Feb 7, 2023 6 min read

Why I won’t start an AI-generated Blog

Will AI improve my life, or is it the downfall of the internet?

After affiliate marketing, drop shipping, and NFT collections have been the safest ways to make millions without working in the past, flooding the internet with AI-generated content seems to be the way to go today. The idea is to fill a blog with SEO-optimised posts, rank high on Google, and make money from the traffic. Because I can create the articles with a few clicks, this is an easy way to generate an anywhere income.

So why would I pass on this opportunity?

Temptation

I thought about using AI tools in the past but decided against it, though the recent hype around ChatGDP made me think again. My dreams suddenly seemed possible, and I feared missing out on the next big thing.

Am I putting myself at a disadvantage by not using AI?

This idea caught me so much that I was already brainstorming topics for multiple AI blogs. I saw myself sitting in a hotel in the Bahamas, drinking my morning coffee while telling ChatGDP which article to write for the day. If you follow my newsletter, you know that I am struggling to reach my goals, and this seemed like an easy way to make some steps forward.

Though, this desire for immediate success keeps me away from actual progress. Reaching my goals without work is a lazy mindset that stops me from putting work into long-term success. I don’t think there is a shortcut to success, and taking a step back, I realised that an AI blog probably wouldn’t work either.

Concerns

When reviewing Jasper.ai, I was concerned about quality. While everything was written in perfect English, the information was repetitive, dull, and often wrong. The popularity OpenAI generated brings up some additional concerns:

Google
(Disclaimer: Just my thoughts based on nothing but thin air)
ChatGDP is considered the first big thread for Google’s power, though people use it to rank higher in search results. Why would Google not take steps against that? In the future, I can imagine Google ignoring generic, low-quality content to slow down ChatGDP and protect the quality of their product. My AI blog will lose its place in the search results and become obsolete. Continuing that thought, trying to boost my existing business through AI content might hurt it instead.

Competition
Everyone can register for ChatGDP and generate 20 articles on any topic within the next hour. There is no entry barrier, meaning there’ll be thousands of people to compete with.

AI Content is Boring
I know that the average internet user doesn’t know about AI and how the blog posts they find through Google are written, though I hope that quality will win over quantity in the long run. Writing is hard, and the secret to great posts is telling a compelling story in as few words as possible, which is the opposite of the soulless texts the AI is generating.

While there might be some true stories of successful AI blogs right now, I cannot see them being sustainable. I won’t reach my dreams in a sea of people churning out low-quality content to trick Google into rating their pages high. And not only will an AI blog ultimately be a waste of my time, but it also represents a trend in technology I don’t want to be a part of.

A Big Fear

Bots + AI = Doom

Blogs are just the beginning, and I doubt it will take long before people combine AI with bots to flood Reddit, Forums, Social Media, and my Email inbox. I am not looking forward to an internet mainly composed of artificial information.

Putting it to an extreme, this is the future I am afraid of:

Suppose I’d be an evil genius that wants to see the world burn. In that case, I’d use AI to create millions of bots on Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and Co. I’d waste the time of whole nations by engaging them in meaningless conversations and spreading misinformation by making my fake users interact and agree with each other. Though, because it is so easy, I won’t be the only one doing this. It will be bots interacting with bots, writing content for bots while creating an enormous pile of digital trash and wasting the time of any human that tries to become a part of the mess.

Granted, this thought might be extreme though not unrealistic. The focus on the pure quantity of content bothers me for a while, and AI supercharges this problem.

AI is not Bad

As much as I don’t like the idea of using AI for mass-producing content, there are some exciting use cases. Like Jarvis in Iron Man, a virtual assistant could be a huge help. While technology might still be far away from a true virtual assistant, I believe this to be the direction I would like to go in: to use technology as a support for my work, not a replacement. AI shouldn’t use existing information to rewrite it into “new” content but help me create something truly unique.

Right now, I like to use ChatGDP as a tool for brainstorming, and it is good at it. I feed it with questions about things I work on and, as its name suggests, chat with it to get inspiration and new thoughts. It is surprising how good it is at kickstarting trains of thought.

My Takeaway

An AI-Blog is not the answer to my problems. It goes against my idea of how I’d like the Internet to be, and I doubt it would lead to sustainable success. My time is spent better working hard on other projects and not trying to find a shortcut.

Combining bots with AI could challenge the internet as we know it because it can create an enormous landfill of digital waste and misinformation on all platforms. Google’s answer to ChatGDP will also be interesting. Will they work against AI-generated content and develop their own solution, or will we soon talk about Artificial Intelligence Optimisation instead of Search Engine Optimisation? Because I am tired of SEO-optimised blogs, I try to get most of my information straight from Wikipedia.

AI is an exciting next step for the digital world, and I am very interested in its future direction. It is a tool that might be helpful if used right, though it also has the potential to distract me and make my life worse - just like my smartphone. I once started the Digital Oase around the idea that technology is good if used correctly, and AI is the perfect example of this. It is a tool that can be used in different ways, some of which are amazing and some of which are bad.

And one good thing came from this thought experiment: Thinking about which low-effort blog to create led to an idea I liked … https://duckyousun.com. Maybe, that’ll be a project I can build up through meaningful content, a brand, and a fun story.

Just follow my newsletter if you’d like to see how this will turn out.