Will Content Writing Be Automated ? Can AI Take Over Content Writing And Replace Human Writers?

Artificial Intelligence is marking its presence in almost all spheres of life. Content writing is no exception. Larger corporates are already using robot writers to create content at scale.

Heliograf of the Washington Post, Quill of Narrative Science, and Wordsmith of The Associated Press are some well-known examples of robot writers. These AI writers can create millions of words in a day.  But can AI take over content writing and replace human writers? 

Will content writing be automated? Will content creators lose their job to bots? Will AI replace technical writers? These are some of the questions that bother content creators. 

Will Content Writing be Automated? 

AI has already made inroads into the content writing industry.  Robot writers use Natural Language Generation (NLG) software to create stories and reports. There is a lot of content on the internet that is generated by AI.

For example, the content on business intelligence dashboards, personalized emails, and in-app messages is generated by robots powered by  NLG and machine learning software.

The main reasons why marketers are looking to automate content writing are speed and accuracy.

Writing bots can scan through a huge pile of data and create meaningful reports within a few minutes. This helps businesses to churn out hundreds of articles in a day, which is an impossible feat for human writers. 

Certain prominent news agencies and corporations have already started using robots to create content like sports news, financial reports, etc.

However, the main drawback of AI writers is the quality of the content. AI-generated content lacks human touch and appears mechanical. While AI is suitable to create news reports and data updates, it is not suitable for creative writing. 

Will AI Replace Technical Writers

The job of technical writers involves creating content for user manuals, product descriptions, product specifications, etc. to help the users understand a product better. They have to understand the problems and queries of the users before creating the content.

Technical writers often collaborate with subject matter experts, and product engineers to understand a product in detail before they start the actual content writing process.  

AI at present is not advanced enough to show empathy towards the audience. It does not have knowledge of the factors required to create helpful technical content such as the background of the intended audience, their expertise in the specific niche,  their problems, and content requirements.

So we can safely say that AI will not replace technical writers in the near future, especially when technical writing is moving towards being more human. 

Can Artificial Intelligence Create Meaningful Stories

Artificial intelligence has come a long way since its inception. Robot writers are becoming increasingly adept at creating coherent content with a human-like appeal.

AI writers such as Bertie, Cyborg, Heliograf, etc. can produce hundreds of stories on election results, sports analysis, corporate earnings, and industry trends within a few minutes. However, the main drawback of AI writers is they lack empathy and emotion.

All the AI-generated stories follow the same format and look monotonous because they cannot think creatively and write stories that can surprise the viewers and spark their imagination. 

The algorithms used to create AI writers can extrapolate past data to identify the patterns to provide data-driven insights.

They can read through vast amounts of data within a few seconds and produce simplified reports and stories to make viewers’ understand the data better. For example, Commerzbank, a German bank uses AI writers to generate equity research reports.

Many other financial institutions are using NLG and AI to produce lengthy financial reports in a sliver of time taken by human writers. 

Recent breakthroughs in NLG and machine learning have enabled AI writers to create poems, stories and novels. “The Day A Computer Writes a Novel” is a novella created by a team of specialists in collaboration with AI.

However, creating the novella was a long drawn, and tedious process where the human writers in the team first created a novella and distilled it into the system. The AI algorithm then scanned all the stories and created a new version of the original work done by humans.  

There are many glitches to overcome before we can confidently say that AI can replace humans in creating meaningful stories. Till then, AI can help human writers to come up with engaging stories that improve reader experience. 

How Intelligent Can AI Become in Writing Good Content?

While AI is helping humans to improve their writing skills for a long time, there is a long way for AI to create good content on its own.

Apps like Grammarly, Hemingway, etc. help writers to improve their content using the natural Language progression technology. They can gauge spelling and grammatical errors and make your writing error-free and improve the readability of the content. 

Robot writers at present require advanced algorithms that tell them how to scan the data and create a piece of content. They create content in the exact format that is instructed to them by the algorithm.

AI can create hundreds of sports stories, reports, financial analysis, etc. in a short span of time. 

AI can understand spreadsheets, charts, numbers, keywords, timing and other data presented to them and generate short reports and stories for the purpose of sharing information.

However, they cannot properly understand the nuances of human communication and produce content that has the power to persuade and convince. 

A recent study conducted by The New Yorker to test whether an AI-generated story qualifies to be published proved that though robot writers can create grammatically correct sentences and summarize data-driven insights, they lack the ability to reason and conceptualize.

AI suffers from drawbacks such as rigid tone, repetitive sentences, and lack of natural flow.

Constant updations in technology are continuously improving the abilities of AI writers to churn out interesting content.

The Current State of AI in Content Writing and Creation

AI is extremely good at performing tasks that are objective, repetitive and measurable. AI is continually helping digital marketers in simplifying routine tasks such as social media scheduling, creating media outreach strategies, market research, etc.

Creating routine articles from data-driven insights, or rewriting articles is a trivial job for robot writers. AI can produce thousands of articles in a day, which is a herculean task for human writers. 

AI is already in use in newsrooms, large scale businesses and content agencies. They use algorithms to create regular updates on stock markets, sports, political events, earnings reports, etc. Most of the emails you receive from brands are also AI-generated. 

AI excels at creating content for SEO and digital marketing. It can easily study the patterns and predict trends to determine what type of content to publish to attract traffic to the website, generate click-worthy headlines and help to increase engagement.

However, it cannot yet mimic human emotions, creativity, and experiences. 

Future and Trends of AI in Content Writing

Businesses are already using AI in every department to automate trivial tasks. AI has also made its presence felt in the content marketing industry. Some examples of AI in content can be chatbots, writing tools, and in-app messages.

If you prefer reading customer reviews and comments before ordering products from eCommerce platforms, or before ordering food from a restaurant, chances are high that you are reading an AI-created review. 

AI is successfully used in content marketing to build meaningful relationships with the target audience by creating high targeted and personalized content.

AI helps digital marketers to compile and analyze vast sets of consumer data to understand their content preferences and accelerate the content creation process. 

AI-enabled tools are helping content creators in tasks such as 

• Generating News updates about the latest happenings
• Creating personalized emails
• Generating highly relevant and engaging website content
• Producing content that resonates with the audience for PPC ads, landing pages, push notifications and SMS
• Writing product descriptions
• Creating meta titles and descriptions
• Generating short from content to provide data-driven insights

Though presently infancy, AI is all set to transform content creation. Specialists are working hard to create deep neural networks that can understand human emotion and reasoning.

Maybe in near future, we can see computers that can create long-form content with context and reasoning. 

Currently, AI is assisting humans to analyze the data and create personalized content to amplify the experience of the readers.

However, we can safely say that it is nowhere closer to replacing humans in the field of content writing, especially when it comes to creative content.