Advantages & Disadvantages Of Artificial Intelligence

So what are the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence in regards to online marketing? How do you protect your online business from AI backlash?

In 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) technology took a front and center position on the stage of online marketing. Although it has existed in various formats in the past, suddenly it was a free and available tool to entrepreneurs who needed help in their business.

Almost overnight, leaders in this niche jumped on the opportunity to churn out endless courses, develop software tools, and shower their audience with opportunities to buy products related to AI.

It worked. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were exchanged in the pursuit of free, push button content that could help people earn six figures or more. Along the way, many cautioned that it was too soon to know how this technology would impact their business.

Initially, there were no AI guidelines or rules discussed by major corporations like Google or Amazon. Entrepreneurs were forced to guess what would happen, and many of them took risks in the hopes that it would work out in their favor. 

Unfortunately, there are things unfolding now and on the horizon that could have a severe impact on your business, and you need to know how to address those immediately.

Corrective Measures Taking Place Against AI Abuse

You might be thinking that it's just consumers that have a concern about artificial intelligence. And it's true that many have started shunning content that they can easily determine to be written by a robot.

There are certain stylistic patterns that AI uses, which are easily discernible by the average reader or viewer. However, that wouldn't necessarily put your business at risk, because there would still be many consumers who may not know the difference.

What's of concern to you, as an online entrepreneur, is the fact that companies and the government itself, is taking corrective action against the abuse of this technology in a way that is not transparent to the customer.

Early on, people didn't know if Google would rank websites that used artificial intelligence content. They also didn't know if Amazon was going to let AI content be published on their platform under the guise of books, coloring books, and even art.

So everyone pushed ahead as if there were no rules that were ever going to unfold. In the beginning, those Amazon products made sales and people were able to rank some of their blog content high in Google.

But now, due to many complaints by original content creators as well as consumers, corrective action is underway.

On Amazon, for instance, consumers are complaining about the abundance of low quality books that have been created by AI tools and uploaded in a flood or tsunami on the site.

People don't want to spend money on low quality content, and they expect the platform to ensure some semblance of quality before they continue using it. If Amazon allowed people to flood their platform with AI content, consumers would soon turn away from purchasing there and instead go directly to human authors.

Amazon had to do something to curb this reputation it was gaining in news stories and in social chatter. So they enacted a system where authors have to now claim exactly how AI was or was not used in the creation of their book.

They still have not stated whether or not they are going to allow the creation of content using AI. Some people assume they will simply require a declaration stating that it was created with this technology to show transparency to the consumer.

However, there have been some reports of authors’ accounts getting shut down immediately when they agree to reveal that AI has been used in the creation of their book.

There are also lawsuits taking place, such as the one against Google’s Generative Search system, an AI-fueled search engine results page where original creators claim Google’s AI tool stole their content to train its AI tool.

There is increased scrutiny right now about the copyright issues tangled up in the AI process, where data is scraped and fed to the AI bot in an effort to teach it how to create information.

Not only that, but readers, if given the chance to read the sterile information that a robot generated, versus content that a person created from their original mind, will almost always choose the unique voice of the human.

If platforms continue pushing AI content in front of their users, they will simply abandon them and go elsewhere.

Recently, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts introduced a bill about AI transparency that would demand that any content consumers are being sold or shown online contain a watermark that lets them know it was created by the robot.

Some of the results of AI generated advice being shown to consumers online have been shocking. Not only has it presented information about how to cook poisonous mushrooms as a recipe for your family, but it has also presented information that is racist and alarming.

The corrective legal and ethical guidelines will affect bloggers, advertisers and sellers of information, too. Some of the wording in these measures include things like “unfair or deceptive practices,” which is what a consumer might think if they assume they’re learning from a real entrepreneur, only to discover a blanket statement that you’re nothing more than an AI content creator instead.

This is actually a positive thing taking place. Just as when article spinners hit the marketplace, and entrepreneurs started scraping other peoples’ sites and publishing poor quality content, actions like this keep the marketplace clean and enjoyable for buyers.

Without it, the result would be that you (a good, quality content creator) would be buried among the masses of low quality AI content taking over at a fast pace. Inevitably, and even in line with current guidelines, Google is likely going to reward original content over AI, even if you’re currently seeing a boost from it.

The reason you see a marketplace flooded with AI tools and courses is because savvy entrepreneurs know they have to quickly make money on an idea like this before anything negative happens, which is what’s occurring now.

They’ll move on to the next hyped up strategy, and people will salivate over it just as they have always done. But this doesn’t mean all is lost with AI. There are some things you need to face and a correct way of using it without risk.

Cleaning Up and Preventing Damage to Your Business

So what does this mean for you? What if you’ve already used AI and now you’re panicking about the possible fallout? There are steps you can take to protect your business and correct everything on your own that’s already out there.

Amazon

If you’ve published anything on Amazon that even slightly uses AI, unpublish the listing. You want to go through and create fully unique content. This is true whether you used it to write your fiction or non fiction books, to create coloring books, and more.

Unpublish them and when you re-publish the new version, you’ll be able to check off the option that your creation is free of any AI content whatsoever. Then, don’t use AI on this platform at all anymore.

Etsy

Etsy is next. Many people are using AI to create printables to sell. One of the specific factors in legislation was about getting the FTC to oversee AI creations and require transparency of items being sold.

Delist your Etsy products created by AI and replace them with original work that you made yourself. This is true whether it’s a printable, a digital download, wall art – or anything else

Blog Content

Blog content might be ranking well with AI (for now). But that corrective action will occur at some point, and you’ll wish you’d taken the time to replace AI blog content with original work before an algorithm uses some sort of detector to bury your site for being unoriginal and AI-generated.

Information Products

Info Products are similar to other books, but you might have information in text and video formats. Work on replacing the AI work and send out new files to your existing customers, not just for the new ones.

PLR Products

PLR (private label rights) is something you might be selling. If so, you have a few options. First, label it transparently as AI-created content. Many PLR sellers have been using this without being upfront.

It’s better to present an apology and admit that’s what you’ve done (along with a unique, human-created file replacement) than to allow your users to get swept up in the net that’s being cast to identify AI content and have their blogs or products get targeted.

Videos

Videos created by AI are often ones where images and content both have been pulled from an original source for AI training. You want to swap out the AI (either for yourself on camera, by using a slideshow presentation or over-the-shoulder screen capture method).

Audio

Audio that you may have used in those videos may need to be replaced with your own voice if you used AI. You may have used it in audiobooks or for a podcast, too. Record these things yourself – it’ll likely get a better reception anyway because people will recognize the authentic human sound.

Images

Images that you’ve created using AI tools like MidJourney need to be replaced. Stock photo deals are not too expensive – and it’s better to find what you need there than to end up a target of legislation because you hoped you wouldn’t get caught.

Seven Ways You Can Still Use AI Effectively and Risk-Free

Is AI just something you need to avoid from here on out?  No!

It’s a useful tool. It’s just been abused by lazy, or unethical marketers who didn’t want to listen to common sense advice.

AI has many uses in your online business. First and foremost, consider it a friend who is good for bouncing ideas off of, or for picking their brain (in this case, a robotic one). AI is great for brainstorming.

1. Brainstorming

If you need to brainstorm anything – you can ask AI for help. You might start out brainstorming yourself and then let AI pick it up from there. For example, you might say you know you want to cover the topic of affiliate marketing from a beginner’s perspective with an emphasis on budget-friendly affiliate marketing.

Then ask it for topics that audience may want to know. It would brainstorm ideas like:

• budget friendly affiliate tools
• list building on a budget for affiliates
• using free social media for affiliate promotions
• low-budget paid ads for affiliates
• other traffic options, etc.

If you’re in fiction, you might ask AI to brainstorm some small town trope ideas for a clean romance for you. It would give you things like:

• a second chance at love slant where high school sweethearts are reunited
• a hidden identity idea where a famous author moves to a small town and falls for someone who doesn’t know who they are.

Getting basic brainstormed ideas isn’t going to violate anything. It’s when you use AI as a crutch too much that it becomes dangerous. You want just enough of a spark to carry you through to the next step.

2. Research

For research, AI tools do a good job of helping you gather information and understand topics. However, they are also known to give erroneous or made up information (and they admit to that on the home page).

Still, as a marketer, you can gain research you may not considered, even if you know your topic pretty well. You can ask it for:

• research pertaining to your demographic, like who they are, what their goals and pain points are, etc.
• their use of keywords and hashtags, what social media that use, buyer behaviors and more.

AI doesn’t just churn out content – it has access to a lot of data that could help you determine what direction to take your business in.

3. Outlining

For outlining, AI is a great tool that can help you start from scratch or fill in the blanks for you. It’s always best if you design an outline as a starting point for as much information as you know you want included.

Then, present it to AI and ask if there are other things that need to go into the outline to make it comprehensive. This is great, not only for creating pillar (comprehensive) blog posts, but for full eBooks, too.

Once you have your bare-boned outline created, you can do the same to outline each section or chapter, and AI can help ensure you don’t forget to include anything relevant or important.

4. Editing

AI is also fantastic for editing, too. Hiring an editor can be expensive. You can get feedback from AI for fiction and non-fiction books, emails, blog posts, and more. You can ask it for all kinds of editing recommendations.

For example:

• It can do a basic edit to spot spelling errors, typos and grammatical issues.
• It can help you with personalization or pacing.
• It can check to see if it reflects a certain tone or style you, and see if it has advice for meeting that goal.

AI can help with the voice (active versus passive) and pinpoint any areas where your content is weak, such as being repetitive or too shallow. If you need to expand or clarify something, it can tell you – just as an editor would.

5. SEO

For SEO (search engine optimization), AI can help in many different ways. It can provide you with keyword optimization tips and clusters. It can write metadata and tags for you.

You can feed it a blog post and ask it to analyze how you can make improvements specifically to help it rank better in the search engine results pages (SERPs) on Google. You can also have it help you with optimization for videos you publish on YouTube or content you share on social media, too.

6. Business Improvements

You can use AI to help you make improvements in different areas of your business. You might want advice on expanding or diversifying your income and AI can pinpoint opportunities for you to consider.

7. Competitive Analysis

And it can also be used for a competitive analysis. AI tools can give you information about the top competitors in your niche and how their online business is operating to help you beat them in the SERPs and in filling gaps in the marketplace.

There are probably many other uses that you can find for artificial intelligence tools that are not listed here. But this is a great start for you to be able to maintain your use of this technology without allowing it to put your brand at risk.

Be Careful About the Sources You Buy Content From

You might be the type of marketer who uses a wide array of strategies and tools in your business. Most people have certain tools that they use themselves, and they also rely on others for things they don't have time for or don't have the talent to do.

For example, if you are publishing books on Amazon, and you know how to write well but you are not adept at graphics, you may have purchased a readymade cover for your book or hired a graphic designer.

What you may not have known is that the person you outsourced to was relying on artificial intelligence to create your book cover. This is a common problem right now in the industry, both for fiction and nonfiction authors.

If you look at the new guidelines in place on Amazon, they want to know if your artwork on the cover has been created with the use of AI. Claiming that you did not know that your graphic designer used this technology is not going to be an excuse that will save your account.

Likewise, if you are hiring a ghostwriter or purchasing private label rights (PLR) from different individuals online, you won't know if the content they have generated was produced by artificial intelligence.

The bad news is, even AI detectors are not going to save you. Many have claimed to have a 96% success rate have been proven to fail incorrectly identifying whether or not content has been created by artificial intelligence. 

You might have human generated content that is being caught by AI detectors falsely, and AI generated content that is able to slip through the cracks without being detected at all.

Behind the scenes, people have been discussing and admitting that they are using AI technology without being transparent.  This is sad news to marketers who have been investing in content, whether it's text, video, or images - and used it to represent their brand without knowing that it had been created by AI.

They assumed that because they were paying for it, the human that was selling it was the original creator. You want to make sure that the writers you are purchasing content from are admitting when and if they are using artificial intelligence.

There are some creators who explain up front how and when they use this technology. For example, there have been private label rights sellers who have openly discussed their use of AI in brainstorming and outlining content.

There are also those who have openly sold AI generated content, but they have labeled it as such so that consumers know the difference between the content they create themselves and that which was created by a robot.

Many of these content creators are never going to admit what they are doing. They are simply concerned about keeping the money coming in, and they don't care whether or not you, as a marketer or brand, suffer any consequences.

If they are in another country from you, it will also be difficult for you to touch them in any legal way, so they know they can get away with it in the end. You have to protect yourself by developing relationships, openly asking questions, and watching for the reputation and ethics of the people you are using for your content needs.

In my business experience, I have had great success with a tool called Originality.ai.  I use this tool often, and it's been very accurate.  I use it to test many PLR products as well as content I receive by others. It's simply another way to test what you're being told by other marketers.

The Only Safe Way to Use Full AI Creations Online

We've gone over the many different ways that you can start using AI in an ethical, risk free manner. But what if you are not good at creating content or graphics, audio or videos and you also can't afford to outsource those tasks?

AI can still be leveraged in a safe manner to some degree. You want to be careful about anything that you are selling and anything that is published publicly. That means anything on Amazon, info products, or content needs to be created by you or someone that you trust not to use AI.

Also, if you have content that you are trying to inform and educate people with online, you need to have a disclaimer in place if you have used AI (which unfortunately could damage your reputation as a niche leader) – or remove all of the AI content from your site and republish blogs that are unique to you or at the very least, not AI-generated.

Lead Magnets

There are a couple of ways that you can use AI with content that it creates in full that may not get you caught in the crosshairs of all of this legislation and ethical mess. The first is in creating lead magnets that you offer as a free gift in exchange for the names and email addresses of your target audience.

This is content you are not charging for nor are you publishing publicly so that it can be crawled and identified by any type of detection tools as stemming from AI technology. However, for transparency purposes, you may want to include a footnote similar to a bibliography that lets your readers know AI was consulted in the creation of the content.

You can include it as part of the entire citation guide that you include at the end of your lead magnet that compiles all of the sources you have used when researching or creating that work.

Emails

Another area that is not going to necessarily get identified will be your emails. Right now, most of the email autoresponder systems have an AI tool built into them to help you craft your content.

They may end up including some sort of disclaimer, depending on legislation that takes place, that lets readers know AI had a hand in your communication. Even with social media. Although there are no guidelines right now about using AI to create posts that you share on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and elsewhere, you should still be  careful that you don't put yourself in a position where you have to backtrack and take even more corrective measures.