We Need More Authenticity, Not More AI Content & Automation

AI Content is A Parasite That Has Infected The Entire Internet

Humans have this tendency to not really care about something until it’s gone. 

We see this on a macro-scale with things like BREXIT and the environment but also on the micro scale too with things like how we approach diet and other things we put in our body. 

And then something happens, a health scare, for instance, and then all of a sudden we’re full of regret and self-loathing about not doing something about it when we had the chance. 

Many people will feel this way about the internet and social media pretty soon because, in case you haven’t been paying attention, things are not good right now. 

Why AI Content Is Bad For Businesses, Creators & Brands

AI content has infected every nook and cranny of the internet, from social media to websites and even forums. You see it in places it has no place being: 

• Articles on websites. 
• In reddit posts. 
• Tweets. 
• Facebook posts. 
• Emails. 

And with tools like Sora, it is only going to get worse and worse and worse as these Big Tech companies court financial directors at companies large and small with the prospect of dramatically lower costs. 

• Why pay humans to write your content? 
• Why pay humans to plan, act, and shoot your video content? 
• Why employ humans to handle your customer service? 

The list goes on and on. 

Use AI Content At Your Peril…

But as many brands and creators are now finding out: quite a lot of people hate AI and what it is becoming. Most don’t have a problem with AI when it is used as a tool for solving problems or tasks or even search.

But they hate it when it starts jamming-up their favorite places to hangout online. Places where they expect to see and interact with content created by humans: Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, X, TikTok, Facebook. 

People also tend to hate having things shoved down their throats, and to describe Big Tech’s approach to marketing its AI models as subtle would be like calling Gal Godot a charismatic actor.

I’ve unsubscribed from so many newsletters in the past 12 months for this exact reason. 

If somebody cannot be bothered to write their own newsletter, I cannot be bothered to read it. 

Same with eBooks. If I download something on Kindle or via a lead magnet and its AI content, I’m done. Unsubscribe, delete the lead magnet. Done. You’re dead to me. And if I’m in a bad mood, I might  even write an X about it or something. 

This kind of reaction might sound OTT to you, but it is quickly becoming more common. People do not like AI content, they want less of it, not more. 

People Hate AI Content. Google Isn’t Listening But If You’re A Brand or Business, You Should

This is why one of the most searched for phrases on Google for the past two years has been: how do I turn off AI Overviews? 

You can’t, and the fact that Google doesn’t even give you the option tells you everything you need to know about that godawful company. 

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum you have DuckDuckGo. It also has an AI overviews-style feature. But guess what? It lets you turn it off completely and remove all AI from the search experience. 

It also doesn’t track everything you do online and harvest your personal data. I honestly have no idea why people still use Google. Do yourself a favor: delete Google and start using DuckDuckGo. 

What Happens When The Tide Goes Out?

The risks are massive when it comes to using AI content too. Both to your brand reputation and for your potential visibility further on down the line. 

If people really do kick up a stink about AI content (and they already are) and Google starts losing more and more market share, it will have to react to save face and make people trust its results again. 

This reaction could come in the form of a Panda or Penguin-style algorithm update that looks for and either penalizes or deindexes AI content. If that happened now, some 65% of the web would disappear overnight. 

And don’t kid yourself that Google cannot detect AI content, either. It can, and if it does come for it (which is very possible; too much AI content on the open web will, ironically, gunk up its training data for Gemini) the fallout will make the HCU update look like a system tweak by comparison. 

But even if this scenario doesn’t happen, you should be extremely cautious about how you use and deploy AI inside your business. Machines cannot be authentic. They cannot be original. All they can do is mash together things from their training data. 

That training data is made up of illegally scraped content from the open web and other sources like social media platforms. It’s somebody else’s intellectual property, essentially. Is that how you want your brand to be perceived?

As something that condones not only the enshitification of the open web but also IP theft? 

It’s not a good look. Just do it properly, focus on quality, and leave AI out of your front-end communications with clients, customers and potential and established subscribers. 

Quite a lot of people already hate AI content. But once it becomes endemic, saturating everything so you cannot escape it, that’s when the axe drops.

When regulation happens, when Google acts, when YouTube starts filtering-out things, etc. And if your entire business is built on this type of content you’ll be in a world of pain when the tide does eventually go back out.