Ranking the robots - are AI-generated blogs actually any good?

What AI tools are available and what do they do?

Along with ChatGPT, there’s also Jasper, Copy.ai, Anyword and plenty of options designed to brainstorm topic ideas, before writing, optimising, and testing your content.

But a blog title generator is one thing; we all know the feeling when ideas are running dry and you need some inspiration from somewhere. But do people actually want AI-generated content, though? Evidence suggests consumers might not be as ready for it as we’re led to believe.

How do AI blogs compare with human content writers?

Beyond debates about content churn and quantity over quality, AI-generated content can occasionally feel incredibly authentic.

And, perhaps, that’s the problem.

Research suggests that 72% of consumers believe AI makes it challenging to discern which content is authentic. Furthermore, 61% of consumers already assume that AI is used in ads - although they’re unsure how to identify it.

In an era of dangerously misleading fake news, this raises ethical concerns about the most convincing AI-generated content. Trained on data from the open internet, generative AI tools have the potential to replicate racial, gender, disability and other biases - and that can happen accidentally even if the author has good intentions. Worse still, is the bad faith actors who can use these tools to knowingly deceive audiences by spreading propaganda and misinformation.

But any tool in the wrong hands can be misused, right? Absolutely. But people aren’t just paying the price for GenAI content; it has an environmental cost too.

How sustainable is AI-generated content?

With our 2025 climate goals now out of reach and the tech industry’s known impact on climate change - it was responsible for 2-3% of global carbon emissions in 2021 (on par with the aviation industry) - the emerging stats around GenAI are worrying.

Research shows that training the bigger, more popular AI models like GPT-3 produced 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. To put that figure into context, that’s the equivalent of approximately 300 round-trip flights between New York and San Francisco - and nearly five times the lifetime emissions of an average car.

But Google carries a significant carbon footprint itself, right?

Without question. However, a single Google search takes 0.3 watt-hours of electricity vs. OpenAI’s ChatGPT 2.9 watt-hours. So if ChatGPT replaced the 9 billion daily Google searches, the electricity demand would require almost 10 terawatt-hours a year; that’s the equivalent annual electricity consumption of 1.5 million EU citizens.

So what can we do?

We spoke with Fiona Brennan, founder of Indie Essentials about sustainable content and AI and offer some guidance to content creators looking to use AI tools for content creation. Essentially, it’s about staying conscious about how we create our content.

"AI has its uses, especially for generating ideas or repurposing content efficiently," Fiona acknowledges. "But we need to be aware of the resources it consumes and the ethical implications behind how it’s trained."

For Brennan, it’s about using the tool sparingly and being aware of its limitations. She recommends always adding a human touch to your content because AI looks backward to generate its answers and has no true voice; not only is it unoriginal content, but it can’t predict the future or draw on personal experiences. As authors, we excel in telling human stories that empathise and connect with audiences on an emotional level. That’s what sets us apart as human writers.

Listen to the full podcast on Apple or Spotify

But we’re not just writing for human audiences, are we? As digital marketers, we wish it was that simple. In reality, there’s another machine we have to satisfy for our content to get ahead.

Do AI-generated blog posts perform well in search engines?

This one’s a bit murky, unfortunately.

According to Google’s guidelines around AI-generated content: “Appropriate use of AI or automation is not against our guidelines. This means that it is not used to generate content primarily to manipulate search rankings, which is against our spam policies.”

But you won’t go far wrong if you're creating quality content that’s ‘helpful’ to audiences. Google’s own E-E-A-T criteria is a good framework to measure how useful your content is:

E - Experience: this is the author's first-hand experience with the subject matter

E - Expertise: this is the extent to which knowledge is demonstrated within the content

A - Authoritativeness: this is the website or individual's overall reputation in the space

T - Trustworthiness: this is the accuracy, transparency, and honesty of the content

That last one’s so important when considering whether to create SEO-friendly content with GenAI. Can a blog truly be trustworthy when generated by out-of-date or unverified data? Not when it’s standing on the shoulders of thousands of authors who toiled before it.

Google knows this too.

Google's own Search Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG) use E-E-A-T to assess search results based on page quality and understanding/meeting real user needs. The fact is that AI-generated copy is duplicated and, in Google’s eyes, can’t compete with an authentic human touch and fresh ideas.

We recently spoke to Rin Hamburgh, founder of RH&Co about navigating AI and authenticity in content and the importance of stakeholder interviews.

"AI can create content quickly, but it often lacks the depth and authenticity that human experts provide," says Rin. "Our job is to cut through the noise with genuine, well-researched content."

Listen to the full episode on Apple or Spotify.

That’s not to say AI tools can't help with SEO tasks, though. There’s plenty of grunt work that busy creatives could use a helping hand with.

What types of content can AI help with?

At Monday Clicks, we sometimes use SEO Wind as a keyword research tool and Frase to see how our optimised and original content will stack up against competitors in the same space. Just don’t attempt to use older versions of ChatGPT to find relevant keywords (not unless you want some hideously out-of-date results, anyway). But what it can do well is help with blog structures, blog titles, subtitles, and meta descriptions. Not to mention quickly generating some fairly detailed FAQs.

So what other types of content do AI-powered tools excel with? It’s a valuable tool for churning out thousands of short, functional product descriptions that don’t need a sprinkling of brand seasoning. Also, bulleted lists that reduce writing time, help keep the casual scroller engaged, and generally break up the flow of your blog content. You know, like this:

To summarise, GenAI can be a powerful tool for a wide range of content generation tasks:

• Blog assistance - help with content ideas, blog topic ideas, blog post headlines, detailed outlines, and titles
  
  

• Social media captions - Short social media posts optimised for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter​
  
  

• Video scripts - in particular, short and informative explainer videos or video-based training materials​
  
  

• News summaries - very concise breakdowns of current events or specific topics​
  
  

• Technical writing - manuals, guides, and FAQ responses​
  
  

• Academic assistance - research summaries, or bibliographic entries for essays (with caution for accuracy)​

AI is amazing at saving us time on lengthy admin tasks so we can spend more time working on what we do best: fresh content. And isn’t that the point? There’s been so much talk about AI taking our jobs, the least it can do is take care of the ones we like doing the least! That sounds like progress to us.

So can AI fully replace blog writers?

Don’t bet your marketing budget on it.

Sure, no one knows for certain what the future holds. But it’s our job as marketers to reflect on the human perspective and use our emotions, instincts, and fresh ideas to predict where things are heading. Such as in our how-to guide to e-commerce SEO.

AI blogging tools can churn out short, low-quality blogs for cheap. But top-notch, longer-form content that drives high-quality results? Not yet, anyway.

The best long-form articles are UX and SEO-optimised to drive traffic to machines. But they’re also personal opinion pieces above all else. It takes toil, time, and empathetic human creativity to engage readers - not machines and algorithms.

As busy content marketers, the blog writing process can be lengthy, laborious, and even painful sometimes - but that’s why we love it. So any universe where the art of crafting a compelling piece is plucked from our warm-blooded hands sounds like a bleak one to us.

So what's the answer then? After all, you can’t fight progress.

Well, we reckon there could be a reality where copywriters and content marketers use AI to steer the ship together; we’d fact-check, adjust the tone of voice, and keep blogs honest and true to a brand’s values. And that level of care just can’t be replicated by robots. For all its usefulness today, GenAI is still just repurposing what came before. And that's the opposite of what this innovative industry stands for.

But we’re not counting out our cybernetic counterparts completely, and AI may be a truly innovative copywriting tool one day. It could even pull from its reams of data to automate a ‘good idea’. But it can’t create one with a heart just yet. That's what resonates with real people.

Interested in creating quality, long-form content that works just as hard for audiences as it does the algorithms?

Speak to an SEO agency that still puts humans at the heart of search. Like us, here at Monday Clicks!

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