In ten years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be creating the majority of SEO content. In twenty, we’ll be wondering why we even bothered with content creation.
At least, that’s what Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, recently said.
Robots, replacing humans? Not very unthinkable in this age, considering the vast number of available visual media portraying very lifelike AI. They can speak, they can dance, and they can even cook. Do you know what else AI can do? They can write thousands of articles in a single minute. So definitely, they can replicate and replace the work of humans, no?
Yeah, not really.
Natural Language Generation Technology
NLG, as explained by Narrative Science, is humans’ attempt at AI synthesising textual content by combining analytic output with contextualised narratives. In simple terms, AI can now proficiently write reports. Here are some examples of NLG used in journalism:
- Heliograf (The Washington Post): In 2016, the Washington Post developed Heliograf to help cover the 2016 Olympics in Rio. The bot was used to generate updates regarding the outcomes of various games and medal awards.
- Quill (Narrative Science): This AI offers a service that, as Kris Hammon said, could easily imitate a sportswriter’s style yet produce a thousand more articles. Quill was already writing over a million words per day in 2015, and Forbes, USAA, and T. Rowe Price have already been subscribing to this AI’s capabilities.
- Wordsmith by Automated Insights (The Associated Press): The news conglomerate is using NLG to publish thousands of quarterly earnings articles. Besides financial reports, Wordsmith can also write sports along the level of minor league basketball.
Interesting, no? Considering the advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s abilities, shouldn’t we be threatened, as SEO content creators, that we would someday be replaced? McCoy of Search Engine Journal says we shouldn’t. Here are the top three reasons why:
- Robots are not humans. In the end, that is what they are: robots. They cannot feel. They are very objective and can only produce based on what is put inside them. But humans? They have memories, and that is what makes a story so compelling; the meaningful experiences and unique insights that we can touch a work with.
- It is expensive. As of now, only large companies have access to big shots like Wordsmith and Quill. What is readily available for the general public, like for example Articoolo, is much more affordable but that’s the only thing that it’s got for it. For a USD 19, 10-article minimum, the only article you can produce is nonsense that sounds exactly like a robot.
- It is not relatable. In the end, who are we writing for? Why are we creating content? Is it so that robots can, for example, buy the sports drink that our client is selling? Of course not. We write for the consumption of other humans and they, as people, trust and connect with other humans who can relate and understand their needs.
Perhaps eventually AI can function just as well as a human can. But it would take a lot of work and maybe a hundred more years. So what’s the bottom-line of this discussion?
No, you won’t be losing your job anytime soon.
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