There has been a lot of talk about ChatGPT and the role that artificial intelligences will have in the future of content creation, also and above all from an SEO perspective. So, we asked ChatGPT itself to write an article on SEO and then to tell us if the contents it generates are good from a search engine optimization point of view. Here’s how it went and the conclusions we drew.

As many probably already know, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool launched in November 2022 by OpenAI, a non-profit organization that researches artificial intelligence.

Its name is the acronym of Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. In fact, ChatGPT works just like a chat: we just need to ask it something for it to generate a more or less articulated response.

How ChatGPT works

Its technology is based on Natural Language Processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence that studies how to program computers to make them able to understand and interact with natural languages. Basically, the algorithms of ChatGPT digest a huge amount of human-generated information and conversations, to the point of being able to understand the nuances of human language and generate equally natural responses.

Its success was almost immediate: launched in its first version on November 30, 2022, in the first five days alone, it had already been tried by a million people; in January 2023, it occupied all the front pages and was the main topic of discussion on every social network. A trend that continues to grow even now that it has reached its third version and introduced a Freemium model.

But what makes it so special? Compared to its cousins Siri and Alexa, ChatGPT is able to provide answers even to rather articulated and technical inputs (from programming codes, to complex explanations, up to musical composition), to the point that even giants like Bing and Google have started the race to integrate this type of artificial intelligence into their search engines. Microsoft Bing promptly integrated ChatGPT but Google did not stand idly by and, in February 2023, it launched Bard.

So, is all that glitters gold? Not exactly. Bard was the first to demonstrate it: by answering incorrectly during its first public demo, it cost Google 100 billion dollars and a 7% drop of the stock value.

Furthermore, upon registration, ChatGPT itself makes a very clear disclaimer: “While we have safeguards in place, the system may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information and produce offensive or biased content. It is not intended to give advice.”

ChatGPT and the role of the copywriter

One of the most controversial aspects concerns the use of ChatGPT for copywriting and content creation. The web is full of testimonials from copywriters who have lost clients because they were replaced by ChatGPT. Some even testify to the loss of their jobs or fear the extinction of some professions, especially in the branch of content creation.

In light of this, to understand exactly how efficient ChatGPT is, we wanted to test it on another issue that has sparked rather heated discussions among marketing professionals: the creation of content from an SEO perspective, therefore optimized for search engines.

The article on SEO written by ChatGPT

When asked to write an article on SEO, ChatGPT generated the following content:

The article explains in a simple and concise way what SEO is, the different types of optimization and why it is important. It does not delve deeper into each strategy mentioned but it is conceptually correct and it can be said that it interpreted my rather broad input (“write an article on SEO”) correctly.

The possible criticalities of ChatGPT-generated content

However, mindful of ChatGPT’s disclaimer, I asked if the contents generated by it are good for SEO.

This is the answer from ChatGPT:

At this point, I followed the suggestion of ChatGPT itself, running a free check with Quetext to verify that there were no plagiarized parts from other sites. Here are the results:

According to Quetext, 50% of the text matches text from other sources. The score is calculated as the weighted average of all matches within the text. The higher the score, the higher the probability of plagiarism.

Observing the results in detail, we realized that some pieces are actually almost identical to the sources cited.

Therefore, taking ChatGPT-generated content as it is could mean being faced with:

• information that is not always accurate or correct;
• decontextualized information;
• non-original content.

What to do then? Actually, ChatGPT itself suggests it to us:

• review and revise the output provided;
• validate information by consulting other sources;
• optimize content based on what is really relevant to your business.

My conclusions

Although it is probable that in the future artificial intelligence will increasingly support marketing professionals – almost as if it was a new colleague – talking of the extinction of certain professions or replacements seems rather risky and, above all, premature. In fact, it feels like hearing once again the theories according to which current computers should have replaced humans: a circumstance that has not occurred yet, except to the extent of an improvement of certain procedures which previously required a lot more time.

So, in light of our little experiment, it seems to us that anyone who thinks of replacing copywriters and content creators with artificial intelligence would first of all damage its own brand: however formidable, at present artificial intelligences are not able to produce genuinely original or error-free content. Nor content capable of recreating the human and emotional component inherent in every product made by humans, which is what makes the difference when it comes to uniqueness and originality.

If this wasn’t enough, Google’s best practices should make us think twice: in order to obtain a high-quality score (and therefore rank on the first page of the SERP), content must be authoritative, trustworthy and written by those who really have the skills and direct or life experience necessary to deal with the topic. A concept summarized in the acronym EEAT.

That’s not all. There is currently no legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence, which is often used to create fake content that can easily be taken for real. The various deepfakes, including the famous photos of the pope wearing a flashy puffer jacket, or the fake viral featuring between Drake and The Weeknd are proof of this.

Having said that, artificial intelligence has great potential and, if regulated and used with common sense, it can really come in handy in our daily lives, even as content creators. In fact, it can help us organize ideas or a workflow, or even create an editorial calendar, complete with content ideas. So, let’s use it to brainstorm and come up with new ideas rather than as a shortcut for “copy-paste” content creation.

What’s your opinion on the matter? Do you really think artificial intelligences can replace certain professions?

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