ChatGPT Can Write, Yet Content’s Future Remains Unwritten

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are taking the creative world by storm. But while the technology is great at coming up with answers, it’s leaving professional content creators with big questions about the future of their careers. Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute weighs in with a word of caution and his thoughts on why marketers don’t need to worry – yet.

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Aired: December 16, 2022

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Hello there and welcome. Heard a little about ChatGPT? Is it going to steal your job? Was this segment written by a robot? Well, I for one welcome our new AI copywriting overlords. This is what’s new that you need to know.

Hello everybody. Robert Rose here with the news. It’s what’s new, but – more importantly –what’s important in the world of content marketing. And for the best in best practices – you can always go to contentmarketinginstitute.com.

Well unless you’ve been buried under a rock for the last week or so, you haven’t been able to avoid the news that there’s a new content writer waiting to join your team. It’s a new artificial intelligence bot called ChatGPT.

It strikes me as ironic, the amount of digital ink that humans are giving to a bot that is designed to, well, help us spill more digital ink. The tool itself is pretty simple: It lets you type in questions using natural language, and the chatbot then answers in a conversational – and sometimes fairly remarkable – way.

Related: AI Text-to-Image Generators: Job Killers or Friendly Robot Assistants?

The world seems to be giving it a go. And, as of the production of our news this week, OpenAI (the company responsible for launching general access to ChatGPT) has closed off new accounts until they deal with the demand that has exploded over the last week or so.

The world has started to react to its capabilities, and responses seem to be falling distinctly into one of two camps:

1. ChatGPT is the end of the content creator’s world.
2. ChatGPT is a magical cauldron that will rescue businesses from the drudgery of content creation.

What’s our take here at CMI?

It will be neither of those things – and may or may not turn out to be a fundamentally disruptive force in the practice of content marketing.

Some have said that ChatGPT will fundamentally, “change everything in marketing, forever.” Others say it has “passed the tipping point” and that we must explore it. One writer even referred to it as a “pocket nuclear bomb” and feels it should be withdrawn from our collective grasp immediately.

Whether you agree or disagree with any particular response, it’s all been dizzying.

Most importantly, the majority of these responses – and the conclusions they draw – are all tempered by the same word: “yet.”

“Yet” is what I urge you to take away from all these reactions (including this one, by the way).

This technology is still in its formative stage. Just wait.

Generative AI is still in its formative stage. Marketers should explore its capabilities & limitations, but it’s not time to form business models around it – yet, says @Robert_Rose Click To Tweet

In the rush to create business models out of this, there will likely be bad actors – those who will utilize generative AI technology (or probably even fake versions of such) in such a way that it actually does harm content creators, the creative process, and other people who create things.

However, it’s just as likely there will be good actors who leverage the technology to further the craft of writing and challenge us to use the tool to get better at it.

Right now, when I look at the quality of content coming out of ChatGPT – and however “impressive” it might be – I think it probably says more about the quality of our current writing than it does about the abilities of ChatGPC. It’s just not great.

YET.

The question that remains is, “What should we do now, as professionals?”

My advice? Play with it. Explore it. Start to understand its capabilities and its limitations.

In my Rose-Colored Glasses column this week I go into a little bit more about my thoughts. But one thing I do notice is that there are tens of tools out there that use the same technology that powers ChatGPT. There will be no doubt hundreds by the summer of next year. Be careful of the ones that position this innovation as taking the drudgery (or “grunt work”) out of the creation process, or as “magical.”

This is a critical point: What I do know now is that every creative content person I know doesn’t view the activities or capabilities that AI will ultimately address as drudgery, wasteful, or especially mysterious and magical. Creating content is fun, hard, and frustrating – but, ultimately, it’s satisfying.

Digital film editing didn’t take the artistry or drudgery out of cutting and splicing film together. It added an extension that allowed content creators to be capable of things they couldn’t do previously.

Digital imaging software didn’t remove drudgery or artistry from opening and mixing paints together in a creative way prior to putting brush to canvas. It added capacity to that process, giving artists an entire rainbow of color palettes to work with without opening a can of paint.

Our take is that AI will open new doors and extend the capabilities of writers and other content creators, just as it closes doors on others. It will transform the process of written content creation in business. It will change all of us.

How it will do that, though, is still up to us.

AI will transform the process of written content creation in business. It will change all of us. But how it will do that is still up to us, says @Robert_Rose Click To Tweet

But for today, that’s 5 minutes of the news you need to lead in content marketing. I’m Robert Rose and remember: It’s your story to tell – tell it well.

See you next week.