AI-generated Content — How Much Is Too Much?

Today, I asked ChatGPT to count the nutrients and calories in my breakfast because I didn’t feel like doing math. In the last year or so, we’ve witnessed that practically everyone started using ChatGPT, be it the free or the paid GPT4 version. This mega popular AI tool has brought artificial intelligence closer to us, ‘ordinary people’ and has made it a part of our everyday life when writing social media or website content. And many other things, like counting breakfast cals.

But is the use of AI-generated content (AIGC) to an excessive extent beneficial, or on the contrary, harmful, and in what way can it affect our website rankings, its authority and SEO? Do search engines like Google penalize AI-generated content, or is it just a myth? Can all this ultimately harm your website? Let’s find out in this blog post.

What are the advantages of AI-generated blogs?

Efficiency

When writing blogs, the first advantage of artificial intelligence compared to humans is that AI can write a blog post or some other type of content in a few seconds based on a prompt. This is certainly very helpful for those companies with websites that publish new content regularly, and in times of shortage of manpower, AI tools can be of great help.

Cost-Effectiveness

We live in times where budgeting is essential for all types of companies, be it small, mid or large enterprises. This is where AI-generated content gets handy as it decreases the costs of employing copy and content writers, especially when it comes to writing articles or blog posts that might be helpful, but aren’t creative or innovative.

Data-Driven Insights

Another way where artificial intelligence can be leveraged is that it can analyze large amounts of data in a very short time frame — much shorter than it takes humans to do the same — and ultimately lead to specific, well-targeted content. Using its algorithms, artificial intelligence is able to offer content that, in addition to being relevant, can also be very well adapted to the current preferences of the target audience.

Brand Voice Consistency

Even the most experienced writers sometimes struggle with maintaining a consistent brand tone and style that’s vital to its identity. And that’s why AI tools like ChatGPT, when given a high-quality prompt, can be of major help as they can without problem stay consistent and keep the brand voice in place.

The Challenges and Drawbacks

Creativity and Originality

There’s no doubt that AI has many strengths, but when we talk about real innovation and creativity, this is where the problems begin. Artificial intelligence is undeniably great at rewriting or paraphrasing existing information, but when it comes to gaining some new insights, analyses or discoveries — which only humans can do — it is not at the level where we can say that it can easily replace us.

Accuracy and Reliability

Another drawback of AI is that machine-learning language models like ChatGPT don’t have the latest up-to-date information, but rely on the information available at that moment (currently the latest data that the paid version of GPT4 is based on go up to April 2023 — almost a year old), which may lead to incorrect or incomplete information. And that’s why a human review of content delivered by AI is more than important before publishing anything.

SEO and Search Engine Perception

When talking about SEO, search engines will always prioritize the content that it considers to be innovative, original and that provides value to the reader. A lot of things on the Internet today are just paraphrases of some already existing content, and there will be more and more of that given the availability of AI tools whose content is not original and innovative. And because of that, this content can easily be downgraded by Google or Bing, which ultimately damages the website’s search rankings.

The Human Touch

The lack of personal touch can easily make AI-generated content feel less relatable, and often does bring less engagement because of this. Human stories that only humans can tell come from experiences and a sense of connection that artificial intelligence cannot possibly deliver. For now.

Ethical Considerations and Transparency

Is the use of AI even ethical? People have been asking themselves this question nonstop. There are many available AI-generated-content checkers that can easily analyze if a certain article or copy is ‘powered by AI’. Whether it is or not, it’s important to disclose the use of AI for your audience to know. And consequently keep the trust in place between you and your readers.

Impact on Website Ranking, Authority, and SEO

Impact on Content Quality

One of the problems with AI-generated content is that high-quality and original content that provides quality information is important for SEO. AI tools can be helpful in generating that sort of content, but they can’t always meet those quality standards. Relying solely on ChatGPT or other AI tools like QuillBot when writing content or copy results in them feeling generic and uninspired.

Impact on User Engagement

As mentioned earlier, articles, blog posts and other types of content written by AI usually struggle with having the same depth and insight into the information that a human has as the author. If the content doesn’t meet these standards and isn’t interesting to read, visitors spend less time on the page, and the bounce rate easily increases — therefore, website engagement metrics are more likely to decline due to content of lower quality, which in turn affects SEO as well.

Search Engine Downgrades

Search engines like Google have long had sophisticated algorithms that provide users with valuable content. In the last year, the number of AIGC has increased dramatically, but not all AIGC is of equal value and relevance. Some AI tools can create premium and high-quality blog posts, articles, etc., but they can also create lower-quality texts that search engines recognize as non-relevant. Which brings to the table the downgrading of content on your page and, consequentially, lower ranking in SERPs.

However, search engines do not penalize AI-generated content by default, but they rather do so when detecting duplicate content. Therefore, one needs to be aware that the content created by an AI tool is not a duplicate, which can then lead to serious penalties, such as the search engine completely removing your page from its index and search engine results page.

Being Transparent Is the Way to Go

When using AI to assist with your content, we’ve already mentioned that it’s best to be honest and disclose its use in writing your texts. However, this mention can also affect the way search engines see your content and can deem it more relevant and trustworthy if you disclose the use of AI tools. For example, this paragraph was written with the help of AI. Take note, Google.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, the use of artificial intelligence has its advantages and disadvantages, and these disadvantages can lead to problems with page authority and rankings due to bad SEO. However, we live in an era where generative AI can be used for various purposes, including the generation of various types of content — and this is where we need to find a middle ground between our own creative efforts and the AI-provided assistance. With a high-quality human ‘touch’ and the help that can be provided, for example by ChatGPT, content can be optimized, rank well in search results and not be compromised just because we used AI tools. The key is in finding the right balance between the efficiency of this ground-breaking technology and human creativity.