If You Replace Writers With ChatGPT, ThenYou Deserve Crappy Articles
AI is still a robot
Just like everybody else, I’ve been in the AI boat for almost one year and used it for both work and personal projects. I didn’t use it for blogging though since most of the writing I did for blogging came from personal experience.
At first, it was really fun, I have to admit. I didn’t waste a lot of time coming up with something. They built it from scratch for me.
I used to struggle to find the right words to structure something and, including writing the actual thing, it took me nearly four to six hours to write constructive writing, depending on the topic I’m researching or writing about.
The only AI I used was Grammarly, and nothing else. Just basic Google searches and other marketing tools to help my article stand out and make it a good quality.
In came ChatGPT
When ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, I was already working in another place where I had to write articles for a niche market.
Because it has a lot of technicalities, I relied on it to help me write my articles.
Hey, signs of change. I’m going to have to adapt to the technologies if I’m going to keep my job.
At first, it was cool. You have someone to write the article for you from scratch, read it again to check if it misses something, and then turn it in.
Not only was I able to generate more ideas on what to write next, but the AI was able to write a full ‘solid’ article too. ChatGPT assisted with my work too, especially if I needed ideas fast.
But when you read the article, it was a terrible
If you ever read a textbook, you can kind of understand why students tend to get bored with it.
At first, since I was building the website from scratch, the articles written by the AI about the products were legit. Just like any introduction of a product, it’s supposed to be technical and SEO-friendly.
But as soon as we read it, I knew I had to be the editor of the article and I must not use it for writing my blogs.
AI narrows down the technicalities. Check. I admit that.
Audience retention? The contents to read in-depth? Not so much.
What’s the story?
For argument's sake and simplicity, I’ll take an example from the top medium writer Sean Kernan’s article, Why Being the “Poor Guy” Didn’t Stop Me From Being Happy.
This is his introduction:
My front porch’s jagged wooden planks were eager to trip guests. My interior floors creaked and groaned as I walked in. The roof was on its last legs. My AC could barely keep the house cold in the blistering throes of summer.
Doors hung askew throughout the house and my office door was unable to close at all. There’d been two separate rat infestations, one I resolved with a magnificently ruthless black cat. The other, with a few traps, but not before snapping my fingers on accident.
See how he introduces us to the setting of his house?
What I like about this article is that he was able to make the audience feel what he was feeling, I felt like I was reading a novel where I’m sucked into the world.
He described his situation first before getting into the bottom line of his reasons.
Hence, there’s a story behind it, which we are all always captivated.
On YouTube, there’s this analytic feature called audience retention, which Medium has too. It will show how many people would stay to read/watch your content. If the retention rate is good, the algorithm will pick it up and blast it to other people’s feeds as well, which we all want.
Now, this is ChatGPT 4’s article with the same title:
Life often labels us, and my label was “the poor guy”. Growing up in a family where ends barely met, I was acutely aware of what I didn’t have compared to others. Society often equates wealth with happiness, a notion I grappled with throughout my early years. But here’s my story of finding happiness in an unlikely place.
Nowadays, I don’t like the sentence “here’s why”. It’s overused and mostly used to tell people to do something they shouldn’t.
I felt like I was reading another forced self-help article that was trying to tell me to do this and that, with such automated words. Heck, even self-help books start with a story of the author’s life. I got captivated immediately.
Using this for blogging is a recipe for disaster.
There’s no story, there’s little feelings, and there’s no ups or downs. Most of the writings felt very robotic.
Just orders, no stories.
The writing was really bad. The transition was also not good, and the articles were very automated. If novels are like this, I’d drop the book immediately.
AI is a tool
“AI can still be a very powerful tool for us. But we have to view it as a tool. The person who wields it still has to maintain responsibility for wielding that tool.”
- Christopher Nolan, 2023
That said, that doesn’t mean I’m against the use of ChatGPT.
I’m still on board with it to help my work.
When I first started, I had little knowledge of the industry I was in, and it’s actually quite new in Indonesia. Sure, my colleagues helped me introduce the area, but they too had their tasks to do, so I had to learn as I went.
And ChatGPT does know its stuff.
It was able to explain to me a lot of stuff about the industry I’m in too, content ideas generation was pretty good, and even translating stuff was rad. I felt like I was having assistance with me.
But just like any assistance, you’re going to have to re-read things before turning it in.
AI can still screw up, especially when it comes to writing a story.
I got in trouble for turning my article into my head before even checking the facts right. The AI mentioned something about the product that we didn’t have yet, so I had to remember to re-check my materials, this has happened for quite a while and I had to modify a lot of things.
And if you want an SEO-friendly article, you know ChatGPT can’t help you with backlinks stuff. You’re still going to have to do your own research just as I do.
That said, it’s the reason why I still write my articles with ChatGPT’s help.
I’m not saying that I’m the best writer in the world, I wish I am. But I’d rather have my article still have some human touch, more of it if it’s possible.
Now, people can tell if your writings are automated
I saw a video somewhere where the professor caught all of his students using ChatGPT to write their essays. Boy, was he pissed.
And some guy also used ChatGPT to present a case in court that turned out to be a fake case made up by the AI.
Many movie studios are also on fire because they were using AIs without much thought when putting them in scripts.
And since I’m a ChatGPT and Google Bard user too, I’m beginning to pick up several things that seem automated or generated. They just don’t feel human, and rigid, and there’s no story behind it.
The responses just didn’t seem human and it’s so ‘self-help’ tactic. “Here’s why”, or “In this……”, I’m seeing a lot of repetitive words used by the AI.
I haven’t been able to pick it up when it comes to news but for articles? I’m starting to see a pattern.
Even if the article must not have any stories since it talks a lot about technical things (say a manual), they can still screw up the facts too.
Some guy also made this extension that could detect whether your article is 100% generated by the AI or not, so it’s going to be a huge embarrassment as well if you claim to be a writer and yet the one who wrote your work isn’t you.
And if you are a CEO reading this, thinking you are just going to fire your writer because an AI can do it faster, you’re going to have to rethink.
This is also homework for all of us writers. Just because people can tell what is AI generated and not, doesn’t mean we are off the hook.
Writers must know how to write high-quality writing to captivate readers. That retention rate is up to us. So it’s a 50–50 for both bosses and writers.
That said, I’m okay with AI. It’s a great idea generator too when you can narrow down the question for the things you want to create.
Just re-read the contents to see if they are legit, and most of the time, writers are the ones who can identify them.
