Why I’m Against AI Writing All Your Content
When it comes to content, AI can seem like a shortcut. Immediately it can pop out hundreds of words on any topic. Instead of treating it as a shortcut that can write all of your content, I believe AI can be a great assistant towards getting great content out there. The problem isn’t the tool. It’s how you can potentially use it!
My Experience with AI writing content
When tools like ChatGPT and Claude first appeared in my world about 2023, I was genuinely excited for what this would mean for the marketing agency I worked for at the time. If we could have AI help with administrative and repetitive day-to-day tasks, it would free up our team for more strategic work. My boss encouraged me to dive in and would send me social media posts about new tools and before I knew it, I was using Zapier and n8n to write my own AI agents while evaluating what else was out there. It seemed like the possibilities were endless and the tools would only continue to get better.
Personally, I loved using the more conversational AI tools to ideate catchy taglines or creative ideas that we could expand upon and share with clients. While the LLMs didn’t always hit the nail on the head, they could give me 50 ideas to pick from or start an idea that I could improve quickly. While I’ve always been known as a resourceful expert Googler, I liked having another place to troubleshoot and learn from as well.
From a business sense, my boss and I thought we had a big opportunity as well in many different ways, but for the sake of this post, I want to focus on the most relevant opportunity regarding content. We had a few copywriters on staff who would handle our blog content, eBook content, website copy and more for us as an agency and for our clients. Could AI condense our writing department requiring fewer staff members, increasing profitability and productivity? Could it reduce reliance on freelancers and control our resource allocation when some months we would have 200 pieces of content vs other months when we would have 400? Could it create longer, better content for our clients? Could it turn our copywriters into content strategists where they’d have more time to improve quality instead of focusing on the quantity of work ahead of them?
With all of that in mind, we started out with a simple task and my boss found an AI partner who said we’d have a solution within six weeks. All we wanted was a tool that could write high-quality SEO blogs that followed the rubric that our content writers used. However, we’d soon discover many problems that would lead to this tool being in development for over a year.
LLMs would make up research and sources - If I would ask Claude to help write an article for an electrician client, I would start finding links to the EPA website or the National Electrical Contractors Association that wouldn’t work. Then Claude would make up statistics and quotes that came from these links. If I wasn’t manually checking them, I would be lying to readers about the facts that we were using to justify our article. Plus, from an SEO sense, we needed these external links to reliable sources that were trusted. If they were broken, that could send the wrong signals to Google.
Consistency was terrible - What I thought was the most surprising aspect of this project was asking Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and other LLMs to stick to a particular word count range. This to me seemed like one of the easiest asks. If I was looking for an article from 800-1000 words, I should not be receiving blog content that is sometimes 300 words and sometimes 3000 words. Unfortunately, that was what these LLMs were delivering. Further, we would have trouble with titles always being in title case or our keyword being used throughout the post. One blog would be perfect then the next blog would be a mess. That would cause us more manual work to check and fix these messy articles than to just write them the right way in the first place.
LLMs would start speaking gibberish - Every once in awhile, I would receive a blog article from these AI tools that would just go off the rails. At first, the post seems normal and reads correctly but get a paragraph or two in and now it’s talking about a topic that has nothing to do with the client and repeating itself.
Nuance and context wasn’t there - Besides the more technical issues spoken about above, we also had an issue with these LLMs creating content that was truly from a client perspective. For example, if I had a client who did foot surgery and I was writing a blog on bunion correctors, that client would most likely say that bunion correctors are a temporary solutions to a more permanent problem. So that blog would need to be focused on where bunion correctors fall short. However, if I asked an LLM to create this content, it would simply provide links to Amazon products of bunion correctors. A foot surgery client wouldn’t be too happy with that as it could steer away customers.
So How Can You Use AI for Content?
Nowadays here in 2026, AI slop is everywhere from millions of AI tracks on Spotify to AI-written content cluttering the web. Just because it’s easier to write content and publish it doesn’t mean that this content will get seen. What’s interesting to me is that Google’s core opinion on content hasn’t changed whether you’re handwriting content or letting AI write content for you. They are looking for helpful, reliable, people-first content and I don’t believe AI alone can accomplish this.
While I do think AI has a place in your content, I would use it to organize topics, find gaps within an article or to do data analysis for data that you are bringing to the table. You could even use it to create your outline or get you started on a piece of content, but then you need to add your own voice.
The best way to accomplish this is by adding information that AI cannot easily make up. Talk about your experience. Show your own data. Use experts from your company that can share something unique.
I oftentimes go back to EEAT (an acronym for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) which is a framework used by Google to evaluate the quality and credibility of content. It’s a great lens for you to view your own content through and use these pillars to separate your content from the AI slop across the web.
Experience - LLMs can give you the words, but it can’t give you experience in the topic. Are you telling stories in your content about your relevant experience? Are you providing first-hand data or original photos/videos about the topic? Are you giving readers a “peek behind the curtain” where they can see what has lead to you writing on this topic?
Expertise - Do you have an insight that is perhaps more uncommon on the topic? Can you speak directly to the audience using verbiage that they’re familiar with? Can you talk about a subject in human language, but also get a bit deeper for other professionals in your world? Are you showing off your knowledge, skills and credentials?
Authoritativeness - Why should we trust YOU above the hundreds of other websites that are talking about the same thing? Do you have websites that consistently link to yours as a trusted source? Do you have content talking about similar topics that is also high-quality? Do you get mentioned on social media or on relevant websites for your quotes and opinions?
Trustworthiness - At a basic level, your content should be secure and trusted. Do you have a privacy policy and clear contact information? Is your business or personal brand is represented across the web in the same way? Do you have a positive reputation online? Do people know who is behind your content?
Need Help Evaluating Your Content?
I always want to provide content on topics I personally care about whether they’re from my personal or professional life. AI in marketing is such a core topic to my professional world right now, but it is not the be-all and end-all marketing expert. It’s important that you know how to apply it and how your knowledge is key to SEO and marketing success with content.
If you’re in need of a content audit or a content plan that can get your business, send me a note at hello@ambercallan.com or click the button below to contact me to discuss options. If we have an opportunity to work together, that’s great! If not, I’m always happy to point you in the right direction to a trusted colleague or agency who will take care of you.