Early thoughts on AI

There is a lot of buzz about AI, but what is it?

Narrow AI refers to where artificial intelligence has reached today, general AI refers to where it will be in the future.

At the moment, AI is the backbone of smart assistance, which can be accessed through most phones, and is also integrated into cars and smart home devices. It’s been around for a long time now.

Siri and Alexia are devices that use voice recognition and are powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

So many people, journalists and writers are worried if they will soon be obsolete and out of a job with new services which make claims that content can be done via AI?

As with any rising tech, there are always super enthusiasts and the real anti-brigade. Yet in my experience things often find a place of balance. Yet for those of us who write stories we are already seeing the limitations.

 

Five things which are great about AI

AI content tools are not there to replace human writers, but to assist and speed up the process.

1 AI can spark ideas when you are struggling, helps you find various ways to share very similar information and can help with key words based on internet activity. Great for your SEO, or when you’re writing wording for a website.

2 When it comes to writing and AI doing blogs, articles and content, there IS so much about that which is fantastic. Using the internet as a base resource, AI programmes can give anyone brilliant ideas for saying things over and over again in different ways and aligned to what others are saying or searching for.

3 AI is already used by some online sites to enhance writing by checking grammar, use of repeated words, keeping writing concise and recognising the difference between writing for a story, or more formal writing. Not only do they help your writing, but for some it helps improve writing skills.

4 When writing advertising copy, AI content generators are trained on millions of examples, so they can help you to produce more compelling copy. If you are looking for a tagline or slogan – using AI, they can generate these kinds of tagline ideas for your business.

5 AI helps you become more productive. If you hit a writer’s block, you can use AI to help you with ideas. See what ideas the AI comes up with – even if you don’t like them, they will at least spark your imagination.

 

Five things which are not great about AI

1 AI an present as fact stuff on the internet which is inaccurate, can sound very clunky and not like natural free flow writing, lacks personality and that personal touch. Doesn’t offer real world, real time examples.

2 At present, AI probably doesn’t know fact from fiction – it’s simply gathering information so most things have to be checked, therefore often it doesn’t save time when it comes to writing content.

3 While there will be deep learning over time, I suspect that search engines like Google will not like a lot of AI-generated content so it will have to be used mindfully. Also AI can only use the dataset given to it – and if that dataset is biased and not representative of humanity as a whole, then it will not speak to everyone. We have to remember a huge portion of the world does not have internet access.

4 I’m currently seeing this as a potentially useful tool, another resource – however it has to be checked. Also, there may be potential for copyright issues if an AI programme gathers information which ‘steals’ the style of a human being somewhere. I await the first case around that.

5 AI can’t evoke human emotions, so it needs the skill of a human writer to create engaging copy.  We have to reach our target audience, and the AI may just be giving an overall idea. Also, the style of writing may not match that of your brand.

Lots of people have problems with change, but I’d say, don’t be afraid of something that’s new, look at it and explore, however don’t come to rely on it. It’s still evolving and while it may help in some ways, search engines may not like it in the medium to long term.