Research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) can trace its origins back to the mid-1950s. As with most technologies, the development of AI has involved decades of quiet progress smattered with occasional leaps forward accompanied by groundbreaking events, most notably when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
In 2012, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeated reigning Go champion Lee Sedol, stunning the world with a now famous – and wholly unexpected – move referred to as “Move 37”. The move was so unorthodox that experts assumed that AlphaGo had made a mistake, which the world champion would eventually capitalise on. But as the game progressed, it became clear that no such mistake had been made. In fact, AlphaGo had used a strategy that deviated from centuries of conventional human wisdom. Having been trained on massive amounts of data through self-play reinforcement learning, DeepMind defeated the South Korean champion in a totally unexpected way, leaving him visibly flustered.
More recently, the introduction of large language models (LLMs), particularly ChatGPT, has been an unprecedented technological breakthrough, which surprised even the industry that spawned it.
Within 2 months, ChatGPT reached around 100 million users, becoming the fastest-growing consumer application. Worldwide, the investment in AI is expected to reach $1.5 trillion by the close of 2025. Over 70% of financial institutions are implementing – or at least planning to implement – LLM technologies for tasks such as customer service and regulatory analysis, causing huge ripples in the jobs market. AI is now embedded in widely distributed products (CoPilot in Microsoft 365, Gemini in Google products, etc.) Hell, even I used AI to gather some of the facts presented in the above text.
There is scarcely an industry left, particularly those pertaining to the digital world, that remains unaffected by the development of AI. At Mapped Out Media, we use AI to support our services in a myriad of ways. From the analysis of marketing trends to developments in the world of SEO, AI can be an incredibly powerful tool to improve efficiency, acquire up-to-date knowledge, and even to bounce creative ideas off.
But, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. As the Industrial Revolution diminished the need for human muscle, so the AI Revolution may diminish the need for human minds, and accordingly the use of AI brings with it a multitude of dangers that lurk in the shadows.
Excessive use can lead to skill atrophy
The huge economic benefits which stem from using AI to improve efficiency are difficult to resist, but those who rely too heavily on AI for writing copy, making decisions, and strategic planning, can dull their own critical-thinking skills, erode their ability to write, and diminish their creative instincts.
It is important to find the balance between using AI as a partner, without outsourcing all your thinking to it. Like any muscle in the body, if you stop using your mind, it will get weaker. To highlight this danger, check out the MIT study: Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task.
People can spot AI-written copy
It is rare that modern AIs will make grammatical errors and so, as users’ faith in the legitimacy of AI-generated content increases, as does the amount of content we see on the web. But it is very easy to spot AI-generated web copy, despite the lack of errors.
First and foremost, the em-dash; AI adores them, and it is not totally clear why. Personally, I love a good em-dash, but a paragraph peppered with em-dashes is likely to be AI-generated. Other giveaway elements are the overuse of lists, hollow transitions, and the deployment of parallel sentence structures, e.g. “It’s not just about saving money—it’s about investing in peace of mind.”
It is not to say that using these literary devices is wrong, but AI has a particular penchant for them and uses them much more frequently than the average writer does.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) penalties
Related to the above point, it is not just humans who can spot AI-generated content; AI can too (of course!), and this can have an adverse effect on SEO. Human writing has a fingerprint that resonates, often at the subconscious level. Be it dry humour, righteous indignation, or subtle sarcasm, there are written artefacts found in human writing that AI struggles to generate authentically.
Perhaps paradoxically, AI is very good at sniffing out this non-authentic content, and so Google penalises low-quality or spammy AI content that lacks human authority and expertise. Over-optimisation – often known as ‘keyword stuffing’ – will actually have a negative effect on search rankings.
Misinformation and hallucinations
Perhaps one of the most dangerous aspects of all. AI is programmed to be helpful above being accurate. As a result, many models can produce erroneous and factually incorrect outputs known as “hallucinations”.
I remember when an AI model I was using suggested some copy for a client’s social media post in which it mentioned that a property was “a walkable distance to local amenities such as a shopping centre…” – it was only my knowledge of the locality which flagged in my mind that the nearest shopping centre was a 30-minute drive away!
When questioned, the AI apologised and informed me it was incorrect. It had simply conjured up a shopping centre because it sounded good, not because one actually existed. For the copywriter who relies on AI, this could have led to a factually incorrect statement going live on a client’s social media platform.
Copyright and intellectual property issues
The sudden explosion of AI has left the legal landscape around generated content murky and difficult. Using AI-generated images and text raises concerns about copyright infringement as models are trained on existing data without explicit permission in the majority of cases.
Those who are overly reliant on AI could find themselves having to go back to basics if and when the legal implications catch up with the technological progress being made. For marketers who have allowed their skills to atrophy, this could be devastating to their businesses.
