One of the fields in which AI has become a powerful revolutionary force is the world of marketing. Artificial intelligence can play a significant role in streamlining workflows, producing content at scale much more quickly, and even helping to adapt and tailor your message. However, while it can save you time and adapt to your needs, it’s far from a perfect tool, even as it gets increasingly more sophisticated. In particular, there are some real risks to becoming overly reliant on it that can end up hurting your marketing abilities.
Everything Looks And Sounds The Same
One of the increasing problems with AI that has turned a lot of brands back to hand-written content and hand-made visuals is that everything can start to look and sound similar, regardless of brand or industry. AI-generated copy and images rely on patterns, buzzwords, phrasing, and art styles that can quickly become predictable and repetitive. Not only does this make it difficult for your brand to stand out from the crowd, but it makes it a lot more identifiably AI-made for those who see content a lot. Originality is a cornerstone of effective branding, and AI, by its nature, generates based on what already exists. Without careful editing and creative input, brands risk fading into the background rather than standing out.
Potential Copyright Violations
Beyond whether or not it’s any good, you should take the time to consider whether your AI-generated content is compliant with the laws, first and foremost. Generative AI has an intellectual property problem, in that it generates content based on large datasets that may not always be pulled from sources that consent to have their copywrighted content used to train these models. Modern AI systems don’t often output direct copies, but the more niche your subject matter gets, the closer your content might get to accidentally plagiarising or violating intellectual property rights. Even if it’s not strictly illegal, looking like you’re copying someone else’s homework can be reputationally damaging.
Lack Of A Distinct Brand
One of the most important marketing tools at your disposal is a clear brand voice. One of the risks of AI, and its propensity to produce output that looks and sounds the same for every user, is that a lot of its output tends to have a neutral, middle-of-the-road tone that lacks emotional nuance or personality. Tools are developing features that allow you to customize the voice or emotions of the content that you put out, but the subtleties of a human-made brand persona are still very difficult for any machine to put out. This can lead to generic marketing messages that feel disconnected from the brand’s identity.
It Can Sound Inhuman
Although the casual observer may or may not notice it, a lot of people who spend plenty of time online or looking at content are becoming increasingly good at spotting when something looks like AI. This is because AI-generated content can look and sound robotic or unnatural. Even when it’s technically correct, the lack of emotional resonance is a problem. For instance, AI often uses jargon-heavy copy or awkward sentence structure. There has been a rise of tools like the Text2Go AI Rewriter that can help you better humanize AI-written text. However, there is a need for someone to be there to review and guide the progress. If you don’t catch the lack of humanity in your content before you put it out, it can affect your brand.
Errors Can Start Piling Up
One of the big advantages that AI has to offer any team is its ability to streamline and automate the marketing process. Marketing automation has been a godsend, from scheduling your posts to generating marketing plans to work from, saving time and effort allows marketers to focus on their more creative endeavors. However, when AI is automating content creation and publishing, a lack of human involvement can see errors starting to pile up, Misrepresented facts, incorrect product details, broken links, or just a lack of common sense on which posts fit the given context of the market and timing can lead to problems that you have to clean up. An AI-generated blog post might contain outdated statistics, misquote sources, or make claims that sound believable but are entirely false. It’s vital for human supervision to ensure that AI-generated content stays on track.
Some People Don’t Just Like It
There is something of a cultural tug-of-war happening over AI at the moment. As mentioned, while some people don’t notice if something is AI-generated, some people do, and they have legitimate complaints about it creatively and ethically. What’s more, if people can spot that your marketing is AI-generated, then how are they supposed to believe that you’re telling an authentic story or that the rest of your services can be trusted to be delivered by real experts instead of machines? People value the human touch in marketing, and if they instead feel the cold grasp of technology, it can feel lazy, disingenuous, and even a little unsettling.
Loss Of Marketing Skills
For marketing professionals, in particular, there should be a real pause for thought on relying on technology that can supplant and replace your skills. Not only can you end up AI-generating yourself out of a role, but your own marketing skills, from content writing to visual design, as well as research and storytelling, can begin to stagnate and suffer as a result of letting AI do that all the time. There is room for people to use AI as one of their tools and to become experts at using AI in marketing to secure themselves a role, but they shouldn’t use AI in a way that makes them easy to replace with it.
Overreliance on AI is rarely a good idea, regardless of your field. If you’re running a business and managing your brand, it can leave it diluted and generic. If you’re a professional marketer, it may well see you losing the skills you have sharpened over your career. You can use AI in your marketing, but be careful; it’s not the only tool in your toolbox.
