The introduction of ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022), a number of ethical concerns have been raised, especially pertaining to students using the service to do their homework. However, the real question we try to answer in this post is different: What fate awaits the content and marketing industries with such an advancement in AI content creation?
ChatGPT, unlike its so-far ill-fated rival, Google’s NARD, has proven high efficiency in writing comprehensive articles and blog posts. The AI engine applied is clearly well poised to continue learning and creating unique pieces, eluding the traps of repetition and plagiarism. However, what are still to discover is its ability to continue creating interesting content. This last statement is subjective of course, but we can agree that the level of sophistication presented in ChatGPT’s work is, one way or another, limited. This is where human writing still, and will continue for the foreseeable future in our opinion, to have the upper hand.
Marketing content, on the other hand, has its peculiar nature. It not based on existing content, it is designed to differ from exiting content. ChatGPT is a content generator, and until it proves itself to be an idea generator, the marketing content industry will not undergo the change we might be awaiting. Automated content, AI or not, is still at the stage of recreating content from segments the engine is fed, or the content it feeds itself by search and integration. This is the definition of weak marketing content, and at this stage, we do not see this fact changing.
Blog posts, like the one you are reading at this moment, is a domain where AI can compete. Blog posts are based on reasonable discussion of exiting data, and inferring simple conclusions of calls to action from this discussion. AI content generators may be able today to accomplish this, and at high success. However, until we see tens of thousands of blog posts written by the same bot, we will not be able to judge its ability to maintain the level of sophistication, even at this simplest of content tasks.
Taken into account my conclusions above, my answer to the title question might seem paradoxical. Yes, the content industry is indeed at the verge of a radical change. However, we are still far from the prelude of this change. ChatGPT in particular has taken us all by surprise, but reasonable thinking, something that is still, at least to the time of writing these lines, a human capacity, will show us that we still have a long way to cross before marketing agencies become simple API-bases SAAS providers.
By: Dr. Ali Mohamad, Co-Founder and CEO, VEER
