More AI Junk and Slop from the Zombie Internet
As AI was introduced to the mainstream business community, CEOs and SMB owners were delighted at the prospect of a robot computer program generating free online content and providing free, cheap customer service.
It was a dream world of low cost, easy automation, zero-employee based pure profit that’s filled their eyes with dollar signs. But what will this new world of zombie content and non-human engagement be like? Who will verify the truth and protect everyone from bad actors? Who will unknowingly get caught in algorithmic misdeeds?
The premise that’s been pushed by the media, corporations, marketeers and AI product designers is that engagement with real, slow, error-prone humans and human-generated content is unnecessary if consumers accept and treat the AI chatbot’s output as trustworthy, warm, inspiring and satisfying.
Yet some feel AI generated content is akin to junk or slop. AI slop is a good description. An article on the Guardian discusses the threat of the Zombie Internet. They highlight the plague of bot-generated books, videos, news stories, and images pouring onto social media and Google search. Do readers know the content is illegitimate, stolen, or created by robots?
“Just like spam, almost no one wants to view slop, but the economics of the internet lead to its creation anyway. AI models make it easy to automatically generate vast quantities of text or images, providing an answer to any imaginable search query, uploading endless shareable landscapes and inspirational stories, and creating an army of supportive comments. If just a handful of users land on the site, reshare the meme or click through the adverts hosted, the cost of its creation pays off.” — from Guardian Article.
So they’re saying that this spam is supported many different ways making it an unstoppable, auto-boosted spam virus of sorts.
I’ve written a post on the dangers of Generative AI, and there are others more articulate than I doing so too. Some believe a backlash against AI will result in a wave of regulation which will stop it in its tracks.
Why Is Generative AI So Harmful to You?
- brand damage — the material undifferentiates your UVP and reputation making you look base and common or contaminates your citation/backlink profile to skew your SEO rankings
- incorrect information — info that’s not true, doesn’t support your brand or sales messaging, or creates legal liabilities
- destruction of your human creative team — content creators resort to reviewing and reworking junk content that they might not be able to verify manually, or to oversee auto-generated imagery that may offend or confuse customers.
- anti AI spam filters from Google, Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin — keeps your content out of top ranking exposure because it resembles AI junk (loss of trust).
- theft of your unique value — your content is stolen, repurposed and made available to other content creators which erodes the value of your entire marketing budget, and allows competitors to leverage your hard work endlessly.
As an example, this snippet returned from Google Gemini AI chatbot cuts images from a website and includes a link to the site where it found the information. So users then, are encouraged to visit the site cited and copy the site owner’s material. Now they see their crafted information duplicated on hundreds of other blog posts online, thus making Google disparage that information (duplication reduction). In fact, other websites using the stolen copy and images might be considered more authoritative and trustworthy than the original site where it was taken. Google dislikes images/links created this way as they appear to them as “syndicated content” which they sometimes penalize.
However, everything new that’s presented comes in a trial phase that illuminates the real outcome. And the outcome of AI generated content (Generative AI) is only being revealed now. The backlash is only beginning.
If you’re going all in on the AI is best philosophy, you may want to slow down and consider where you might end up.
The spate of crazy altered images, auto-slanted information, and ideologically designed messaging is itself being continuously regurgitated and republished. And as all content begins to lose its luster, credibility and desirability, we wonder at what consumers or clients will refer to when making their decisions.
Hummm.. Looks Like you’re a AI Spam Bot!
Many content creators are struggling to prove their work is their own original creation, since AI filters are flagging their original work as AI generated. Every copywriter is faced with this issue, of avoiding being consider AI spam.
As Generative AI moves to replace human research, insight, clarity and creativity, can you control your marketing? Will AI bots be blocked from most online content, thus restrict its accuracy and value? Politicians will be pulled into this madness as AI bot developers cry for their “human rights.”
Right now, most viewers don’t understand the threat of Generative AI, and there is a blind faith that it’s all in good hands. The media has expressed concerns, but not nearly to the degree they should. People are profiting from it, and don’t want to see their golden goose be destroyed.
Should You Use Generative AI?
The best advice might be to use AI to provide some ideas and viewpoints, but ensure your content creators don’t regurgitate its output. It is also wise to use a service such as Cloudflare and others to stop AI bots from stealing your content and dishing it out to others. Blocking these thieves isn’t easy as they disobey and evade detection.
To small business owners who have no real brand or value proposition, AI seems like a big free boost, and they’ll likely jump on the cheap AI content and auto marketing train, and jump off just as it crashes.
But for you, the intelligent business owner (because you’re still reading this), it’s wise to stay away from AI slop, and rely on a talented content creator to build, unique, authentic content with a real, genuine human voice that resonates with the deep personal needs of your customers.
People buy the brand which contains that personal human voice demonstrated authentically with real events and personal viewpoints which that resonate with their values and preferences. It’s that human voice that they like, trust and respect. That’s where real customer loyalty is created.