While researching this blog post, I asked Verse by Verse, Google’s “experimental AI-powered muse” to write a poem about robotic imagination combining the styles of Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The result is as follows.
Across poetry, literature, marketing, and even cinema, artificial intelligence (AI) is making steady inroads as an important tool. At last count, there were 603 AI writing assistants, including our very own ClickUp Brain. Every piece of writing software, from Google Docs to Quillbot, now has AI integrated.
On the other hand, more than half of the marketers Salesforce surveyed already use or experimenting with generative AI for work. In the form of text, images, and even video, teams are creating content with AI. Whether we like it or not, AI-generated content is already coexisting with human-generated content.
If you’re looking to embrace this reality and understand how they work together (or don’t), here’s a primer on the pros and cons of AI-generated content.
AI vs. Human Generated Content: Pros and Cons
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding AI Content
Before we get into the AI-generated content vs. human content debate, let’s first understand how this works.
What is AI content?
AI-generated content refers to any text or media created by machine learning algorithms in response to human input (known as prompts). You might use AI content creation tools, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, Google Gemini, etc., to create content.
How does AI-generated content work?
A typical user journey for creating AI content would be as follows.
Choose your tool
Open up an AI tool to create content. Depending on your needs, ease of use, price, etc., you can choose from a number of AI text generators available today.
Prompt the AI
Input a description of the content you want to create. For instance, you might say, “write a Twitter post about my icebreaker event this evening” or “what is rapid application development?
Review the output
The AI will use natural language processing (NLP) techniques to understand your input and produce appropriate responses. Review them for suitability to your needs.
Refine the output
You don’t need to take the first draft as is. Give the AI additional instructions. For example, you might say, “break this down into bullet points” or “use more film references.”
Quality check the output
AI isn’t all-knowing. While creating AI content, you might run the risk of inaccuracies, hallucinations, and sometimes even rambling. So, run a thorough quality check.
Now you’re all set to use the AI-generated content in whatever way you need. Some of the most common ways AI content is used are as follows.
How to use AI content?
You can use AI content for any of the purposes you use human writing. Some examples are:
Brainstorming: Use the AI tool to brainstorm ideas, create outlines and first drafts etc. which you can give a human touch to later.
Content repurposing: Once you’ve created one form of content, use AI to repurpose it in others. For example, you might input a blog post into AI and ask for:
- Short summary
- Meta title and description
- Social media posts
- Email newsletter promotions
- Search engine ads
Scaling content: If you’re writing e-commerce descriptions for a large number of products, AI is a fantastic tool. It can automatically create content for your product pages in line with your brand tone and style.
Translation: Though not adept in all languages, AI is an effective tool for translations. Especially for large scale projects, such as instruction manuals, subtitling, etc., AI can help significantly.
This brings with it numerous advantages.
Summarize this article for me pleaseAdvantages and Disadvantages of Using AI-Generated Content
Generative AI opens up opportunities for content creation unlike any other technology before. Its advantages far outweigh anything any digital tool offers.
Scalability
The biggest advantage of AI is the scale it can serve. It takes 2-3 seconds for any AI tool to create the first draft of an entire blog post on any topic, however complex. Imagine the number of first drafts you can generate each working day! To say nothing of the fact that AI can actually work 24×7.
Efficiency
AI writing tools are efficient in creating content at scale. However, they also make human teams more efficient.
- By instantly generating first drafts on any topic, they eliminate writer’s block
- By giving content pieces to work with, AI reduces the time writers need to write
- By acting as a sparring partner, AI helps the human writer explore ideas and see output without judgment
- By incorporating all necessary data points, AI minimizes research time
With spell check, proofreading, and editing, AI improves efficiency at every stage of the writing process.
Improved SEO
AI content tools are some of the most effective SEO support that writers can have. Not only do they offer relevant keyword suggestions, they also show how these can be integrated into the article organically so your content ranks of search engines.
Consistency
Need to follow a style guide? Need to maintain a consistent tone? Have a brand message that needs to be integrated everywhere? No sweat. AI writing tools can ensure that all your content follows these guidelines consistently and appropriately.
Despite its many advantages, AI content is not perfect. Some critical disadvantages are as follows.
Limited creativity
At its core, an AI tool takes existing data from various sources and spins them into comprehensible responses to specific questions. So, despite its ability to create content, AI is limited by the boundaries of the data used to train it.
More importantly, AI can’t yet have an original idea. It can spark inspiration, showing human content writers a glimpse of possibilities. But AI itself is yet to be imaginative, so to speak. So, if two human content creators use the same tool to write about the same topic, they might just end up being copies of one another.
Questionable quality
Every AI content generator will have a disclaimer, such as this one by Google Gemini:
“Gemini may display inaccurate info, including about people, so double-check its responses.”
This is because AI is still not reliable for content creation. Some quality issues you might face are:
- Inaccuracies: AI hallucinating facts, events, and other information
- Redundancies: AI repeating itself or worse, convoluting or misrepresenting existing information
- Lack of context: AI is yet to understand the nuances of various cultural contexts
- Lack of depth: Content generated by AI can sometimes be shallow, often regurgitating existing or even outdated knowledge without any new insight
- Unnatural language: Ironically, AI-generated content can be unnatural, awkward, robotic, and unfeeling
- Plagiarism: At the end of the day, AI is trained on publicly available data, which means issues around copyright and plagiarism are still a very dark grey area
The necessity of human intervention
No AI tool today creates content that can be published without human intervention. Every tool acknowledges the risks of AI and encourages users to build their own quality control processes.
This means that despite the use of AI tools, organizations still need human writers, editors, and proofreaders to make the content worthy of publication. Adding humans as overseers in the process brings in extraordinary benefits that AI is yet to recreate. We discuss that next.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Benefits and Drawbacks of Human-Generated Content
On the same scale we measured AI-generated content, let’s look at those written by humans, too. Its greatest benefits are:
- Creativity: Human writers often put thoughtfulness, imagination, and some of their own lived experiences into their content that AI can never match
- Accuracy: Humans are more likely to spot inaccuracies in their work and perform thorough fact-checks
- Accountability: Writers are accountable for the words they write; they get bylines!
- Critical thinking: Writers question the status quo and evaluate what they see/hear critically and offer insights that AI can’t
- Contextual understanding: Humans can tailor their content for cultural sensitivity, inclusivity, and in response to feedback
The biggest drawback of human-written content, however, is that it’s limited by human capabilities. There is only so much one writer can do. And despite their best efforts, humans make mistakes. They get things wrong, misunderstand things, and, in some cases, may just be having an off day.
That is not to say that AI content is useless or that human-generated content is biased. In the next section, let’s see how you can differentiate the two or combine them to meet your needs.
Summarize this article for me pleaseDifferentiating Between Human-Generated and AI-Generated Content
Simply put, human-generated content is written by a person. AI-generated content is written by an algorithm. However, in today’s world, the differentiation isn’t that easy. For instance, what if a human uses AI to brainstorm the outline but writes the content draft on their own? Is proofreading considered part of writing too?
Such existential questions are for another day. 🤷
Today, we’ll focus on the key differences between human-generated and AI-generated content.
Creativity
Humans are inherently creative. From the Iliad to TikTok, human creativity is responsible for every single tool and technology around us. Therefore, human-generated content will always hold the potential to display imagination and raw creativity in a way that AI simply cannot.
AI content is a rehash of what exists already. Where humans are limited by speed and output volumes, AI can never produce something completely original. Moreover, as all content is initiated by a human’s prompts, it’s safe to say that if there is any imagination at play, it came from the user.
Human writer 1️⃣
AI 0️⃣
Efficiency
Every writer struggles with inspiration and consistently creating content of a certain quality. However experienced or trained you are, there is a limit to how much content you can create within the 8-hour workday.
AI doesn’t really have that problem. Your friendly neighborhood AI isn’t going to have writer’s block when you ask it to churn out a 1000-word essay. It is not going to struggle with inspiration or a creative slump. So, AI-generated content is more efficient and consistent than human content can ever be.
Human writer 0️⃣
AI 1️⃣
Subjectivity and emotional depth
Humans have lived experiences. Across class, caste, race, age, gender, sexual orientation, etc., there is a multitude of experiences that make for great narratives with emotional depth. This is also more relatable and moving to human readers (who are still the largest audience group).
Most AI tools are trained on existing datasets, which means they have no unique intelligence. This makes them somewhat uniform and uninteresting in creating stories. However, this is not to be confused with being objective. In fact, that’s a whole new concept that we explore next.
Human writer 1️⃣
AI 0️⃣
Bias
Every individual is biased by the knowledge they’ve gained from their experiences. Any content they generate is a product of such biases.
For instance, a graphic designer who believes that candidates with tattoos are unsuitable for professional environments might never create images including them.
On the other hand, AI is trained on data created by humans. Their biases are reflected in the algorithms.
For example, in an infamous incident, an AI resume screener trained on the resumes of existing employees learned to give a high score to those who listed baseball or basketball as hobbies, but deducted points for softball.
In short, bias isn’t a human vs. AI thing. Bias is innately human and therefore inherent in AI too. However, a human can recognize those biases (by themselves or, if say, a supervisor points them out) and work to shed them.
An AI will need to be specifically programmed to do
Human writer 0️⃣
AI 0️⃣
Given the way generative AI is today, human writing outweighs the benefits of AI content. However, that doesn’t mean you should shun AI content altogether. In fact, AI-generated efficiency is extraordinarily valuable when used in conjunction with human imagination, originality, and quality control.
In summary, here’s what the difference between human-generated and AI-generated content looks like.
| Feature | AI-generated content | AI generated content |
|---|---|---|
| Originality | Possibly high | Very low |
| Efficiency | Low to moderate | Very high |
| Consistency | Moderate | Very high |
| Scalability | Challenging and expensive | Simpler and cost effective |
| Bias | Possible | Possible |
| Reliability | High, when critical thinking is applied | Low as AI can hallucinate and be inaccurate |
| Quality | Moderate to high with specific and relevant examples | Low to moderate with redundancies and awkward language |
| Best for | Creative and engaging content needs (E.g., novels, essays, marketing content) | Standardized and repeatable content needs (E.g., Technical documentation, meta descriptions, video transcripts) |
Summarize this article for me pleaseCombining Human Creativity and AI Efficiency
While you might debate passionately about human vs. AI, practicality dictates that the best way forward is a thoughtful combination of the two. Here’s how that’ll pan out in practice with a virtual workspace like ClickUp.
AI for inspiration; Humans for value-add
AI’s best use case today is inspiration and ideation. Open up an AI writing tool like ClickUp Docs and Use ClickUp’s AI tool to either enter your prompt and get started with a first draft, or summarize the content from a ready draft.
Don’t know where to start? Try ClickUp’s Content Writing Template for a simple way to create engaging, high-quality content.
Bonus: How to edit AI content
AI for research; humans for insight
AI chatbots make great research assistants. Ever stuck at “what’s the word for…”? Your research assistant can help. Forgot where you saved your edited document? Connected Search can help. Need organizational data from your project management tool? ClickUp Brain has answers.
However, if you’re creating content for a report or a proposal, it needs your human insight. AI document summarizers can give you the information you need to glean insights from it.
For example, your project management tool might show that your teams are taking an average of two weeks to publish each blog post. It might even say this has increased from one week, which was the standard six months ago. But this could mean:
- Your team size has reduced
- Your teams are burned out
- The length and quality of your content have gone up
- You’ve reduced the number of blog posts and are focusing on video content instead
Such insight and corresponding action items must still come from a thinking human.
By the way, if you’re managing a team of writers, here’s a primer on how to use AI in content marketing that you might find helpful.
Humans for imagination; AI for scale
Let’s take the example of content for marketing materials. Published content is plentiful. Even the longest of long-tail keywords have hundreds of pages of content. What differentiates a successful organization from the rest is how unique, engaging, interesting, and valuable its content is. This requires human imagination.
From there, AI can take over. It can proofread and check for consistency of tone and style. It can create distribution material for social media, email, video scripts, etc. AI can also personalize content for various audience groups effortlessly.
This way, by combining the creativity of humans with the efficiency of AI, organizations can create truly extraordinary content.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSupercharge Your Content Creation Process with ClickUp
To write a poem, Google’s Verse by Verse needs you to do a few things, like choose the poetic style, pick three authors who’ll be your muses, and write the first line too. Once you do this, AI gives you options to choose from—here, you need to pick the next line yourself.
The point is that generative AI is not (yet) a sentient entity that can create content on its own. However, it is a knowledgeable assistant that can help with inspiration, ideation, research, spellchecking, proofreading, etc.
It is efficient, but it’s also unreliable. It lacks subjectivity, but it’s also biased. It is consistent, but its quality can be questionable.
Despite these conundrums, avid users of AI for content generation know that it can be powerful when wielded wisely. It can help in a number of use cases as part of a writer’s everyday workflow. Whether you’re writing the summary of your standup meeting, a heartfelt goodbye email, or the President’s speech, AI has something to offer.
Integrated into the ClickUp project management tool, AI can help you find related tasks, answer questions about projects, summarize long documents, expand on ideas with examples, create content writing templates, and a whole lot more.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
