A shock ran through the content marketing world in 2023
Businesses hit AI like a tarpon on a jerkbait, as more than half of all companies struck the flashing lure of AI-generated content. AI use surged 47% to $66 billion. ChatGPT became the fastest-growing app in history. And 56% of users in a blind study said they liked AI-written articles better than their human-written counterparts.
Then flesh-and-blood reality came calling.
CNET was publicly lambasted for using AI to write a stream of plagiarism. The site lost credibility and sold for half its previous worth. Consumers shied away from openly AI-assisted publications, lamenting the loss of the human touch. Quality and accuracy issues reared their carping heads, and the term “AI slop” crashed the lexicon. Businesses have since called a collective takeback, fleeing AI-generated content use in droves. The flood tide of AI confidence has been followed by a matching ebb of digital regret.
So — is the party over for AI-written content?
Enter HITL — Human in the Loop.
With a human in the process, AI takes its rightful place in content creation — as a tool. Rather than leading the charge, it follows the direction of seasoned human content pros. In the same way that a hammer and a skilsaw can’t build a house without a contractor to wield them, a GPT can’t write an engaging thought-leadership article on risk management, or a traffic-getting blog on how to manage diabetes, without human help.
Only a human can make articles that resonate with humans. Why? Because only humans know what matters most to *us*.
What AI *can* do is make human writers faster and more effective. It can do lightning-fast research on the pain points around homeownership or retirement or PPOs, helping the writer to build empathy for the reader in minutes instead of hours. It can find and verify better sources.
Write suggested outlines. Draft paragraphs studded with the right keywords, worked into the text in natural ways. Verify accuracy. Call out omissions, missed opportunities, and awkward phrasings. And guided correctly, it can craft human-sounding content that engages us.
In other words, AI can help human writers do what they do better.
The rush to AI content as a low-cost panacea was a misstep. Today’s top businesses are course-correcting, putting human experts in the loop, and reaping the rewards in greater monthly traffic and conversions. With AI tools, living, breathing, feeling writers are creating written work with higher levels of accuracy and creativity, faster, at a lower cost. They’re reaching their potential in a way they never could before AI.
That’s why HITL isn’t just a new buzzword in AI-generated content. It’s the way forward.