The AI vs. Human Test: Can AI Replace Humans?
*Please note this blog was written in December 2023, but as AI is constantly evolving and being updated, by the time you read this, some of this information may be outdated.
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Intended Audience: B2B Marketers, Microsoft Partners
AI, while not a new concept, has definitely expanded its usefulness in the past few years. You are now likely familiar with popular AI tools like Microsoft’s OpenAI ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. At this stage AI is now ready to help you with a variety of tasks, such as analyzing data, writing code, virtually assisting, and autonomous driving, plus aiding in creating content (i.e. social media posts, blogs, press releases, website copy, conference materials, speeches).
Given the numerous ways AI can assist, you then must assess the relevance and usefulness of the output. How complete is the analysis, code, help, and/or content? If it isn’t meeting the intended need, how much time is required to develop the work to make the AI output meet the standard of your human output?
To test this ourselves, we asked both ChatGPT and one of our B2B digital marketing Mavens to write a blog on the same subject, measuring the output against our standards for quality, accuracy, optimization, strategy integration, and relevancy. It’s AI vs human! Let’s dive into what we found.
Effectively Prompting AI
The most important element to leveraging AI for the best output is the prompt. The prompt is what is included in the request of what you are asking AI to do for you, in our scenario – writing a blog. For this test, we researched and tested the best ways to prompt AI to provide the best output for this use case, delivering the same prompt to both AI (ChatGPT) and our B2B Content Marketing Maven.
The more context you can provide about the topic, the better. We provided ChatGPT (and our Maven) with the following prompt that included the topic, the audience, the intended purpose of the content, the keyword, and the tone:
“Part 1: Can you analyze the style, tone of voice, and audience for this blog?*
Part 2: Now, can you write a blog for the same audience, using the same style and tone of voice, about how to grow website traffic from other websites as a Microsoft Partner? The blog should mention how getting backlinks from other sites can help increase authority and SEO rankings, as well as mention the types of communities Microsoft Partners can get these backlinks from, such as MSDynamicsWorld and SharePoint community. Please include H1 and H2 tags, a meta title, and meta description as well.”
*Please note that as of December 2023, ChatGPT is unable to analyze links. The text we wanted to analyze was copied and pasted.
Output Produced by AI
The quality of the work produced by the AI really depends on the prompt, topic, and context you provide. For some topics, like this blog, you may find it easier to write a draft yourself. For others, like the backlink blog example, you may find that AI gives you some good ideas and a solid starting point. Based on the prompt we provided, ChatGPT was able to come up with a very well-written first draft much quicker than a human can, however, the key here is first draft.
The process doesn’t just start and end there – we still had to spend time researching the topic prior to coming up with the prompt so we could effectively write a prompt. We also needed to be familiar enough with it to recognize where improvements needed to be made so follow-up prompts could be provided. Once the output was produced, we had to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, and ensure that it was optimized and consistent with our brand. We know you must be curious about how long this process took, and whether utilizing AI was actually much quicker than writing the content from scratch, so let’s dive into the time it took for each stage, AI vs. human.
AI vs Human: The Writing Process from Start to Finish
| SEO Blogging Requirement | AI | Human |
|---|---|---|
| Research Topic/Keywords/Brief | 20 minutes | 30 minutes |
| Prompting AI | 30 minutes | 0 minutes |
| First Draft/Copywriting | 45 minutes | 120 minutes |
| Second Read/Copy Editing | 70 minutes | 45 minutes |
| Final Proofread | 15 minutes | 15 minutes |
| Optimization/Publishing | 30 minutes | 30 minutes |
| Total |
210 minutes (3.5h) |
240 minutes (4h) |
Research/Brief
As you may have experienced, composing an original SEO blog for your website doesn’t start with the writing, it starts in the initial phase of ideation, research, and evaluating the competitive landscape for such topic. Once the topic has been formulated, you then need to conduct keyword research to see the types of queries people are making to see if there is an appetite for your idea. Once you have come up with the idea, conducted keyword research, and looked at other resources from competitors, you need to come up with an outline for your content, and then finally, you can begin the writing process. With AI, the research phase took us slightly less time as we didn’t have to spend as much time thinking about the topic and fleshing out the outline prior to beginning the writing.
Prompting AI
First Draft/Copywriting
This phase takes the longest when using a human writer, as they delve into the topic and familiarize themselves with it as they write, ensuring the information is accurate, up-to-date, and on brand, and that headings are optimized, keywords have been included naturally, and external and internal links are added. For our backlinks blog, it took us 2 hours to write a first draft from scratch, but this of course varies and depends entirely on the topic. With AI, while the first draft was generated in less than a minute, this phase includes combining the best parts of each draft from the various AI tools used, verifying accuracy, and adding internal links. While this didn’t take as long as writing the blog from scratch, it still required some time to be dedicated to it.
Second Read/Copyediting
Whether AI generates the first draft or a human does, the second read and copyediting process remains the same and involves a second set of eyes conducting a stringent internal review to ensure that the content is consistent, incorporates SEO principles, and is written strategically in a way that will capture the audience. For the blog draft generated by AI, the copy editor had to spend more time making sure the information was consistent and on brand, whereas the draft generated by the human didn’t require as many edits as the writer was already familiar with the Maven brand.
Final Proofread
Before we get a blog ready for publishing, we get a third editor to do a final proofread with a fresh set of eyes. This process took about the same amount of time for the blog that was initially written by AI as well as the blog that was entirely written by a human.
Optimization/Publishing
Can AI Replace Humans?
AI is a great writer for first drafts of long-form content, but it often gets too wordy and redundant, taking away from the value it can provide. We thought using an AI tool would significantly help speed up our content creation process, but we found that it still ended up taking a similar amount of time. The total process for the AI-assisted blog took 3.5 hours from start to finish, and doing it entirely ourselves took 4 hours. AI also still has some limitations, like not being able to add internal links, stay up-to-date and current with advancements, or add the output to our publishing platform.
You must also keep in mind that even if AI produces well-written content for your business, there is always a risk of it plagiarizing or outputting irrelevant/incorrect information. There are many tools out there to help identify this, however, none are 100% reliable. Therefore, use your judgment when leveraging content produced by AI. AI can do a great job of mimicking humans, but it is unable to think on its own, so utilizing it means you are limited to content that has already been written and that the AI is familiar with.
All in all, while AI can produce very well-written content, it should always be used as a starting point only. AI still has a long way to go in terms of being able to write with emotion and creativity like a human would, and while it won’t be able to replace humans any time soon, it is still a great tool to have as part of your stack.
Beyond AI vs. Human: Embracing a Hybrid Model
Even though AI can help streamline efforts, amplify efficiency, and enhance overall content quality, the essence of human creativity remains unmatched, which is why we believe the best way to strike a balance is to opt for a hybrid approach to content creation. Rather than competing with AI, we can collaborate with it to complement our strengths, as long as we understand that we can only prompt it to produce well-written first drafts of content, never the final product. It still always requires a human touch to elevate its content quality to ensure that it is ready for publishing, and the first drafts often require more editing than content written by humans.
Embrace AI to enhance efficiency, scalability, and data-driven insights, while nurturing the human touch for creativity, emotional resonance, and adaptability. So instead of viewing it as AI vs. human, work to strike the right balance for your brand’s unique needs, crafting a content strategy that maximizes the benefits of both AI and human capabilities.
The Mavens have been researching and taking courses on the best way to prompt AI to generate quality content. Get in touch to learn more about how you can leverage AI as part of your marketing strategy to increase efficiency and help drive your campaigns.
