In recent years, we’ve seen a huge upsurge in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. However, one area where AI has had a little impact is writing content for blogs. In fact, many people don’t know that AI can be used to write blog posts at all.
🤖If you guessed that the above introduction was generated with writing AI, you’d be right.
(Now back to the human.) Writing is a ton of work. It takes an average of three hours and sixteen minutes to write 1000 words. It’s no wonder that many marketers and business owners are wondering if AI can live up to its promises.
In this post, we’re putting artificial intelligence to the test.
Table of contents:
- What is writing AI?
- Can writing AI help with blog post writing?
- Using an AI blog writer in light of Google’s Helpful Content Update
- Putting StoryChief to the test
- Putting Jasper.ai to the test
- Putting Copy.ai to the test
- Top writing AI apps
- What can writing AI do in 2023?
- What is the future of writing AI?
What is writing AI?
Writing AI is artificial intelligence technology that analyzes large data sets in a certain language in order to produce written content in desired formats.
Most writing assistants today offer short-form copy like headlines, bullet points, and short paragraphs. They require some direction. The input is usually sentences and phrases meant to guide the AI’s output toward something relevant and useful.
Writing AI is used for several different functions: marketing copywriting, novel writing, essay writing, and even editing.
How does AI writing actually work?
Most AI writing assistants use GPT-3 to produce human-like text. The AI guesses what to write next based on all of the text it has crawled in the past. Think of it like supercharged predictive text.
The downside of this, especially for bloggers, is that the AI is guessing what words should come next based on what blog content is already out there—meaning that the AI will produce content that is too similar to what is already out there, or will piece together words that go well but that might not yield factual statements.
Can writing AI help with blog post writing?
As content marketers, we know that blog writing is one of the most tedious, time-consuming activities. To keep up with the current pace and comment, we need all the help we can get. And AI can provide it. 🎉
Where AI can help with AI-written blogs
And here are some ways that AI writing can be helpful:
- The headline and subheadline ideation.
- Outline ideation, and important topics to cover (this can be with a writing AI or with an SEO research AI like StoryChief, Frase, MarketMuse, or Clearscope).
- Rephrases content sections that you want to re-use, for example, if you’re launching a similar set of articles like competitor alternatives round-ups or templates, you could use the writing AI to rewrite some paragraphs and then edit to make sure it’s unique enough.
- Spinning up paragraphs and sections when you get writer's block. If you’re writing thought leadership, make sure that you enter unique information (that you know from experience or that you researched) into the AI writing prompt so that the AI writer generates unique content that Google will love, instead of just rehashing things from the web.
- Handling research for you. AI writing tools can generate paragraphs of information based on web research, meaning you can consolidate hours of research and writing into minutes.
Where AI is lacking
Here are the top reasons why AI can’t be responsible for 100% of your blog content:
- Google doesn’t love artificial intelligence blog writing, because it is based on existing content, meaning you’re just publishing the same information with nothing unique.
- AI writing assistants don’t do a good job at writing within a brand’s style and voice guidelines.
- AI writing assistants can produce incorrect information, and lazy writers might be tempted to just publish it without fact-checking for accuracy.
But none of these things mean you can’t use it. You just need to know how. Keep reading to learn how to work side-by-side with blogging AI.
Using an AI blog writer in light of Google’s Helpful Content Update
We’ve all seen copycat content. One blog post covers a topic with “What is...?” and “Why is it important?” and “Examples of...” and then a dozen other blog posts all copy the exact same format.
In some instances, Google does a bad job of showing similar results on the SERP page. In other instances, Google offers a variety of different types of content on the same SERP page.
Google wants to get better at doing the latter.
Google Search released one of their biggest updates yet, the Helpful Content Update.
This update intends to:
- De-prioritize content that seems to be written for search rather the humans
- Unrank content that copies or “skyscrapes” existing articles
- Unrank and penalize AI-generated content
- Rank more unique and helpful content
It sent ripples through the SEO community, with many bloggers and content managers worried about the state of their rankings, while plenty of others were unconcerned—feeling that they’ve been prioritizing unique content for a while.
In this blog post, we gathered even more tips on Google’s Helpful Content Update and SEO best practices for 2023.
So what does this update mean for AI blogging?
Good news: you can use AI for writing blogs. But you shouldn’t expect it to do 100% of the work. A better split would be 50-50 (a theory that content agency Animalz calls the “Content Cyborg”). AI shouldn’t replace the knowledge and expertise of a human writer. Instead, it should be used to elevate and speed up your content creation process.
So long as you use the 50-50 rule, you can enjoy the benefits of AI without worrying about Google penalties.
For example, you might use AI to come up with your blog post headline, outline, and 30-40% of your paragraphs. You can have your AI writing assistant finish your sentences when you get stuck, provide bullet point copy, and expand on your ideas.
Putting StoryChief to the test
StoryChief is a content operations platform for content marketing teams and agencies. At StoryChief, we’re not just focused on writing. We help make content teams’ lives easier through content collaboration features, one-click publishing, and omnichannel promotion.
Benefits of using StoryChief:
- Use AI to write blog posts and other content
- Assign and brief content writers
- Comment and request revisions
- Approve content
- Publish to WordPress, Webflow, Medium, and more in one click
- Create and publish social media content
- Share content with your ambassadors, advocates, and press contacts
- Share content through your newsletter
But the question remains...can writing AI really produce quality content?
Let’s find out.
Test #1. Coming up with blog titles
If you’re new to writing blogs with AI, you might want to start out by testing how AI can help with titles. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
For this test, I used StoryChief’s title feature and entered “30 Marketing Trends for 2023” to come up with new ideas.
Here are my favorite outputs:
The Future of Marketing is Here: 30 Trends You Need to Know in 2023
Get Ahead of the Curve: 30 Essential Marketing Trends for 2023
Stay Relevant and Competitive with These Emerging Marketing Trends for 2023
Successes:
I love how creative these titles are. They make the content more emotional and interesting by poking at the readers’ desire to stay relevant and up-to-date.
Failures:
The last title is really enticing but it’s too long. However, you could easily edit it to stay under 63 characters (which is better for SEO).
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
AI can easily come up with more (and often better) headlines faster than a human writer can, so this is an excellent use case for AI.
Test #2. Generating an editorial brief and blog outline
AI is great at generating blog ideas, which is why it’s perfect for writing editorial briefs. All you have to do is come up with a topic. For this test, we went with “5 Steps to Implementing Marketing Automation as a Beginner.”
StoryChief’s AI Power Mode feature gave us the blog post audience, objectives, tone/voice, and key points to cover in the outline.
You can then insert the AI text into your editorial brief or try again to see another option.
Here’s the 5 step outline it generated:
1. Define your goals for using marketing automation
2. Choose an automation platform that meets your needs
3. Set up automated emails, campaigns, and workflows
4. Use analytics to track progress and optimize campaigns
5. Monitor results and adjust strategies accordingly
If you like some of what you see, make sure you insert it. Then, you can have the AI generate more outputs and insert those too. Next, pick your favorite ideas and delete the rest.
Successes:
The AI is super helpful for writing editorial briefs. Not only did we get 5 accurate steps to serve as the outline for the article, but we also have the audience and tone to guide the writing process (whether done with AI, a human writer, or both).
Failures:
For this particular topic, we don’t see any failures. The editorial brief is accurate and knowledgeable. However, if you’re writing a brief on your proprietary process or new information that the AI can’t crawl through, then it might not be able to help you write your outline.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
If you haven’t used AI to write a blog post yet, this is an excellent first step.
Test #3. Writing blog paragraphs
For our next test, let’s write some blog content. It’s time to start drafting those paragraphs.
We’ll use StoryChief’s Expand feature.
The way it works is you start a sentence, add the topic for that section of the blog, and then let the AI finish the rest.
We started with “DevOps engineers are in charge of,” and StoryChief’s AI finished the sentence like this:
developing and maintaining an organization’s IT infrastructure.
The AI provides 4 paragraphs in total, so there are plenty of options to choose from to complete your sentence and paragraph.
Successes:
This test is definitely a success. The fact that it provides so much text means that you can easily choose what information you want to cover.
And when we run the entire AI output through Grammarly’s plagiarism detection, we get a score of 100%, meaning no plagiarism is detected. Our AI scans millions of data sets to come up with unique, fresh content every time, so you never have to worry about another StoryChief user getting the same output as you. And you never have to worry about plagiarism.
Failures:
For this topic, AI is definitely a success. But if you’re writing about current news or your proprietary information, the AI might struggle to generate text you like. The only way to know is to try.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
The expanded feature is the best way to generate blog paragraphs in StoryChief. You only need to give it a shot, a rough starting point.
Test #4. Writing a list of pros and cons
Google loves detailed, well-formatted blog content. One smart SEO hack is to include a list of pros and cons for all of your key sections or points. You can generate pros and cons easily with StoryChief.
For this prompt, I’ve used “Pros and cons of maintaining a TikTok account for a B2B business.”
My favorite con is this one because it utilizes the B2B aspect of my prompt:
Difficulty creating content that resonates with a business-to-business (B2B) audience
Successes:
All of the points generated are accurate, easy to read, and helpful when considering starting a B2B TikTok account, so this test is a win.
Failures:
The content seems to be more general to social media as a whole and not to TikTok specifically, but you could easily edit a couple of the points to make them more specific to TikTok’s short-form videos, viral sounds, etc.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Not only is this feature great for creating lists of pros and cons in your blog posts, but you can also use it to help you get unstuck when writing outlines or paragraphs (then just feed each point into our Expand feature to turn it into its own paragraph).
Test #5.
And for our last test, we explored StoryChief’s social post capabilities. The prompt was, “AI helps with blogging.” Just that simple idea gave us a couple of great posts in seconds.
After playing around with it for just 30 seconds, these are my two favorite outputs:
#AI is a game changer for #blogging! It can help you craft the perfect post in no time. #Tech #Writing
#AI is a great tool for bloggers! It can help you write faster, get more creative with content, and even optimize your blog for search engines. #blogging #technology
Successes:
These social posts are perfect for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They use an upbeat, informal tone.
Failures:
Depending on the channel you are posting to, there are probably too many hashtags, but you can alter those. You could also remove the exclamation marks to fit your brand voice, if desired.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Social promotion is a great use case for AI because very little editing is needed. The text would also be great for opening sentences for email newsletters used to promote your blog content.
StoryChief’s full list of AI capabilities
There are so many more ways to speed up your blog writing with AI. You could use our Summarize feature to come up with a great concluding paragraph and Improve feature is great for revamping any paragraph.
StoryChief offers 15 unique AI features to help you ideate, assign, write, and promote blogs faster.
- Help me edit
- Expand
- Editorial brief
- Press release
- Job description
- Summarize
- Translate
- Improve
- Social post
- Topic questions
- Topic pros & cons
- Topic blog titles
- Fix spelling
- Explain this
- Simplify
StoryChief gives you all of these AI features inside our content collaboration platform so you can plan, assign, approve, publish, and promote your content!
Putting Jasper.ai to the test
Next, we used a writing assistant named Jasper.
Here are the different things we tested with Jasper. Keep reading for the results.
- Blog post topic ideas
- Blog post introduction paragraph
- Blog post outline
- Blog content improvements
- Social media promotional copy
- Email newsletter headlines
Test #1. Blog post topic ideas
First, we’re checking out how Jasper can help with blog post headlines.
Here’s an example of writing AI output:
12 Ways to Improve Your Content Collaboration
Successes:
The topic ideas are pretty good actually. The output of five headlines gives us three listicles that require little editing to be useful.
Failures:
The third output (What are some of the main content management issues that your company aims to solve?) seems more like an FAQ for handling sales objections. However, we can easily change this to read more like a blog post, such as How to Solve Common Content Management Issues.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
AI can give you some great ideas for blog posts, but you’ll need to change the “product description” to the general topic you want to cover, to generate new ideas each time.
Test #2. Blog post introduction paragraph
Next, let’s see how the AI does when we ask it to write our blog post introduction. We can select the number of outputs to get different options to choose from.
Here’s an example of writing AI output:
Starting a blog post with an interesting intro paragraph is tough. Writing one manually can be time consuming and tedious. Finding the right topic to write about can also be difficult if you don't have many ideas or don’t know how to generate more content ideas for your business. Fortunately, there are solutions that make writing easier and quicker than ever before - using artificial intelligence (ai) in the form of chatbots!
Successes:
The first three sentences in the above example are simple and to the point. Unlike common fears about AI, these don’t sound like they were written by a robot.
Failures:
While the first three sentences sound human enough, it is odd that all three begin with an -ing word. It creates a slightly unnatural flow.
Also, the paragraph includes “chatbots” which is totally irrelevant to the topic. And worse, there is an unnecessary exclamation point.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
When it comes to actual writing, the AI is less helpful than when it comes to ideating. However, with some quick editing, this intro paragraph is usable.
Test #3. Blog post outline
Next up, let’s see how Jasper does with ideating an outline.
An example of writing AI output for an outline is:
1. What is writing AI?
2. How does it work?
3. Why should I use it for my blog post?
4. Who can benefit from using ai-generated content on their website or blog?
Successes:
Between the five different outputs generated, the AI covers some basics, like the what, who, and why of the topic. The phrases are also pretty much ready to use.
Failures:
Each outline has only three or four points, so it’s disappointing that the outlines don’t get deep. You also can’t add more criteria as input, such as the familiarity level.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
All things considered, the outline feature can be used when writing a high-level overview or introduction to a topic. It likely can’t produce an outline for advanced content and thought leadership.
If you’re really stuck in the outlining phase, it does offer some quick wins to get your brain working again.
Test #4. Blog content improvements
While Jasper can’t yet write long-form content, it does offer content improvements. You can add up to 400 characters at a time, and have the text rewritten for you.
Here’s an example output:
Artificial intelligence has made its way into many industries, including the writing industry. Writing AI is artificial intelligence technology that analyzes large data sets in order to produce written content in desired formats. They require some direction; input is usually sentences and phrases meant to guide the AI’s output towards something relevant.
Most writing assistants today offer short form copy like headlines, bullet points, and short paragraphs.
Successes:
The writing AI has produced clear and informative copy. Unlike some of the other features where the outputs are very similar, the content optimizer produces very different options to choose from.
Failures:
Some sentences are a bit awkward or strangely worded, and the first option reads more like an introductory paragraph rather than an improvement on the input.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
If you have a blog post that you want to repurpose into a different post on a similar topic, this might help speed up some of the rewritings, so you’re not posting duplicate content.
Test #5. Social media promotional copy
So maybe AI can’t help you write an entire blog post. What about the promotional copy required to share the post on social media? Let’s see what happens when we use Jasper’s social media feature.
Here’s an example output (the only one somewhat usable):
Writing AI is very much in its infancy. Are you using a tool that will stand up to this brave new world? Or are you writing it yourself and hoping for the best?
Successes:
Unfortunately, this is the most disappointing use case so far. I had wrongly assumed it would be the best at writing social media copy, but alas, that’s not the case. The only good thing here is the ideas generated, not the copy. We can take this and use it to inspire posts with a definition of writing AI, what skills writing AI offers, and the cost-effectiveness of writing AI.
Failures:
The first post isn’t related to writing, the second is incomplete, the third is falsely confident, the fourth is so-so, and the fifth is completely crazy.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Writing AI can’t generate social media copy for you (sorry). But it can offer some ideas. However, the cost of the subscription might not be worth it, since you can easily find prompts and ideas online.
Overall thoughts on Jasper’s capabilities
Jasper has several useful AI writing features. However, if you’re looking to use AI to write blog posts specifically, you’ll be disappointed by Jasper because you’ll have to do a lot of copying and pasting. When you use StoryChief, you get an AI blog post writer directly inside of the same platform you’ll use to publish and promote your content—saving you a lot of time on your workflow.
Putting Copy.ai to the test
Now, we’re going to test a different AI writer in order to gauge its effectiveness and see whether or not its outputs are any better.
Let’s test the AI-generated outputs of Copy.ai, another popular tool.
We’ll still write about AI writing, partly to be super meta and partly to better compare the tool with Jasper.
Test #1. Blog title
For our first test, we’re generating some blog titles. I input this as the description of the blog topic in order to generate the titles, “AI writing, all about AI writing, everything you need to know about AI writing, how to write with AI.”
Here are some of my favorite headlines:
The AI Writing Companion: How To Write With AI
5 Things You Need To Know About AI Writing
How To Write With AI For 80% Of Your Writing Tasks
How To Get Started With AI-Based Writing Tools
Successes:
I was pretty surprised at how great some of these titles are. I like how it threw in that 80% stat. While not accurate, it does make for a great headline.
Failures:
There are plenty of silly titles here, like “Who I Am and What's the AI Writer,” which just proves that AI writing is unpredictable.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Titles are probably what AI writing does best. It doesn’t matter that some of the titles are garbage. All you have to do is pick the ones you like best. But when writing paragraphs, the garbage text can take longer to edit than writing from scratch.
Test #2. Blog outline
For the blog outline, I used a similar input as above, except that I added steps in as well: “AI writing, all about AI writing, everything you need to know about AI writing, how to write with AI, steps to writing with AI.”
Here’s an example of the output:
Section: AI, or artificial intelligence, is a computer program that can solve problems or complete challenges.
Section: We are in a transition period, the transition from human writers to AI-powered writing.
Section: To get started with AI writing, you need to know your topic and tone.
Section: You can use artificial intelligence to write marketing copy about products and services for your business.
Section: You can use artificial intelligence to write blogs for your website.
Section: Come up with a topic.
Section: Brainstorm ideas for sections.
Section: Go to ContentStudio's AI Writing feature and enter the topic, tone, and sections.
Section: Click the Write button at the top of the page.
Successes:
There’s not much to celebrate here. Copy.ai generated 4 different outlines for my query, but none were usable.
Failures:
I was surprised by how poorly Copy.ai performed for the outline test. I would’ve thought that the output would’ve more closely resembled an outline, but most sections look more like sentences rather than headlines.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
You may get some ideas from the outline generator, but this AI assistant can’t actually write your outline for you.
Test #3. Blog intro
For this test, I used the same input as Test #2.
Here’s an example of the output:
What is AI writing? If you don't know, you've come to the right place. We'll cover different aspects of AI writing in this article. From how to write with it, to what AI writing actually is. Whether you're interested in using AI as a writing tool or just want the basic details behind it, this article will give you everything you need to know about AI writing.
Successes:
The above output certainly isn’t terrible (well, depending on who you ask). It does a great job with simplicity, ease of writing, and positive sentiment.
Failures:
The intro paragraph is pretty cheesy. It also doesn’t include any facts or statistics, which is commonplace in B2B blogs to establish authority and set the stage for a high-quality article.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
If you’re writing B2C content or your brand doesn’t really have an established brand voice and you prioritize productivity over style, you could use AI for writing a blog intro. Just be sure to not overdo it for paragraph text, otherwise, the whole article will read like copycat content.
Test #4. Blog paragraph
For this test, I used Copy.ai’s Freestyle feature, which can be used to generate longer paragraphs.
For the prompt input, I wrote, “Why AI writing is helpful and what it can be used for.” I wanted to see if it could write a paragraph about the benefits and use cases of AI writing.
Here’s an example of the output:
AI writing is a tool that can be used to automate the process of writing. It uses algorithms to generate content according to a set of parameters, which allows it to be used for many different purposes.
AI writing can help you improve your website's SEO, it can allow you to predict customer behavior, and it can even help you write your next novel!
Successes:
The writing sounds mostly natural, although it’s clearly not super high-quality writing.
Failures:
The second paragraph isn’t factual. While AI can help you predict customer behavior, writing AI cannot.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
The results of the test were better than I expected, but a lot of the content came off as really salesy and cheesy. I would recommend not using AI to write paragraphs, unless you’re stuck with writer’s block and would rather edit a few paragraphs than write them from scratch.
Test #5. Sentence rewriter
For this test, I asked the AI to rewrite its own sentence, “AI writing is a tool that can be used to automate the process of writing.”
Since that’s a short sentence, I was curious to see if the AI would produce anything more detailed or longer.
Here’s an example of the output:
AI writing is a tool that can be used to create writings that are indistinguishable from those created by humans.
Successes:
There are many options that match the sentence input in style and length.
Failures:
The outputs are pretty bland, but again if you care more about saving time than writing with style, you may not mind.
Our overall opinion on the result of the test:
Rewriting is one of the better uses of AI. But be careful when rewriting someone else’s content as it likely won’t pass plagiarism checkers. If you do use AI for rewriting, you should only do so for 30% or less of your blog. The majority of your blog should still be unique.
Overall thoughts on Copy.ai’s capabilities
Copy.ai could be used for AI-generated blog posts, but we wouldn’t recommend it. By far, the outputs have the lowest quality in terms of writing style and informativeness. Jasper and StoryChief both offer far better blog content quality. However, we’d recommend StoryChief for professional bloggers, content marketing teams, and content agencies because you get writing AI, SEO optimization, content collaboration and publishing in one place.
Top writing AI apps
There are many AI-powered writing assistants on the market today. Here are some of the more popular AI tools for content creation:
- StoryChief - AI-powered content marketing assistant for blogs, social posts, briefings and press releases
- Grammarly - Grammar and spell checker
- ProWritingAid - Similar to Grammarly, but designed for academic papers
- Skillroads - AI-powered resume writing and LinkedIn profile editing
- Textio -Augmented job listing writing
- AI writer - Gathers resources and information for writing articles
- Articoolo -Helps with researching and rewriting articles
- Essaybot - Social media writing tool
- Frase - Analyzes search results to help when writing SEO content
- TapRecruit - Revises job summaries and listings
- WordAI - Writes article paragraphs
So, what can writing AI really do in 2023?
Now the question is, what can writing AI really offer today?
AI can...
- Offer ideas to help you write better content.
- Finish your sentences and paragraphs.
- Help speed up your research with (mostly) accurate information.
- Rewrite sentences and paragraphs for you to re-use.
- Revive existing content and make it look like new.
- Double your content output.
- Optimize your content for SEO.
- Plus, it can give you a starting point. You can edit and add to what an AI writing assistant produces.
What AI absolutely can’t do is write all on its own. It needs your fresh ideas and proprietary knowledge to feed it great prompts. It also needs your keen editing for fact-checking and brand voice.
What is the future of writing AI?
In the near future, we’ll see even more companies starting to use AI for content improvements.
For example, a readability and SEO optimizer can show a copywriter where to make improvements in their article and spin up an AI Power Mode command to improve content.
We also expect to see more companies using AI for actual blog writing, because it has improved so much in the past few months. It just keeps getting better and better.
In the future, AI writing tools will seek to improve upon their ability to learn each users’ unique brand voice, so it can write in your brand voice from the jump. AI platforms might also allow users to upload their proprietary thought leadership content, in order to feed the platform with their own knowledge so that it can repurpose that content into more blog posts, social media posts, etc. It’s certainly an exciting time and there will be new changes happening frequently.
Now, is the perfect time to start unlocking the power of AI.
StoryChief is an AI-driven content marketing software that brings your collaborators and content channels in one place. Learn more.
