Some people have likened AI to the invention of the calculator…
But the calculator didn’t make us all into Albert Einstein, most of us just used a calculator to write humorous things when held upside down. And this is turning out to be similar to what we are seeing with AI, where most people are just using AI tools to create crazy videos, stupid memes or fake news.
But in reality…
In my experience, so far, the reality is that the quality of AI content is extremely poor. More often than not it’s completely wrong, because most systems have been trained on vast amounts of information available on the internet, which itself is 99% complete rubbish. The only people that keep telling us that AI platforms are brilliant are the blue chip companies that have pumped billions of dollars into their AI research, and are now desperately trying to monetise their AI platforms.
The blind leading the blind…
For many tasks, AI content is only as good as the instructions the human gives it. In skilled industries or professions, companies are popping up left, right and centre that have absolutely zero experience in the field and are using AI platforms to provide their services.
These companies are taking advantage of the hype surrounding AI, where normal customers actually get impressed just at the mere mention of AI. But six months down the line, they realise that the AI company are producing complete AI slop and results are dropping off a cliff!
AI is ‘not smart’ so what’s next in artificial intelligence?
BBC ARTICLE: “We don’t have robots that are nearly as good at understanding the physical world as a rat,” says Yann LeCun, one of the leading figures in the world of artificial intelligence.
He worked at Facebook / Meta, for a decade, where he was chief AI scientist, but left in 2025 and founded Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs (AMI Labs). “They [LLMs] basically just accumulate knowledge… They can regurgitate something, you train them to regurgitate, but they’re not particularly smart. They don’t have an underlying understanding,” he says.
AI tools in Marketing…
When it comes to graphic design, web design and marketing, in my experience (so far) AI design tools are actually benefiting the established, professional designers. As opposed to taking away their design work. And here’s why…
Nothing has really changed.
For decades now, we have had platforms like Fiverr or Canva, or those Free Logo Design generators, that can create logos and other graphics. And many people have used these platforms for years, rather than paying a professional designer to create logos or graphics for them. But when the client requires something truly original or professional, they turn to an established designer.
Advertising knowledge still comes in handy.
In some cases, AI does a decent job. For example, if a company needs a quick graphic for an Instagram post, ChatGPT will often do a good job. I have lots of clients that use ChatGPT for this, and I am totally happy about this, because this gets a few clients off my case!
But what they are supplied by AI is pretty generic and tacky. For companies that want to maintain a high-end / classy brand identity, this kind of content really should be avoided. You are basically telling the world that you use AI to do your marketing and you don’t really understand the industry.
Web Design & SEO:
Original content still rules the waves!
I’ve been monitoring a number of websites and marketing campaigns where the client has used AI to generate the content. And they fail miserably. One client asked me to build a website for them, and I knew they were supplying me AI generated text to populate the website. Which I warned them, would be a ticket to the bottom of Google.
Blogging:
For many of my clients, I recommend adding a Blog to their website to help improve their search engine rankings. But what I’m finding is that clients use ChatGPT to generate a blog article, then simply copy & paste it onto their website. This is not going to add any benefits to their websites!
The whole point of a Blog is to add original content to your website, based on a specific subject. What ChatGPT gives you is simply copied from someone else’s website, so it is not original! And in some cases, this can do major damage to your website rankings.
Digital Marketing / PPC Campaigns:
I’ve posted about this topic before, how the AI generated Ads supplied by Google or Meta are extremely unreliable. And if a company simply relies on the AI generated Ads, they are basically pouring your money down the drain.
READ MORE ABOUT AI IN ADVERTISING
Where’s my Evidence?
All I can go on is what I’ve witnessed. And I’m fortunate to have access to hundreds of websites and a number of social media accounts for various companies, so I can actually measure the results over long periods of time.
Some real world examples…
One company I work for, managing their websites and social media content, decided to try a new marketing company. I only really had time to do one or two Instagram posts each month, but I would only post stuff that was worth posting, if we had actual news to share, or if I though of a new aspect that would be interesting – but my posts would always get a decent number of likes and shares. This new marketing company promised to create 2 or 3 post each week, using mainly ChatGPT to create graphics and ideas.
But in reality, their posts were so generic and pointless, stuff like “It’s Friday (smiley face) drop us a DM and see what [company name] can do for you!” Or something completely non-specific. Absolutely no technical details about the products. Even the “tone of voice” is all wrong, they are meant to be a serious technology company, not Debbie from the local hair salon.
Every single post they did got zero likes or shares, and they basically alienated our audience. We would have been better off not posting anything at all!
Blogging & SEO…
With access to many different websites, I’ve done lots of experimenting over the years. And to see how good ChatGPT is, I asked it to create a blog article for me, then published it and left it alone for 3 or 4 months. It never got any rankings whatsoever on Google.
I then went through the same article and used my brain to completely re-word the article, but keeping the same subject matter and same basic post structure. And after 3 or 4 weeks the same article got into the top 5 on Google. It even started appearing in the AI Gemini overview results that you see at the top of Google, and got recommended by ChatGPT.
So… this basically tells you that what ChatGPT supplied me initially was copied from elsewhere on the internet. Google saw my article as duplicate content and gave me absolutely no credit for what I’ve written. And as soon as I re-word stuff, so it’s genuinely original, it started getting recognised by Google.
And it’s not just a one off, I see the same patterns over and over again when AI content is used unwisely.