Brendan Hufford’s Post

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I cannot think of a more irresponsible or less empathetic response to that question. Truly. The price of a service like writing is dictated in part by the time it takes to perform it. Using AI (allegedly) cuts down on this. So it’s perfectly reasonable to feel ripped off by a writer using AI tools. Good content is also expensive. Therefore, wondering if one is being ripped off with it in this economic climate isn’t just about feeling angry. It can actually have a big impact on one’s marketing budget and even overall business.  Can you honestly say that you would be okay with paying a writer the same $1500 for a blog post that would normally take them 50% longer had they not used AI tools? I highly doubt it.  As for the “quality” you speak to, that’s determined by the results it provides. This can take months to determine for B2B SaaS, particularly SEO content.  On that front, Google is very vocal about how it’s cracking down on AI-generated and even seemingly AI-generated content. So while a piece may successfully rank one day, it could easily be completely gone the next – along with your client’s entire domain.  Lastly, using AI to write content doesn’t mean you’re ahead of the curve. It means you have zero edge.

I disagree here. There are several reasons. First, there's the pricing / cost issue. If you're paying $0.30 a word, and someone presses three buttons to generate a 1,500 word article (that anyone else can do, by the way) it's not what you're paying for. Second, these AI writers are good. I don't dispute that, but they aren't original, and if you're writing for SEO purposes there's a very high chance that Google will penalize sites that do this -- because we're about to see an avalanche of AI-written spam. I also predict we're about to see a new wave of AI-bots. LinkedIn and other SM platforms already have a serious bot problem. For some things, I don't care if I'm talking to a machine. But for many things, I don't want to talk to a machine. We're going to see these bots talking back to each other as their creators try to game the system. So if a writer is using an AI assistant to write the article, I'd get rid of them. Why pay them anything at all when I can do it myself, or hire a different person whose honest about using these tools and pay the $5.00 that the content is worth, as opposed to what's actually being paid. When you can just click a few buttons and you've got an article, everyone can do it.

“Drafts” is the most important word in this post it seems people are missing… To me it’s no different than using an Excel formula to speed up a process. I don’t remember the last time someone had a go at me for doing that or felt ripped off. If one can shell out 40-60% of a content piece with a solid brief to AI, fact check it, flesh it out, compare it with what competitors have done and add further insight then it ain’t cheating to me. Unedited and unchecked AI content is largely dogshit for anything beyond generalist blabbering and it shows. Anyone just spitting stuff out like this will be rumbled almost as a fast as a noughties word spinner tool.

I think it does matter. Google has stated that AI generated content violates their guidelines and Google is already penalizing many sites for using it. Stack Overflow has banned it, and I'm sure other platforms will do the same. So there are very good reasons to want human-written content on your site. As far as how to detect AI content, there are tools to do that. I found a free tool that's very accurate at detecting content from ChatGPT, so I would assume Google has at least as good or better of a detection tool. Even if they're only 50% accurate, if you publish a bunch of AI content, they'll detect at least a few of them and realize what's going on.

My and other jurists concern is that AI relies on third party content (as I’m sure you are well aware). This is an issue under copyright law (potentially copyright infringement unless consent has been obtained from the owners of thousands of works used by the algorithm). Even from a moral perspective, it is concerning.

Was this post draft written by AI? 🤔 Tools are tools, it's up to people how they want to be used. Even with an AI helping write/create a draft, I imagine there is still a huge benefit for EDITORS, who are reviewing what the AI has created and filtering before publishing. What I see in the future is an excellent EDITOR becoming more important than being able to write a draft of the content, due to these tools becoming more available and refined.

From the perspective of someone who wants to get into freelance writing though, it does personally make me feel less valuable. It feels like the barrier to entry will start getting lower, so demand for writers will get lower, because almost anyone can use those tools to write. Distinguishing myself/standing out from the crowd might become a lot harder, and I worry that my passion for writing might become redundant in the future, as companies would want to choose cheaper/more efficient tech over a slower writer. It's a little bit scary for me having just begun my career journey a year or so ago. Any consolation and/or advice on this would be much appreciated.

I've just started using AI to help 'cowrite' my blogs. I have found it doesn't do 100% of the work, but rather like 50%. I still need to provide the prompts, edit, move sections around, make it more thoughtful, ect. I agree its just another tool. We used to hammer each nail in a house individually, but now we use nail guns. The nail gun still needs an experienced team of framers to position the wood to frame the home. From my experience, AI has helped me improve the quantity & quality of my work. Since I started using it, the blogs I've written have driven over 500k in organic traffic....so I think it works.

Yes, there's always ghostwriting, and I'm fine with that so long as it is the author's ideas. At that point you're paying someone for the skill set to articulate your expertise. There better be zero plagiarism, and be a completely original piece (no "rephrasing" of others' work). I'm not paying contributors for AI content, and I'm not giving you an author credit. You didn't write it. It's not your ideas. It's not quite stealing, but it's using someone else's work.