‘AI slop’ is the new term people are using to refer to low quality AI generated content.  Does AI content have to suck?  We don’t think so.  Find out how to use AI to generate content, while still leaving your creative fingerprint.

✒️ Paul Rigden

If you’re old enough to remember mix tapes or burned CDs, you probably remember how weirdly personal they felt.  When you made a mix tape, it was a little like the entire creative enterprise became yours.  I know I didn’t write or perform any of this music, but it took a genius like me to recognize its value, and arrange it in such a pleasing order.  When you made a mix tape, it became clear how much creative input it takes simply to even prepare and assemble a creative arrangement.  Taste, style, and a sense of flow all heavily came into play.  If you’d just put the radio on and recorded the next 12 songs to play, it wouldn’t have hit the same.

Today, the concept behind generating quality writing with AI, and avoiding AI slop, is the same.  Just asking AI to “write me an article on [subject]’ isn’t much different from making a mix tape from random songs off the radio.  You can do it, but the result won’t be a reflection of your sense of creativity, style, or opinion, and it probably won’t resonate as well with people who share your tastes and interests.

These days, most Content Marketers are leveraging AI to write their copy in one way or another, but some are doing it much more successfully, why?  Well, it’s kind of like making a good mix CD, a lot comes down to selection and editing.  What should the AI say, and how should it say it?  What core perspectives will resonate with the audience?   Good content needs to be more than just topical and accurate, it needs to engage readers with opinion and perspective. 

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 That’s the new challenge for the content marketer. In this battle, you are your own secret weapon.  Nobody understands your audience like you do.  You understand their problems, needs, and points of view.  Use that insight to give your AI generated writing perspective and purpose.  Coaxing good writing out of language models is all about the prompt, but it’s not about magic phrases or fix-it-all instructions.  What makes a good prompt is the detail in the instructions.  Don’t just tell the AI what to write about, tell it what to say.  Make sure that your prompts include your perspective, and what you want to communicate.  That may only take a few seconds to write, but will make all the difference in the product.

The funny thing about writing with AI is that it’s strongest where humans are weak, and vice versa.  AIs can generate thousands of words in seconds, but struggle to come up with an engaging point of view.  On the other hand, when you read about a trending event that interests you, it’s not hard to have a perspective on it.  In fact, sometimes it’s impossible not to.  Putting it down on paper is the hard part.  Any content marketer knows sometimes turning an idea into an article can feel like pulling teeth.  In that way, without much work, you can compensate for the fundamental quality that AI lacks: Humanity.  In return, it can compensate for what you lack: Time. Your reaction, even if it’s only in the form of a few bullet points, is enough of a seed for AI to start to build quality content around.

Including a few simple elements like a trending subject to react to, a perspective, and a few simple bullet points can turn AI slop into quality content, and it only takes a few minutes.  If you really want to streamline that process, check out how ContentEngine’s Events feed and AI Autodraft can help.

AI can be great at some tasks, and comically bad at others.  Generating the best content means understanding how to play to AI’s strong points, while avoiding its pitfalls.

Learn why AI can appear to be super-intelligent, yet also be hopelessly flawed in the next edition of The Content Marketer’s Guide to AI: Understanding Knowledge vs Intelligence when dealing with AI