By now everyone knows and has likely used AI tools. ChatGPT, many others like Gemini, Claude, and the list goes on. AI like this can be used for many great things, convenience being one of the top factors. For example, writing a template for a professional email. However, there are certain risks involved when relying on it to make content. In this blog, we’ll go over why this is, and an interesting stat for you about how much AI-generated content is growing on the web.
The Rise of AI Content
Since ChatGPT’s reveal in 2022, many more AI tools have evolved from it, offering different specialities. For example, Microsoft is now building AI-infused laptops that serve as a ‘super-powered Cortana’, finding your documents with just a description, or setting up business meetings from a typed command. On the other hand, AI content generators have also boomed in recent times, nowadays even Website Builders have their AI to generate content for you on a description prompt.
This can be a lifesaver in ease of use, however, it also creates the bad habit of solely relying on AI to generate web content, after all, it’s so tempting!
I’m sure you’ve seen AI content at some point already if it’s on a TikTok post with an AI narrator, or synthetic images. What might surprise you though, is just how fast this is spreading over the internet.
According to ‘The Living Library’, “Experts estimate that as much as 90% of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026,”. It’s no surprise why either, especially on social media, as individuals can make lots of money from engagement by simply making mass content posts with AI tools, not only making it convenient but profitable.
The Implications
In theory, this all sounds pretty harmless so far. However, there are risks that run with AI content which could severely damage user experience when trying to learn information on the internet, here’s the main ones:
- Inaccuracy- even though AI is incredibly advanced in today’s age, it can still make mistakes. This is especially relevant when the content in question relies on scientific, historical or highly detailed information. This can be backed up by the AI itself, as soon as you load up ChatGPT, it will come up with the following:
Not that it’d ever happen, but an analogy would be if someone used AI to make an instruction guide to perform medical dosages. You could imagine the dangers of that if the AI missed a step or made a mistake.
- Google- we mentioned in our last blog how Google is proactively filtering out AI-generated content based on the above. So, if you rely fully on AI, it might run the risk of being flagged down by Google as well as providing inaccurate/outdated information to users. It goes without saying that very few people would deliberately spread false information, which is the main purpose of this blog, to spread awareness that using these tools repeatedly may do more harm for your website than good, while also reducing a good user experience.
- Plagiarism- AI-generated content can include plagiarized or unsourced content. This is not a good look for someone who unknowingly used this in their web content and then uploaded it. Not only could it lead to legal action and a fine, but also cause unnecessary complications.
- Bias- as limitless as AI can be, currently it is limited to the information we give it, specifically on the internet. Because of this, there’s an off-chance of AI content using original biased content, and learning off it. Linking closely to inaccuracy, bias AI content will not help the user’s experience. However, this risk is worse in the perspective that biased content can very easily harm or offend certain segments in society, painting them in an untrue light, or simply in a hostile way.
- Propaganda/defamation- on social media you might’ve seen the odd ‘Deep-Fake’ of a political or celebrity figure. Most of the time this is used for comedic/entertainment purposes, yet it goes without saying that could still harm the individual, giving no consent to it. However, unfortunately, this is being used for darker motives, spreading propaganda, lies or misinformation online. An example was the COVID-19 Pandemic, where so many posts were going out, that social media companies invented algorithms to spot it and flag it to everyone as “potentially showing false information”. The sad truth is that AI is enhancing some people to be able to do this more efficiently. On the topic of deep fakes, this has also led to many people getting scammed by people exploiting AI to make it target others. While the more aware individual might spot this, certain demographics such as the elderly that might not know about the advancing AI technology are much more likely to believe it.
The Takeaway
In brass tacks, the simplest solution to solving this problem is one many people might not like to hear but is the truth. To mitigate these risks, you need to make original, useful, and updated content. There’s plenty of scientific/trustworthy information on the web that can help you write this, without the need for AI.
If the above statistic of AI content in 2026 proves right, you can bet that Google will also ramp up its algorithms to detect and ignore it. In the end, this is a good opportunity to get ahead of the curve, if your content meets that criteria, it’ll only be ranked higher when this happens. So, stay original and stay ahead!
We hope you liked this blog, be sure to check out our many others ranging from IT News to Cyber Security articles!
