Look, let's face facts. The rush to replace human talent with AI, in the spirit of reducing human capital to increase the company's capital, may have been premature. According to articles cropping up in the news, companies that tried to save money with AI are now spending a fortune hiring people to fix its mistakes. Uh oh.
"Companies that rushed to replace human labor with AI are now shelling out to get human workers to fix the technology's screwups," wrote Noor Al-Sibai in Futurism. The BBC also recounted the story of Sarah Skidd, a product marketing manager who writes for tech and start-up companies. The BBC reported that she "was approached by a content agency to urgently rework website copy that had been produced via generative AI for a hospitality client."
Stories such as these aren't likely to fade away as isolated incidents. AI may be fast and cheap, but it's not a strategic partner, a thinking writer, or a problem solver. It's a clever parrot at best, a hallucinating syntax organizer at worst.
We get it. Hiring a full-time writer comes with an ugly sticker price. There's a salary, benefits, paid time off, recruitment costs, employment taxes, and the overhead of office space and equipment. It's a big investment, but it's also an assurance of consistent quality. Quite the conundrum, right?
Enter AI, the seemingly perfect answer to the cost and scalability question. Proponents tout its ability to generate vast quantities of text for a fraction of a human writer's wages. Okay, but this approach overlooks the hidden costs that are now bubbling to the surface.
The internet is already brimming with generic, soulless AI-generated content. This cresting wave of mediocrity not only washes away audience attention but actively harms a brand's reputation. Consumers are adept at detecting the robotic tone and lack of genuine insight that comes with AI's pathetic attempts to replicate human wisdom, tone, empathy, and even cleverness. A study by HubSpot revealed that AI content can sometimes rank in search results, yet it often lacks the E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) signals that Google prioritizes. That’s a bad thing, because low-quality and uninspired content invites penalties from search engines. So, there will be a decline in organic traffic.
This is why I can't figure out why companies don't outsource their writing. It's the tie that binds the high-quality content of human writers to the low-cost appeal of AI. Outsourcing to a writing agency is the most strategic and cost-effective solution. Yeah, AI doesn't demand a salary, benefits, and other perks that go into a competitive compensation package. But neither do outsourced writers. It's kinda the whole point of "independent" in "independent contractor."
Sure, AI can be a useful tool, but it’s still a tool, if you catch my drift. An outsourced writing agency offers a superior value proposition for most businesses: writing that resonates without breaking the bank. We may still hallucinate from time to time, but at least we know that we're doing it. And we clean it up during revision before you see it.