Seasoned users of AI-generated writing and similar tools will most likely have a leg-up on their competition for at least the next two years.
The reason: Content marketing is expected to become even more popular during that time and AI content creation tools – when used skillfully – can greatly ease the ongoing burden of generating that content.
Highlighting the trend is new research released by World Media Group. It found that 80% of marketers plan to beef-up their content marketing in 2020 and 2021.
In practice, that intense interest will translate into the proliferation of even more blogs, e-newsletters, sponsored articles, white papers, ebooks, press releases, social media posts and similar content on Web sites and throughout the online world.
“Content — when produced strategically and with regularity — can be the backbone of a marketing and advertising plan,” says Jillian Ryan, principal analyst, eMarketer.
In other AI-generated writing news:
*Fake News Site Continuously Churning Out Stories: A fake news site powered by AI-generated writing is continually churning out news stories that at first glance, appear real.
The site — NotRealNews.net — promotes itself as a prototype source of future news: A clearinghouse of first draft news that journalists can enhance and then call their own.
But in its current form, NotRealNews.net is “dangerous,” spewing half-truths and undermining authentic news coverage, according to Futurism writer Dan Robitzski.
“Articles on the Web site contain fictional updates from the U.S. presidential race,” Robitzski observes.
Other stories feature misinformation about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak — a news cycle that’s already full of confusing and sometimes conflicting reports, according to Robitzski.
Adds Robitzski: “Given the system’s believable prose and close proximity to the truth, it seems like that arrangement would almost guarantee that some fake news would slip through the cracks.”
*New AI System from MIT Auto-Updates Wikipedia Posts: Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come-up with an AI-generated fact checking / writing system that auto-updates Wikipedia posts.
Essentially, the prototype system can be programmed to seek out errors in Wikipedia posts – and then auto-correct the posts in the style of a human writer, according to researchers.
“Instead of hundreds of people working on modifying each Wikipedia article, then you’ll only need a few, because the model is helping or doing it automatically,” says Darsh Shah, a PhD student at MIT and one of the lead authors behind the research.
“That offers dramatic improvements in efficiency,” Shah adds.
*Positioning Yourself in an AI-Generated Writing World: Given that content creation will be most likely increasingly automated in years to come, writers and editors need to prepare for the inevitable, according to Cameron Conaway.
He’s director of marketing and communications at Solace, an IT services provider.
“Fear of automation is real,” Conaway observes in Forbes Magazine. “But editorial leaders must at once stay curious about the present and see the long arc of history.
“Rather than let fear drive your decision-making, work to shift your mindset and develop habits of curiosity about what’s changing — and why.”
*AI-Generated Writing: A Challenge For Academia: AI tech’s ability to auto-generate a research paper for a college class – or even produce a convincing professional academic study – is challenging scholarship at universities, according to Michael Mindzak.
He’s an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Brock University.
“Assuming that forms of algorithmic writing become more widely available, the first question many educators may ask is how will they know what their students have actually written?” Mindzak observes.
Equally disturbing: Professional academics may also turn to AI-generated writing as the tech proliferates, according to Mindzak.
“Such technological developments will conceivably lead to increased ‘automation of publication,’ whereby academics – under pressure to ‘publish or perish’ – may seek to deploy algorithmic writing technologies,” Mindzak observes.
*Report: Universities Will Be Heavy Users of AI-Curated Content: Educational institutions are expected to lean heavily on AI-curated content as they reach out to current and prospective students in coming years, according to a new report from Absolute Market Insights.
The AI tools — available from a plethora of vendors — are designed to continually search the Web for content on highly specific topics
Generally, they ready that information for packaging into easily readable digests for quick consumption by targeted audiences.
Other variations of the tools take the curation process a step further, producing snackable text summaries of what they find.
And some even include a related image, video, Twitter post or similar content that can be featured along with the text summaries.
No matter what flavor you choose, reliance on auto-content-curation is expected to grow significantly across all industries in years to come, according to Absolute Market insights.
In the U.S. alone, the research firm sees the market for content curation tools and services ballooning from $525 million in 2018 to $2.43 billion by 2027.
Current day content curation tools examined by the report include Vestorly, Read It Later, Scoop.it, Sendible, SocialPilot Storyful Limited, Act-on Software, Buffer, BuzzSumo, Curata, eClincher and Flipboard.
For an in-depth look at how the AI content curation process works, check-out “AI-Created Newsletters On-The-Cheap,” by Joe Dysart.
*Newsday Auto-Generates Coverage of School Board Elections: Long Island’s top newspaper Newsday experimented with AI-generated writing recently, using AI software to auto-write election coverage of the region’s 124 school districts.
The paper got help for the feat with a $50,000 grant from the Lenfest Institute.
Plus, technical support came from longtime AI-generated writing user, the Associated Press
The micro-coverage of each school board election highlights one of AI-generated writing’s great strengths, according to Lisa Gibbs, director, AP News Partnerships.
Specifically: Newsday may not have the staff to cover election results for 124 school board districts — or come out with similar stories about test score data and graduation rates for each of those 124 districts, according to Gibbs.
But “arguably, if you’re a parent living in that school district, you might want that information,” Gibbs says.
*AI-Generated Writing Firm Offers Free Guide on AI Marketing: Persado, an AI firm known for a tool that auto-generates subject heads for marketing emails, has published a free guide on how to get the most from AI marketing.
The primer features tips and tricks, as well as case studies on marketers who have already been successful in implementing AI-generated writing.
With email marketing, Persado’s process involves running a human-generated subject head through its software to come-up with a number of AI-generated subject heads for test marketing.
The creation process, in part, sources Persado’s database of emotionally charged words that have performed well in other email marketing campaigns.
Ultimately, Persado’s strategy for finding the best email subject head for a marketing campaign involves little more than test-marketing the various alternatives produced by the AI software and then selecting the one that performs best.
*AI in Marketing: Key Uses: Mariya Yao, co-author, “Applied AI,’ offers a rundown on key ways marketers can leverage artificial intelligence in this article.
Included on her list are AI applications for generating ad copy and text content.
She also includes a link to her evaluation of the latest research breakthroughs in AI-generated writing, also known as Natural Language Processing.
*Key AI-Generated Writing Tools for PR Professionals: PR Pro Wendy Marx offers a rundown on AI-generated writing tools agencies and others can use to automate writing.
Her top picks: Article Forge, Grammarly, Scoop.it, Word.AI and Wordsmith.
“It’s safe to say that we are a long way from handing all of our content creation needs over to artificial intelligence,” Marx observes. “However, for data-based content writing where the facts are paramount, AI can be a boon.”
*Special Feature: Company Reports That Write Themselves
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.