If you haven’t taken the AI natural-language dialogue engine ChatGPT for a spin, you definitely should.
It’s astounding how it can take a normal query and reply in a structured, easy-to-understand, and if you didn’t know any better, thoughtful way.
Friends and colleagues have been sending me links to ChatGPT, fearing that this will kill off my livelihood. As an SEO copywriter, at least on the surface, it can produce articles in minutes for cents while it takes me hours and hundreds of dollars of investment later.
With that scary thought in mind, should I learn how to code these machines instead of competing against them?
The written word by a scribe’s hand has been around for tens of thousands of years; we aren’t extinct just yet.
The Limitations of AI-written copy
The irony of logging into ChatGPT is the reCAPTCHA asking if you aren’t a robot. AI cannot access itself, it would seem.
I asked it “How do I optimise my content for Google?” - and it returned a pretty decent list of best-practice SEO techniques. Use H1, H2, etc. headings, use internal and external links, upload sitemaps, conduct keyword research. Couldn’t fault it there.
Then I asked it something more subjective - something that required real-world experience to answer.
“Who's the better Starfleet captain, Picard or Sisko?” If you don’t speak nerd, this is the eternal debate as to whether who is the better fictional starship commander - Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise-D or Captain Sisko of Deep Space Nine and the Defiant in the iconic Star Trek spinoffs.
Here’s where things got interesting; or from my perspective, quite boring.
Its opening line was this:
It's difficult to say definitively who the better Starfleet captain is between Jean-Luc Picard and Benjamin Sisko, as it ultimately comes down to personal preference.
That’s not what I asked, ChatGPT. I asked who is better.
It rattled off, in natural-language, how Picard was a level-headed, intellectually curious, and stoic diplomat; Sisko by contrast was an impulsive yet decisive warrior who let his emotions guide him more often than not.
That’s all fantastic; but AI will never ever give you a “straight” answer. So who’s better, HAL? I am unable to tell you that, Dave.
If it was attempting to persuade me one way or the other - the essence of sales - it was doing a pretty poor job.
Fortunately for us mere mortal copywriters, Google has seen the inherent flaw in AI copywriting and adjusted its PageRank algorithm, the fundamental programming behind its search engine, to accommodate.
Preempting the rise of AI - Google’s E-E-A-T
Prior to 2018, Google’s quality index rated pages in terms of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T). If a page could demonstrate more of these attributes compared to others, it would rank higher in Search Engine Page Results (SERPs).
In August of 2018, Google added another metric to the ranking system: Experience. (E-E-A-T.)
Google is essentially asking if the writer behind the content has accumulated actual, real-world experience on their chosen topic. Have they actually made Gramma’s Sausage Gravy & Biscuits? Have they actually stood underneath and witnessed the grandeur of the Sistine Chapel? Have they binge watched Star Trek: The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine to truly evaluate whether Picard or Sisko is the better captain?
An AI could have high levels of Expertise (they have the entire internet at their disposal), and in turn Authoritativeness or Trustworthiness owing to prior social proof, high traffic, or user ratings on a particular site.
However, if this high E-A-T site begins churning content written by a machine lacking Experience, their ranking will be soon be diminished in comparison to a site that has a real human that has actually done all the things it’s writing about.
Expertise is also a subjective measure - just because I changed my oil on my car, does that make me a motor mechanic? Hardly. How do I stack up against Star Trek nerds who saw the first television run in 1966 and stuck with it ever since? At the end of the day, it’s for the reading public to decide.
Training and formal education can go a long way to establish credibility as a subject matter expert or influencer - but I can’t sit here and say that I learned everything there is to know about copywriting by attending university. That took independent research, trial and error, informal learning, and practice.
AI copywriting is cheap and fast, but never good
If you’re a business and you’re thinking that SEO copywriting “costs too much” we now have something that can do it for free. But should you use it?
Remember the triangle of value: good, cheap, and fast - you only ever get to pick two.
AI copywriting seems to pick “cheap and fast” each time, every time. That doesn’t bode well if you have high search engine ranking aspirations in the short-term or long-term. AI will always be one step behind human minds doing real and original research.
The Hungarian scholar and author Arthur Koestler once remarked, “true creativity often starts where language ends.” For AI, there is no end to language. It can only regurgitate or synthesise what we feed it.
For now, pioneers will always be flesh and blood; and machines will be playing second fiddle.
SPOILER (RED) ALERT
To me, Sisko is clearly the better captain.
