Erika Heald is the host of the weekly #ContentChat LinkedIn Live video podcast for content marketers, held Mondays at noon Pacific. As a B2B marketing consultant, she helps organizations define and execute content marketing strategies that drive business and professional growth. As a creator, and gluten-free blogger helping people discover gut-friendly farm-to-table food. She frequently speaks at B2B marketing industry events on employee brand advocacy, content strategy, customer experience, AI readiness, and social media topics. You can find her on her blogs erikaheald.com and erikasglutenfreekitchen.com.
The #ContentChat Bulletin: The AI Backlash Is Here
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If I were giving today’s #ContentChat talk in person, I wonder if I’d be met by picketers holding signs reading, “Boycott all writers who use AI!” Everywhere I’ve gone online over the past two weeks, I’ve seen increased hostility toward AI use, like the Threads post from someone outing another writer for using AI. As it turns out, though, they were using it to create ads to sell their books—not to write the books themselves. Yet, this was somehow still grounds for ruining all the authors’ prior books for the poster. People are combing through books trying to find “gotchas” proving that the text—or any part of it—passed through an AI tool. Others are loudly declaring that good writing (like the use of an em dash) is an AI tell. Meanwhile, some people are trolling those critics by posting examples of “clear AI use” from books published long before generative AI was even a specter living rent-free in our heads. And then there's Substack, smugly announcing the AI tool it's imposing on its platform, purporting to show what percentage of every post was AI-generated. Did these people miss all the media coverage about how bad all these AI detectors are??? Spoiler alert: AI is embedded in so many of the everyday applications we use. Just about everything has gone through an AI tool. I’m typing this up in Grammarly, BTW, which most certainly is an AI tool. When I’m done writing, I’ll use another AI tool to tighten my email subject line, since I am not an email marketing expert. After I hit send, I’m going to make some more progress on the content governance discovery process I’m working on for a client, where we 100% are using AI to help us gain insights from the huge amount of non-confidential, publicly accessible data neither her budget nor my time can afford to handle manually. AI can be a fantastic writing coach while enforcing brand voice and style. It can help us do things we don’t have experience doing (like the author with their ads), or take chores we dislike off our plates. For me, the key to using AI to scale your content hinges upon being clear about how you are using AI, and making sure there is always a human in the loop, and that content starts with human experience and perspectives. I don’t think it’s cheating to use an AI tool as part of your content process any more than it is cheating to use a GLP-1 to help with your weight loss and wellness pursuits. If you want to hear more about my approach, you can join me today at noon pacific/3 p.m. Eastern as I share Chapter 9 from Content Foundations, Harnessing AI to Boost Content Efficiency. Coming Up on #ContentChatContent Chat is my weekly LinkedIn Live video chat focused on sharing expertise and ideas amongst the content marketing community. Join the conversation on Mondays at noon Pacific / 3 p.m. Eastern. RSVP for our upcoming conversations by clicking the chat date below to get a reminder and to access the chat.
Until next time, stay safe and be well! Cheers, Erika |
The #ContentChat Bulletin
Erika Heald is the host of the weekly #ContentChat LinkedIn Live video podcast for content marketers, held Mondays at noon Pacific. As a B2B marketing consultant, she helps organizations define and execute content marketing strategies that drive business and professional growth. As a creator, and gluten-free blogger helping people discover gut-friendly farm-to-table food. She frequently speaks at B2B marketing industry events on employee brand advocacy, content strategy, customer experience, AI readiness, and social media topics. You can find her on her blogs erikaheald.com and erikasglutenfreekitchen.com.
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