If I ask you to list some of the most obvious debates of 2024 in the world of digital marketing, the AI vs Human debate may come to your mind first. The reason is that the industry and its people are being affected by artificial Intelligence, making it a real concern for some people and an opportunity for others. Whenever AI makes new headlines in the news, we come a step closer to the question that who’s better, a human or an AI.
Answering this question is not new to humans, as it has happened a few times. For instance, when automated robots were introduced, they threatened people working in big manufacturing companies like car manufacturers. The work humans previously did is now done by robotic arms, like painting a car in the factory, casting panels, and even putting them together. So, in that case, the robots became the clear winners.
However, with this AI vs. human debate, there’s a huge difference that this time it is taking over the creative fields. For now, we will be talking about writers, but if you look at other fields, most of them are creative, like image generation, video production, Etc.
Painting a car door is not creative at all, as everything is already fed into the computer, from the movement to the angle. But these creative fields, like writing a blog, are different.
It takes a lot of aspects to consider which we always thought were limited to humans be it being emotional, creative or understanding. But, today these qualities that make a human different from robots are also put to test.
Thus, answering this question of which is better in 2024 – AI or a human writer will take many factors to be examined first, and in this blog, we will be doing that.
The Mechanism of Writing Content for Both AI and Humans
To compare AI vs Human writers, we must know how they create content. It not only includes writing but the whole process, including research, development, putting one’s thoughts, and many more.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence for writing content works very similar to how you order a customizable combo at a restaurant, but how? It takes the prompt from you just like the waiter takes the order.
So, now it knows what to bring back to you. Behind the wall, the cooking is going on in the kitchen where your order is being prepared. Now, since you have ordered a combo, no matter what, you’ll ultimately be getting the same thing as every other person will get if they order the same combo.
The only difference between your and other’s orders can be the cooking. You may get the best cooked, and the other person gets something undercooked or overcooked. Also, the difference can be the items you excluded or included, which can differ from the other person.
The AI, while generating content for you, is doing the same. Once it takes the prompt, it finds the relevant information from the huge set of data it trained on. It looks at what is needed and what is not and provides some unique rephrasing. So, it’s like the cooking process in the kitchen that can vary a little bit for everyone.
You are getting what’s already there, but since AI is trained on this massive pre-existing data, it never feels like you are getting the same thing. Moreover, there are algorithms in the back working so fast that the speed of content generation can’t be compared. But is speed everything? Let’s understand it in the other half.
Human Writer
First thing first, the speed, as we discussed, can never be met by a human writer. A human writer can’t write 1000 words of content in a few seconds. But putting that aside, everything is quite different. The process that a writer undertakes to write a blog is to research the topic first and then start writing.
From a broader perspective, it’s the same as what AI does, but when a human writer writes, he/she can add in their own experiences. This is the thing that makes most of the difference between an AI model and a human.
It’s like ordering a dish from the menu, like spaghetti, but giving independence to the chef to make it their way. So, you’ll be getting spaghetti but with something added that comes from the experience of the chef.
So that’s an overview of how AI writes and how a human writes. But to conclude, an in-depth look at the advantages and disadvantages of AI is important. So, let’s do that now.
Advantages of Artificial Intelligence
- Speed
As we have discussed above, AI writing tools are very fast. Moreover, the speed at which it creates content is actually unmatched. So, it constitutes a content creation process that takes much less time than a human.
- Consistency
Let’s say you are a writer and need to write a piece that requires a particular tone, style and formatting. As a human, it can be hard to maintain all these factors throughout the writing process. But it’s not an issue with AI as it is trained over a lot of data. Also, being a machine, it does not have a forgetting problem, so what it gets once in a prompt, it doesn’t forget, resulting in a piece with the same tone, style and formatting throughout.
- Cost-effectiveness
With AI, another benefit that one can get is cost-effectiveness. This is because even powerful AI models like ChatGPT cost much less compared to a human writer. You can access these tools with a monthly or annually billed subscription and then generate as much content as you want. Moreover, in some cases, like with GPT, you can generate content even for free.
Disadvantages of Artificial Intelligence
- Creativity Constraints
While AI writers can create content quickly, they sometimes have trouble coming up with new and imaginative ideas as humans do. For example, if you want a story that’s full of surprises and emotions, AI might struggle to make it as captivating as a human writer could. It is because of the limited resources, but a more obvious reason is being artificial, after all. So, it restricts AI from coming up with something new. However, you may think that even humans mostly don’t develop something new. Here, you must know that what AI is coming up with is 100% unoriginal as it takes some from this and some from that.
- Limited Understanding
Sometimes, AI doesn’t understand the subtle meanings behind words or phrases, which can lead to mistakes in the content. For instance, if you ask an AI to write a funny article about a cultural event, it might miss the jokes or cultural references that humans easily understand.
- Dependency on Data Quality
AI relies heavily on the information it’s trained on, so if the data is biased or inaccurate, the content it generates may also be flawed. For instance, if the AI is trained on outdated or limited data about a topic, it may not provide the most up-to-date or comprehensive information. It makes AI quite unusable for niches where up-to-date data and accuracy are key. For example, writing about YMYL topics needs a lot of accuracy as Google is extra attentive towards these topics.
Summing Up
To sum up, it may feel like AI is just standing in the corner and can take over anytime soon. But from whatever you have read above, you can speculate that the picture that is being created about AI is itself very doubtful.
Shortly, the influence of AI in the creative fields can not be denied. However, the chances of AI being a friend of humans are greater than it taking over humans and their creative jobs.
So, if you want to automate your content generation process, you can do so, but there will still be humans handling your automated process powered by AI.
Moreover, if you are a writer concerned about whether your job will remain in the future or not, the answer is yes, but only if you shake hands with AI. Hence, it’s better to keep yourself updated with AI trends in your fields instead of debating unnecessary things like AI’s content quality, SEO understanding, etc.
