“The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.”
This quote from sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard comes up too often to show the creative limitations of artificial intelligence. But times have changed, and we’re seeing a flurry of breakthroughs in AI use cases, not just in the technical but creative sectors as well. And one of the biggest impacts of AI has been in content creation with AI content writers.
Today, content bots like Copy.ai and ChatGPT can generate grammatically and syntactically correct text with minimal instructions from the user. And even the keenest of eyes cannot guess if the content was AI-generated or the work of a real writer.
However, this wasn’t always the case.
Let’s try and uncover the origin of AI content bots and how they grew into the tools we know and love today.
What are Content Bots?
We can define content bots or AI content writers as computer programmes that generate content based on the prompts given by the user. The interaction between these bots and users is generally textual, i.e., users give prompts as text, and the bot returns text.
These smart programmes use AI, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and automated storytelling technology to understand user inputs and answer them.
Users of content bots are also not limited to the fields of content writing and marketing. Industries like customer service, e-commerce, and healthcare rely on content bots to interact with customers/audiences through chat interfaces.
Today, content bots are used to automate the tedious task of manually researching topics, gathering facts, and creating content that offers value to readers. But – when did it all begin? And how?
What is the Origin of AI Content Writers?
Content bots have come a long way to reach the stage where we can call them AI content writers.
We can trace their origins back to the 1960s – the early days of chatbots. The 60s were also the early days of the Internet and AI, so these chatbots were very simple. They could only respond to a limited number of predefined questions.
Eliza was the first-ever chatbot developed in the 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The chatbot could recognise limited words and phrases in users’ input and return a pre-programmed response.
But it was only in the 1980s and 1990s that researchers and developers were able to create complex machine-learning models – paving the way for modern AI content writers. For example, in 1980 the WordCheck program was released for the Commodore VIC-20, which helped PC owners. WordCheck later became part of word processors and other PC operating systems.
Then in 1984, a computer program could write a whole book on its own – The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed. But the first chatbot to use NLP was ALICE which was developed in 1995 and could have an actual conversation with users.
This, however, was only the beginning.
In 2007, the first-ever online AI bot called StatSheet came into being. It was notable for creating sports-related content. Then, two years later, we had a spell checker that could flag misspelt words AND tell you when you were using a spelt word in the wrong context – Grammarly.
In 2023, we’re far more advanced and sophisticated with generative AI and discriminative AI systems. They’re capable of producing original and high-quality work in the form of arts, gaming, coding, music, and more.
What is the Present State of AI Content Writers?
There is a diversity of AI content writers at the disposal of writers and marketers. And each is unique and focuses on automating tedious tasks.
Let’s try and categorise these.
- For content generation
…to name a few.
- For content refinement & addition
We also have AI image, video, and speech generators, but they are not mainstream like text-based AI content creators due to high computing costs.
What are the Benefits of Using Bots for Writing?
There are several benefits to using content creation bots.
#1 Make the Writing Process More Efficient
The “cobots” can make the entire writing process much more efficient.
For example, ChatGPT and Quill can generate numerous content pieces in no time. They can dish out title tags, statistics, and meta descriptions, making the writing process agile. Even for human-generated content, tools like Grammarly can help refine and improve the content for punctuation, context, and readability.
#2 Maintain Consistency in Content
If your branded content follows a unique tone and style, AI writers can help you stay consistent with each marketing copy.
To illustrate, Quill only takes a few minutes to generate headlines, news articles, and financial reports. At the same time, clients can instruct Quill to maintain a uniform tone, angle and language style for the content it creates.
This is the brilliance of AI writers. They can help you build a strong brand identity and create content at scale.
#3 Create Inexpensive, On-Demand Content
Content comes at a cost, and great content is a costly affair. It requires hiring content creators or agencies who, not to mention, can only work for so many hours a day.
However, with content bots, you can create content 24X7 and reach a global audience with limited investment. It is also easier to scale AI content creation to match the increasing content demands of a growing business.
What are the Problems of AI Content Writers?
There are some problems with using bots for content as well. These are listed below.
#1 Not Ideal for Creative Content
Content bots have come a long way in processing natural language and putting together lengthy blocks of text. But can content bots replace human wit and emotion? Highly unlikely.
They are ideal for writing straightforward content like press releases or product descriptions. But AI-generated content starts to feel impersonal and inauthentic, where a hint of sarcasm or nuance is needed. For example, when writing a thought-leadership piece.
#2 Dependence on Data and AI Model
Besides language processing, data and algorithms make a content bot capable of creating content. This means the content is only as good as the AI model and the database it is trained on. For example, ChatGPT was trained using data created pre-2021, so the content it generates is often outdated. It is also trained to write only positive content, which introduces biases and inaccuracies.
#3 Repetitive Content
As the complexity of content increases, the quality of AI-generated content decreases. This is because content bots have limited parameters in their language models, so they often churn out repetitive content, even for user prompts with contrasting intent. The content generated contains the exact words, sentences and structure in some cases, which is easy to notice.
As a result, AI-generated content carries the risk of losing uniqueness and getting flagged for plagiarism are high.
What is the Future of Content Bots or AI Content Writers?
Not too long ago, in the early 1970s, the world’s first-word processor WordStar showed how it could fill the gaps left by typewriters and do it well. It was faster and aided creative composition like no other.
This was the beginning of the decline of typewriters. Will something similar happen to human writers?
Well, content bots do have a long way to go before they can come close to matching the conviction and authority of an expert human writer. And while they might achieve that level of proficiency, it is hard to predict when that time will come.
But here’s what you can expect to see in the coming years.
#1 Plagiarism Protection
Plagiarism has been the biggest issue with AI content writers. But that may change with watermarking solutions. For instance, ChatGPT is working to embed a cryptographic watermark in its content which developers can use to identify bot-generated content.
#2 Intellectual Property
Who owns the content generated using AI? Is it the company that developed the bot or the users? Unfortunately, there is not much clarity on the issue. But developers will likely try to copyright all the content their bots generate.
#3 Multi-Modal Interaction
Even though we have Dall-E, an AI that can visualise text into art, content bots that we see in the mainstream are majorly text-based tools. They take user input in text and develop content in text form. But as computers and AI models become more sophisticated, we will likely see more bots that can create audio-visual content.
What’s Next for AI Content Writers?
Like any technology, the history of content bots is also a story of innovation and evolution.
As AI and machine learning models become more sophisticated and computing costs optimised, we will see more AI content bots on the market. And they are going to change the way we interact and access information.
But as of now, AI writers are not perfect. Issues that plague these content bots limit them to being just good-to-have AI tools for marketers and writers. Like blog title generators, headline analysers, or Hemingway Editor.
And yet, that may change in the blink of an eye.
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