Since the dawn of time, humans have developed creative solutions to make their lives easier and more convenient. We have always found ways to adapt to and engineer our environment. It’s how the primitive invention of a simple wheel progressed to the revolutionary development of trains and railroads. What we’re currently seeing with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is no different. 

Although many people may think of AI as a new development, it has actually been around for some time. As our generation becomes more comfortable with technology, we have increasingly turned to earlier versions of AI-powered software to boost productivity and streamline processes. Prior to the recent attention generated by ChatGPT, however, awareness of AI’s presence was relatively low. In a 2017 study of 1,500 senior business leaders in the United States, for instance, only 17% reported being familiar with the technology. 

The growing role of AI for economic development is becoming more apparent: PriceWaterHouseCoopers conducted a study on artificial intelligence and estimated that within the next decade, this technology could boost global GDP by 14%. This has led to significant investments in AI across a range of fields, including finance, national security, criminal justice, healthcare and transportation. These industries have made rapid strides in integrating AI into their operations.

Recently, however, the possibilities of AI have moved beyond the more critical and objective fields and into art and other creative pursuits. This has sparked the question of what boundaries artificial intelligence will push, which begs the question: will AI erase the need for human creativity?

Exploring The Discourse On AI: Significance, Applications And Impact Of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an extensive field of computer science focused on creating machines that can imitate human intelligence and perform various tasks. While traditional machines act as tools for task support, AI goes beyond that and simulates human behavior. The future of AI aims to explore the human brain’s interaction with the world, extending beyond reactive machines to develop their own consciousness, store data, make predictions and behave similarly to humans.

While the idea of conscious AI has inspired a lot of science fiction on whether robots will take over the human species, there is a more relevant discourse in the creative community. Some are debating whether AI can become so autonomous that human-generated outputs of creativity may no longer be necessary.

Are We Headed Toward A Human-Free Future?

As it is now, the simple answer is NO. The AI programs used in other fields still struggle with biases that can affect accuracy, indicative of having a long way to go before they could hope to tackle the inherently complex system of human creativity. We still need out-of-the-box good ideas. 

It’s easy to think that AI can replace humans in any creative pursuit when looking at it from a perspective that emphasizes production and output. If you look at it from the lens of consumption, users will always want to go out of their way to find content from other humans. In short, the need to be creative is a deeply primal human need, and humans themselves are unlikely to let machines take that from them.

Art created withAI is limited by the data available to it. The program hinges on what has already been produced and lacks the individual meaning that humans bring to their creations. While civilization’s progress has relied on human genius in creativity and problem-solving, the human mind remains the sole creator of art imbued with personal meaning. AI excels in fields that value objectivity, accuracy and data, but it cannot replicate the subjective judgments of human aesthetic sense required in creative fields.

How Can AI Assist In The Creative Process?

While human creativity relies on coming up with unexpected solutions to problems, AI is programmed to achieve its goals according to prompts and existing data. It’s still a largely human-machine interaction because you have to type a prompt, give it a goal and direct it to what you want it to do. This is why there has been so much resistance to AI creating art by itself. It cannot replace human artists in the way it cannot replace human writers, and search engines like Google have created measures to continually present users with human-generated content.

This does not mean, however, that AI programs should be discarded entirely. While they may not be here to replace human creativity, they are here to assist it. They were programmed for a reason, which is to overcome certain hurdles during the creative process. 

By taking care of repetitive tasks quickly and objectively, AI can free up more time for human creators to focus on the more subjective aspects of their work. Therefore, AI can enhance and streamline the creative process.

 

Should You Use AI For Content Writing?

In the writing field, things like AI writing assistants can be a godsend. Good writing depends on the accuracy of information from the real world. AI writing tools are made with machine learning algorithms to eventually create a large network of knowledge sources and repositories available across the web. Software training then teaches the networks to interact, countercheck, experiment and generate content. This is done with intensive repetition, teaching the AI tool to mimic the styles, tones and formats presented to it.

For content writing and digital marketing especially, AI adapts to improve the process. Content production involves a lot of side tasks that an AI writing assistant can instantly solve. Doing so allows content writers to focus on coming up with unique and creative content. 

AI writing best complements content writers by making the process more efficient, especially in the fast-paced world of digital marketing. The programs can range from assisting in blog posts, landing pages, captions, titles, advertisements and numerous other tasks. 

With the advent of AI software, creatives need to accept that AI is here to stay and that they can be a collaborative presence in the process. For writers especially, there are several tools that can help them polish their skills. 

Here’s How to Harness The Power Of AI Writing Tools And Reap The Rewards

I. The Technical Aspect

AI writing tools are there to help writers get through the more tedious parts of writing. One can agree that dealing with grammar and spelling edits may be the more unfabulous parts of the job, and AI-based editing is in another league.

Let’s take a look at the following tools below:

1.  InstaText helps the text sound more casual, come up with alternative words or phrases and improve the overall flow of the text.
2. WordTune is capable of rewriting an article by changing the tone, expanding or shortening the content and paraphrasing the given texts. 
3. Grammarly is popularly known for checking basic spelling tone and punctuation. It quickly grasps the tone of your article and makes suggestions if it senses a deviation.
4. Surfer can come up with an outline for you prior to writing.
5. Peppertype is a more intuitive virtual content assistant which assists your writing by learning your habits and patterns as a user to come up with relevant responses and suggestions. It improves readability through sentence formatting, sentence rephrasing and grammatical and plagiarism checkers.

Contrary to the common notion that AI produces no original content and is prone to plagiarism, when used properly AI tools can ensure your writing’s originality. Any AI writing assistant tool, including the ones mentioned above, have plagiarism checkers where they can quickly scan the text and compare it with other existing sources for accidental similarities. This helps you as the writer eliminate possible accusations without having to go through a more grueling manual process.

The perks of using AI are best seen in its objectivity when it comes to making the text more readable for all audiences. Text improvement can go a number of ways, depending on the writer’s notions on what can optimize a text. An AI tool, however, immediately scours available sources and provides the solution that yields the best results.

II. Data Gathering

Doing the research before doubling down on writing is one of the most difficult and tedious parts of the writing process. Several fields of writing can benefit from AI tools made for the research process, whether it’s journalism, academic research, fiction or content writing.

Modern-day research heavily relies on internet sources, which can create challenges in terms of organizing content, materials and ideas due to the availability of huge amounts of data. With the help of easy-to-use AI software, managing research materials has never been easier. These tools can be a game-changer for streamlining research and improving productivity.

 

Tools For Managing Research Materials:

 

1. Elink.io can help bundle links, personalize titles and descriptions and easily share content with others.
2. Bit.ai provides a shareable content library, complete with a smart search feature that can help quickly locate anything saved. 

 

AI Tools For Extracting Knowledge From Academic Papers:

 

1. ContentMine is essential when it comes to extracting knowledge from several quantitative academic papers. It browses through tables, graphs and numbers and summarizes them with a meta-analysis that takes an immense load off the researcher’s back.
2. Genei will help you narrow down a wide research topic through an Overview button– you simply type the topic and necessary keywords and the tool crawls across all the relevant content across the web, makes a summary, extracts some common keywords and rounds up all the references. From here, you as the human researcher should counter check these sources, verify the authority and credibility and ensure that they meet the necessary standards for the particular research project.

 

AI Tools For Formatting Bibliographies:

 

1. Typeset.io helps immensely by providing citation templates that you just have to fill in.
2. Mendeley is a reference management software that does the same thing with citations and references, and is synced seamlessly across devices making it accessible from anywhere. It even has a repository of information for grants from across 5,000 organizations, making it essential for researchers who are looking for funding.
 

III. Prewriting For Writer’s Block

The human writing process involves a lot of the writer’s state of mind. With long-form content especially, a lot of time needs to be allotted in case of writer’s block. However, with the pace of media and content production today, writer’s need to keep up. This can quickly lead to burnout or fatigue, but with tools to help them overcome the procrastination that often blocks them from starting a piece, they can produce content in a shorter period of time without the expense of their mental well-being.

AI Creativity Tools That Are Useful In Addressing Writer’s Block

1. Jasper.ai is an innovative AI writing tool that provides writers with topic suggestions, research material and ideas for structuring their writing. This tool has become popular for being one of the first AI tools with the unique ability to optimize content for SEO by suggesting relevant keywords and phrases to include in an article.
2. Chibi is an AI writing assistant that uses GPT-3 to generate high-quality content based on your intent, style, and tone.
3. Rytr. While Jasper and Rytr have the same features, some writers prefer Rytr for its built-in features. Aside from text correction, it also has a built-in plagiarism checker. This can be a valuable tool for writers who want to ensure that their content is original and not inadvertently copied from other sources.
4. Scrivener. If you’re the sort of writer who’s more physical, i.e. you like to write down sections on different papers and move them around to see which structure fits best, Scrivener is a helpful tool that simulates a similar experience. It has a corkboard and cards to help you visualize your outline and shuffle them around as you like. This can help you plan an article and get you started on the actual writing part. If you’re having a more difficult time tying all the parts together into one cohesive narrative, Scrivener can take up several sections and join them together to give you an idea of where things should go.
5. CopyAI has generators for Instagram captions, email subject lines and several templates for digital website, blog and sales copies.

Ideation is one crucial part of writing to which AI can claim an important role in. Automated creativity tools offer a wide range of templates that will help you get started. All you need to do is input the subject area and fill in some of the details and it will generate the content. 

However, you shouldn’t stop there. It will be fairly obvious that you didn’t write the text, because AI generated content isn’t quite there yet. Some sources will be made up and a number of snippets may look false. In this case, treat the generated content as a prewritten text that you can use as a template. It’s an effective way to get past writer’s block because you will immediately insert paragraphs, correct sections, rearrange topics and fact-check the sources.

IV. Content Strategy

You could say that content writing and digital marketing is a field immediately threatened by AI. There still is, however, a meeting ground for both where AI can be used as a tool to ease the content writing process. Surfer, one of the tools mentioned earlier, cuts down the research time at an amazing rate by quickly crawling the web for the most popular content ideas that rank quickly on search engines. 

To save time and money, AI content strategy can be maximized to produce, organize and distribute written content to make the SEO process more efficient. Blog ideas are generated based on what the program has found to be most in demand, which is a quick solution if you’re trying to get your page up in the search engine rankings. Google has repeatedly said that AI-generated content is bad for SEO, but some tools can definitely help your human-generated content get its rankings up.

AI Tools To Boost Content Strategy For SEO

1. GrowthBar are made specifically for SEO optimization and adopt key features from standard SEO software like rank tracking and keyword research. It adds exciting features like internal link auto-suggestions, paragraph and meta generation and site inspection for keywords.
2. Neuroflash optimizes your text and restructures the content based on the formats of high-ranking articles. Surfer can do an audit for your existing content for keywords and compare them with competitors. Similar to other tools, it also comes with masterclasses and courses on learning the ropes for SEO writing.
3. Outranking enables you to optimize your website’s performance by providing detailed insights into your competitors’ strategies. You can analyze your competition’s content, backlinks and rankings, allowing you to identify gaps in your own strategy that will help in making informed decisions on how to improve your content. This tool also provides personalized recommendations and actionable insights to help you outrank your competitors and improve your online visibility. 

With the help of AI, companies can stay updated on relevant shifts within the content writing field, making necessary changes to adapt to the needs of users and the target audience. With the speed and efficiency of these tools, there is also a significantly reduced human error rate.

V. Productivity And Collaboration

AI programs have become essential during a time when the post-pandemic world is learning to adapt to virtual replications of physical spaces, especially for school and office purposes. People now have to be constantly connected in email circles, calendars and other platforms for information dissemination. Notes, announcements, project tracking and conversations are now synced across several people’s accounts, making productivity sessions easier in real time.

Colleagues have learned to stay productive together through team management software like:

1. ProofHub to assign tasks and store files;
2. GanttPRO for planning and progress tracking;
3. Bit.ai as mentioned earlier, for collaborative and real-time editing across the team.
4. Transcription tools such as Otter are also convenient to use during remote meetings because it auto-joins the meeting and transcribes everything with fairly high accuracy.
5.  Beautiful.ai is a presentation tool to help with quick and visually appealing slide decks — it’s almost similar to manually making a slide deck, although it’s sprinkled with several AI features that can rewrite the text as you go and adapt tables and graphs to frequently changing data.

Automation software can also be integrated into a team’s daily workflow. Zapier, for example, allows you to automate task management, daily emails, reminders and even content creation. By customizing an automated workflow, you immediately save energy by assigning the tedious daily tasks such as writing email copies and sending meeting summaries to an AI-powered tool.

Conclusion

At the moment, the most rational way to think about AI is that it’s not there to replace you, but rather to optimize your work. While it’s easy to fearmonger about whether AI will replace human labor and creativity, we first have to remember that AI is simply a tool, regardless of the degree of independence we give it. It has always been about the collaboration between man and machine, and artificial intelligence has done wonders for moving technology and innovation onwards. In the case of writing for human consumption, there are numerous AI tools that assist and boost the writer’s productivity to achieve a unique and genuine output. It all comes down to knowing what each program can do for you and using it to maximize human capability. 

With the overwhelming amount of information due to the constant development of technology, it’s easy to feel lost and unsure of where to begin, continue or even end your work. It’s important to take a step back, take a breather and reconnect with the reason why you started your career as a writer or content creator in the first place. By finding your voice and unique perspective, you can create work that stands out from the rest. You can check out some of our previous posts for content tips and inspiration. 

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