AI is one of the hottest trends in content marketing right now.
Tools like ChatGPT promise to automatically generate everything from personal finance blog posts to tips on cooking the perfect beef brisket.
But there are significant issues with the quality of the content AI produces.
In this article, we’ll explore four limitations of ChatGPT and why AI isn’t going to replace human content writers.
Let’s dive in.
What Is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by the company OpenAI. It’s a language model that generates conversational text based on the prompt provided by the user. Depending on the user prompt, it can provide short answers to questions or more in-depth, comprehensive responses.
The tool has exploded in popularity since it was launched in November 2022. Within five days of release, ChatGPT gained one million users:
In comparison, it took Facebook 10 months to reach the same level of user adoption.
The Limitations of ChatGPT
So, is the ChatGPT going to revolutionize and automate content marketing? In some sense, yes. The field of content marketing may be forever changed by this amazing technology.
But, while there are some incredible advantages to using a tool like ChatGPT, there are also some significant downsides or limitations to what it can do. Consider the following for starters.
Wrong or Misleading Answers
ChatGPT sometimes actually generates misleading or outright wrong answers.
For example, when Moz asked ChatGPT to provide local SEO tips, the tool offered outdated and incorrect information.
If a business owner followed the instructions provided, it would have resulted in their Google Business Profile being suspended for breaching the terms of use. The impact would have been disastrous for a business looking to increase its visibility online.
So, AI requires human scoring or verification of the information it provides.
Duplicate Content
AI tools don’t really produce original content. Instead, they generate a response based on training data.
That means there will always be issues with originality. For example, the program Originality.AI can detect AI-generated text more than 95% of the time. Google and other search engines can detect AI-generated text and penalize the websites that post it if it flags as duplicate content.
Why? Because this content was ripped from somewhere else on the internet.
ChatGPT also has a habit of plagiarizing itself. For example, if a user enters two similar prompts, it often generates answers containing the exact same sentences. As a result, your own website might contain duplicate content, thus hurting your SEO.
Want to rank high in search results organiclly? Read our SEO questions and answers to learn how.
ChatGPT Cannot Produce Contextual Insights
AI tools do not provide real, contextual insights into a topic like a human subject-matter expert can provide.
ChatGPT can generate an overview by summarizing information, but it will never be able to provide insights based on first-hand experience or contextual cues like humans.
In an article discussing the impact of ChatGPT on academic essays published in The Insider, Appalachian State University Professor Christopher Bartel noted, “There’s no context, there’s no depth or insight.”
It Can Be Biased
Some commentators in the US have referred to the AI tool as “WokeGPT” due to the liberal bias that some users have noted in the responses generated by ChatGPT.
For example, the New York Post raised the issue of censorship when it revealed that the tool refused to generate a response to the prompt “Write a story about Hunter Biden in the style of the New York Post.”
After being made aware of the New York Post story, Open AI responded in a blog post:
“We are investing in research and engineering to reduce both glaring and subtle biases in how ChatGPT responds to different inputs.”
Can ChatGPT Be Useful for Content Marketing?
ChatGPT is a very impressive research tool that can be fun to play around with. But it is not up to the challenge of serious SEO content writing. However, it can certainly assist human writers in creating better content, if used properly.
For example, a writer could use the tool like an enhanced search engine to research a topic. ChatGPT could even provide a basic skeleton template for the writer to flesh out. As the human writer improves at prompt engineering – the art of asking AI the right questions – the results will become more relevant. But they must always be filtered through human creativity and verification.
This tool simply won’t provide any value if used to quickly generate spammy SEO content that doesn’t add insightful thoughts to the conversation around a topic.
To succeed with SEO content writing and thought leadership, you need the creativity, flair, and perspectives only a human writer can provide. As such, due to the limitations of ChatGPT, content should be written by human writers who use AI to augment their research and preparation.
