered writing assistant focusing on proofreading and editing your content. This tool can help you spot spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. It can also offer suggestions to shorten or reword your sentences to make them easier to read. Grammarly also has a tone detector, which can help creators adjust their writing to fit a particular style or audience. This is also helpful if there is a specific brand voice that you want your content to sound like.
What about marketers who are looking to optimize their content for SEO? No worries, there are AI tools for that. Some examples are SurferSEO, Frase, and Clearscope. These tools can help by generating articles that are optimized for the specific keywords that the creator selected. For SurferSEO in particular, the tool will show you a Content Score, which is essentially an estimated score of how well your content will perform in Google ranking. SurferSEO can also show you which keywords and how many of those keywords you should add to make your content more SEO-friendly.
Compelling content is crucial for any business that wants to grow and engage its audience. AI tools can make a creator's life easier by generating article outlines, expediting the editing process, as well as providing prompts to get a writer out of a writer's block.
AI in Image Content
Beautiful and eye-catching image content has always been a priority for any brand or business. Why? It’s because 94% of content with images gets more views compared to those without. Additionally, visual content is 40x more likely to get social media shares.
The power of great visuals can’t be underestimated, but it definitely takes a lot of time and effort to produce one. This is why we have seen a surge of demand for AI tools in the field of graphic design.
From AI photo editors to AI logo generators, creators now have tons of AI tools at their disposal that can be used to make the design process easier.
Let’s talk about photo editing. Before AI, designers spend hours manually editing, masking, or fine-tuning an image. But with tools like Luminar Neo, Remini, Fotor, and VanceAI, edits can now be done in just a few clicks. These tools use algorithms to detect faces or objects and use that to automatically add adjustments. These can be simple fixes such as brightening the photo or smoothening the skin, to more complicated changes such as cutting out the object from its background.
Aside from editing, AI has also taken the world by storm in regard to image generation.
Creating visual outputs such as logos, social media images, posters, or podcast covers can now be done in a few clicks with AI. These are possible through tools like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney. Creators only need to enter prompts (the more specific the better) and then wait for a few seconds for the images to show up.
Notice those yearbook photos that have been dominating TikTok and Instagram recently? Those have been courtesy of EPIK, an AI photo editor. The app uses AI to automatically generate photos of you as different school cliques based on the images that you provided them.
We can’t miss out on mentioning avatar generators as well. Whether you want a cartoonized version of yourself, a cool anime-style avatar for your gaming channel, or a simple line art to use in your email signatures, there is an AI tool that you can use for sure. Some examples are Lensa, Picsart, and Dawn AI.
AI tools have been a great resource for designers as the more time-consuming and repetitive tasks can now be automated via AI. Editing that takes hours can now take just a few seconds. The same goes for image generators. You can have images with different art styles, all in just a few clicks. This can make idea generation and conceptualization easier. It also makes art more accessible for people who may not have intensive graphic design experience or knowledge.
AI - Good or Bad?
We have discussed the different AI tools that can be used in different aspects of content creation. While we can’t deny the positives of it, there are some unfortunate negatives to it as well.
First is the ethics of it. AI is trained by learning from the existing content on the internet. Sadly, these include content that is not publicly available or some that is uploaded on private blogs or sites. And while AI won’t produce an exact copy of someone’s work, it uses data from various existing content to produce theirs. This sparks huge debates on whether AI is “stealing” from artists and creators.
Next is job obsolescence. According to Statista, it was found that US companies have saved between $50,000 to $70,000 since introducing ChatGPT in their workflow. While you can argue that they computed it based on the amount of time saved, it can also be because of workers getting their positions removed since they now use ChatGPT instead.
And it’s not just limited to ChatGPT. Other creative, administrative, and clerical jobs have also been outsourced to AI - leading to a loss of 4,000 jobs in the US just in May 2023 alone.
Creators are also expressing concerns at the distrust that is aimed towards their work, on whether it’s AI-generated or not. Some freelance writers have been accused of submitting AI-generated work since AI checkers have pinged their writing as “AI generated” even though it’s not. However, these AI checkers are still in their infancy and are not 100% accurate. But people’s reliance on these checkers can create a huge disconnect between their staff, leading to distrust and lost jobs.
Lastly, even with the advancement of technology, AI still has its limitations. AI-written content can sound very robotic and stiff. AI image generators have a difficult time producing complex shapes. This is why you can see AI images where a person has 6 fingers or an unnatural body shape.
So is AI good or bad? The answer is it depends on how you use it. AI has definitely improved content creation workflow and processes by automating the more time-consuming tasks. However, we can argue about the originality and ethics of the content it produces.
The best thing to do is to view AI as a helping hand. Creators can use it to spark ideas, jog their creative minds, or be used as a starting point. It should be seen as an aid, instead of relying on it to do all creative work.
AI and the Future of Digital Content
And now for our final question — is the use of AI the new norm for digital content?
The answer is yes. New technologies and trends have always influenced marketing and the content we see. Just look at social media for instance. Back then, we were using MySpace, until we moved to Facebook, and now to TikTok.
Change is always inevitable in a field like marketing. Adapting to new technologies such as AI is important if you want to keep up and remain relevant. AI tools can be particularly helpful for small brands or new aspiring content creators as well, as the ease of use and accessibility of these tools can help in producing their content easier and less time consuming.
While there are a lot of concerns regarding AI, the benefits and convenience of these tools are undeniable. Whether you like it or not, AI will definitely continue to have an impact on content creation.
