The content/copywriting world is simply EXPLODING right now because of the development of ChatGPT.
AI has been in use for quite some time, and many creators have used it for years. You may not be as familiar with it, or maybe you’re just hearing about it for the first time.
We’d like to take a moment to clarify what ChatGPT is, what it can do, what it cannot do, and whether you should use it to create copy or content for your website.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a free AI computer program that has the ability to write everything from high school essays to high-level web pages.
As of the writing of this blog post, ChatGPT is free for a limited time to allow researchers time to gather feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses.
What Can ChatGPT Do?
The main goal of this AI program is to write a “reasonable continuation” of text that has already been entered into the system.
For example, let’s say I want to write a blog post about ghostwriting. I want to start my blog post with an introduction. The following paragraph is in italics, indicating that it was written with ChatGPT:
Ghostwriting refers to the act of writing on behalf of someone else who is credited as the author. In other words, a ghostwriter is a professional writer who writes books, articles, blog posts, speeches, or other content, but does not receive credit for the work.
To produce this paragraph, I put the word ghostwriting into the prompt, hit enter, and let ChatGPT do the rest. (We’ll talk more about the site’s limitations in a minute).
There are lots of other things ChatGPT can do, too, such as:
Writing music or poetry.
Writing resumes or cover letters.
Answer questions and do research.
Write, explain, and debug computer code.
Should You Use ChatGPT to Write Website Content?
At first glance, it may seem like a no-brainer to use ChatGPT to write content for your website.
But let’s take a look at the paragraph I made earlier again:
Ghostwriting refers to the act of writing on behalf of someone else who is credited as the author. In other words, a ghostwriter is a professional writer who writes books, articles, blog posts, speeches, or other content, but does not receive credit for the work.
This is pretty obviously written by a computer and not a human. In theory, you could just edit this to make it sound like a person wrote it.
But that will probably take as much time as if you wrote it from scratch.
This is a screenshot of what I get when I put this text into Hemingway, which is the site we use to check for passive text (green) and hard-to-read sentences (red). As you can see, there are problems.
Hemingway also says this is written at a 12th-grade reading level, which is much higher than we like to see in content written for most websites. Most of our clients require a 6th-grade reading level.
If I were to write this for our blog, or one of our clients, this is how I would write it:
This is from Hemingway too, and as you can see, there are no highlights. This is also at a 9th-grade reading level, which is closer to our target.
There’s another issue with ChatGPT too - you don’t have any guarantees that your newly written content/copy isn’t plagiarized.
What Should Businesses Use ChatGPT for?
It’s really a shame to have such a great tool at our disposal and not use it. Although using ChatGPT to write content or copy isn’t ideal, it does have some other uses you may find interesting.
It’s great for translating content into a different language.
It’s great to check for plagiarism.
It’s great for learning things; you can use it just like Google searches!
It’s great for getting ideas.
It’s great for getting the answers to homework questions.
It’s great for quickly solving math problems.
Finally, and probably most importantly - you can use ChatGPT to check to see if a writer you’ve worked with has used AI to write something you’ve assigned to them.
Our Commitment to Our Clients: NO AI WRITING TOOLS
At Colwell Creative Content, Inc., we take the use of AI writing tools like ChatGPT very seriously.
Our writers are forbidden to use them unless a client specifically requests them, which is rare.
In fact, we require our writers to sign an agreement stating they will not use AI to write content or copy, and if we detect it, that writer is terminated immediately.
We are 100% committed to providing you with blog posts, web pages, and any other type of content/copy that is written by a human. We’re old-fashioned that way, I suppose. But integrity is important to us, and we take our work seriously.
Want to know more about how our writers can help you upgrade your site with fresh, optimized content that converts sales? Contact us today, and Let’s Grow Your Business Together!