The internet is about to change in ways you can’t imagine.
And it’s all down to AI.
In the online world, AI is going to break most systems that are in place at the moment. In fact, it’s already begun.
Internet search, website content, design, paid advertising, video, text, e-books, images, art, and the list goes on. Anyone who ignores this and continues slugging away manually to make money online is going to get left behind and ignored.
You could argue that creating your own, non-AI content is the righteous thing to do and that your efforts will pay off once AI content is penalized, but you’d be wrong – to a certain extent anyway.
Think of this as a revolution – the biggest since the dawn of the internet.
And it’s not just content creators who have to worry. Even the big players like Google have a lot on the line.
The Search Engines
Things have been fairly routine for the last 20 plus years. Google and company have had their share of threats in the form of scammers and manipulators who try to constantly beat the system to get first page results. But, through constant algorithm updates, they have thwarted these attacks on their search. After all, if no one trusts the results, then advertisers will go elsewhere. It’s a constant game of cat-and-mouse, tit-for-tat – and it’s been that way for many years.
While we may sometimes feel that Google has it out for us, they are holding back a wall of scammers, spammers, and criminals that would otherwise lay waste to the entire system. You wouldn’t be able to trust anything you see/read, or be able to find the real information you need.
But that was then, and this is now. Yes, they are still holding back spammers and scammers, but it’s become very apparent that anyone looking to make a quick buck is now using AI as a way to multiply their efforts. As well, so called, “regular marketers” are quickly using AI to write articles that get pasted to websites without checking facts. The writing is good, but you still have to check facts. AI can lie very convincingly.
The other major issue for the search engines is that if people are using AI, they are getting instant solutions to their problems for the most part. Compare that to the search results where you have to choose a website and hope that your answer is there. Often, it requires digging around until you find it.
For example, if I want some information on how to water my grass in a drought area, AI will give me instant solutions, instead of me landing on some website and finding the answer in a myriad of ads and unorganized pages. There is no comparison.
Is it any wonder search engines are eager to include AI in their search?
Times, they are a changing.
Online marketing
If you make your living online, things are going to change drastically for you as well. Though it isn’t crystal clear as to how that is going to play out, suffice it to say that the old playbook of starting a blog, adding useful content, getting indexed in the search engines, getting traffic, and making money from ads on your site is going to be significantly diminished.
What to do?
If you use AI content, you will be penalized – if not now, then it’s only a matter of time. If you continue to write original content, you will be left behind due to others using AI in a way that can’t be penalized. An example could be rewriting the content or simply using it as a guideline. Still, it’s faster than 100% handwritten content.
But look, even if you do everything right and become a darling of the search engines, your traffic is going to come to a halt simply because people will be using things like Chat GPT to get information directly and bypassing your site.
In many ways, you have the same problem Google has.
How in the world can anyone invest a decent amount of time into something that is so unsure? And that’s the problem – until we have a clearer picture of where things are going and where we’ll end up, you could be working for nothing if you are a content creator.
That’s where I am at the moment with all my sites. Things have never been more unsure.
One good thing is that this blog is 100% original content. I don’t imagine AI will make it obsolete any time soon because it’s also more than a simple content site. I like to inject a little personality into my writing – for good or for bad, my readers will know it’s me. I suggest you do the same. If you inject your personality into your blog, you will gain an audience and AI is never going to do that the way you do (at least not yet).
Chat GPT produces incredible writing for an information website, not so much where personality and style are key factors to the popularity of the site.
Just my 2 cents.
