The machines are taking over! We’ve all seen that movie, right? The one where the robots rise up and take over humankind because they’re sick of being subservient to us. As artificial intelligence and robotics improves, we come closer to saluting our computerised overlords.
Most days it seems like AI is taking over every aspect of our lives. Historically, as machines were produced to simplify tedious manual tasks, fewer labourers were needed. Of course there was resistance to change, especially when it threatened the status quo. But, humans have always adapted and even embraced new technology as it generally makes our lives easier. Does anyone really want to go back to a time before washing machines?
Now with the advent of advanced AI systems, the cycle is repeating, as people begin wondering if their jobs are safe. The ultimate question many businesses ask themselves is why pay an exorbitant salary to a human when AI can produce the same product at a fraction of the cost.
Quality Concerns
But, is it the same quality? Are we sacrificing superior writing for computer generated nonsense written by a robot? Of course we need to weigh the pros and cons. AI writing is certainly faster, cheaper, and more efficient. But what it is lacking is something that AI will likely never perfect: basic human emotion.
An article, blog, or any other document written by a robot is going to read as if it was written by a robot. Often, AI also gets things blatantly wrong. A recent article by the BBC shows that ‘AI chatbots are inaccurately summarising news stories’ and that ‘51% of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form.’ That is a terrifying statistic for businesses who hope to utilise AI more in the future.
However, what if we’re not writing entire articles but simply looking for keywords to optimise our site? Surely AI could handle a simple task like that? This brings us into the realm of search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO involves using specific keywords within your website so that search engines, and ultimately the people using them, are able to find your website and the products on them. It has become a huge business, raking in around $68.27 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $157.41 billion by 2032. It is easy to argue that an AI bot could comb a website and spit out the keywords necessary to place the website high in a search. But, SEO is a much more complex system than it appears.
When it comes to search engines, the first one that comes to nearly everyone’s mind is Google. Indeed, ‘as of January 2025, Google’s [dominance] has remained claiming a staggering 90% of the global search market.’ Therefore, if one wants to master SEO, they must understand how Google works.
According to Pure.Content’s own SEO expert and CEO Andy Nauman, ‘While AI is a fantastic new tool many of us are excited about, it still cannot replace the expertise that comes from years of hands-on experience,’ thus an expert is needed to effectively provide a quality analysis of the needed keywords to be successful in Google’s market. While AI will be able to analyse a site and produce an extensive list of keywords for SEO purposes, without expert analysis, most of the content produced will be rubbish.
A Helpful, but Uncreative Tool
Despite all of this, however, AI can still be useful in business, and even in SEO. Indeed, Forbes argues that AI is the future of SEO and that we shouldn’t be asking ourselves ‘whether AI will affect the future of SEO, but how it will.’ What we don’t want to do is allow AI to completely control the SEO process.
AI is not great with generating new ideas, as it needs to learn from a source that has already been published, but it can help you come up with more ideas. It also tends to dominate smaller projects, such as in titles or meta tags where human ingenuity doesn’t necessarily need to shine.
AI also excels in tasks that humans find menial and repetitive, and thus it can save manpower to do tasks much more suited to one’s particular expertise. Much like one might use AI to brainstorm ideas for a research project, but wouldn’t use it to write the final paper, an SEO expert can use AI in initial research and analytics, but should not rely on a computer to generate the necessary keywords for optimisation. And always, since we have seen above that AI is not always the most accurate, humans are needed to fact check and improve upon the robotic tone that AI operates in.
Embracing Change
As humans have done throughout history, we embrace the new technology and allow ourselves to adapt to it, but we also remember that faster and cheaper is not always the best. We understand that a jumper can be bought in a local department store for a relatively low price, but the jumper that was hand knitted will be of much higher quality and last a great deal longer, though it will be much more expensive.
Relying on AI to improve business because it is fast and cheap will not always result in optimum results. Instead, we use AI as a tool to help us be more productive and efficient at our jobs.
I guess our robot overlords are here to stay!
(No AI bots were harmed in the writing of this article.)
