Is it OK to Use AI-Generated Content as Part of Digital Marketing Strategy?

One of the many questions we’re asked by our clients is

Is it OK to use AI-generated content?

The answer is highly nuanced, so let’s have a look at the background to the AI-generated content question and the approach going forward…

The Background

Amongst all the channels in any digital marketing strategy, content marketing is key for many businesses. Backed up by SEO, PPC, and social media plus newsletter marketing, you can amplify your website content’s visibility and reach a wide audience.

Traditionally, we’ve all used professional copywriters, and designers to create content for our audiences, but a few years ago artificial intelligence (AI) became a genuinely viable option for content creation.

Indeed, AI-generated content was a new concept in early 2022, but when ChatGPT was unleashed on the public in November that year, the genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

The general mood at the time of ChatGPT’s huge public unveiling was mixed: professionals with many years of finely tuned experience were sceptical, if not threatened by AI content. Others saw AI-generated content as a huge opportunity. Let’s put it this way – people with no skills, no experience, who couldn’t spell correctly or compose a coherent sentence, were suddenly empowered by the incredible content creation capabilities of ChatGPT.

The Initial Unease

As far back as April 2022, Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, the public voice of their Search Relations team, expressed concern, even going so far as to say that AI-generated content could be considered akin to “auto-generated content” and therefore might potentially be regarded as web spam, thus going against Google’s terms of service (TOS).

Violating Google’s TOS can have consequences and throughout the company’s history they have brought about measures to reduce, and even remove low-quality content and websites. The possibility of the search giant penalising webmasters for producing and publishing AI-generated content was a real possibility.

This position remained until early 2023. Google’s top execs were concerned that ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, had stolen a march on them. Perhaps sensing the opportunity and maybe more so the necessity to make their own Large Language Model (LLM) powered tools more front and centre, they adjusted and clarified their stance.

Google’s Stance on AI Generated Content Now

In February 2023 Google made a short and simple but significant change in its Webmaster Guidelines (Now called Search Essentials). In essence Google’s guidelines clarified that quality content is acceptable “no matter how it’s created”.

However, here’s the specific nuance; that content must be quality content. Additionally, it must be of value to users. This is where the “helpful content update” came into play and the official algorithm core updates were adjusted yet again to surface more of what Google deemed to be quality content. It’s what they’ve always strived to achieve. Afterall, Google is the dominant search engine and needs to perform on behalf of users to remain the number one tool.

Today, in late 2024, the song remains the same – Google will still surface quality content regardless of how it was created.

And What is Quality Content?

Quality content is website content that has been produced to inform or entertain your audience and it needs to be:

  • Helpful
  • Reliable
  • People-focused

Each of these points is extremely important but let’s focus on the last one. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – you need to write for people not the search engines.

Of course, you need to consider how the search engines will view the helpful content you’ve invested time in creating so that your professional efforts have not gone to waste. But writing primarily to “game the system” is not just frowned upon but also futile – content written purely to gain search engine rankings can be ignored and is sometimes penalised. Google can identify content that is produced “at scale” and act accordingly when it finds it.

As a bonus, we’d like to add that quality content isn’t just about one single piece of content or a recent raft of good articles. Google looks at your whole ecosystem as part of that process; it’s all about the broader context.

  • Does your website load quickly?
  • Is your website well designed?
  • Is the page layout appealing to users?
  • Do you make good use of images?
  • Is the user experience (UX) easy?
  • Can your visitors find your content easily?

And as an extra, we’d like to add that E-E-A-T is still “a thing”. Users like to see that you are an expert, that you have experience, and it’s extra beneficial when you are considered an authority in your field and that you have built up trust.

Quality Content is Not a New Concept

Whilst “helpful content” and “quality content” are prominent and popular terms used in the digital media industry today, they are not new concepts. Just to illustrate this point, one of our copywriting experts worked on a news desk twenty years ago, publishing stories from a news agency. Their immediate thought was that the content wasn’t particularly helpful, so they embarked upon a mission of improving the news before it was published to a business consultancy website.

Competing against other blue-chip websites using the exact same content, our staff writer turned “thin content” into “helpful content”. The news items became more comprehensive, more original, they were helpful, and they were far more fulfilling than the initial pieces of content. The result? The users found the revised content to be far superior and thus the website was rewarded with higher rankings than the much larger corporations at the time, and they received lots of quality traffic.

How Do I Use AI-Generated Content Then?

Rather than focus on the negatives, let’s look at the positives; how can you use AI-generated content in your digital marketing strategy?

  1. First and foremost, write for audience not the search engines. These may be your existing customers or potential new clients.
  2. Create quality content. Make it comprehensive.
  3. Create helpful content; It really must provide genuine value for your consumers.
  4. Be original.
  5. Offer insights.
  6. Demonstrate your own organisation’s E-E-A-T

To do all the above takes more than just entering all these things into a sophisticated prompt for your CoPilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or any of the myriad AI tools out there. This is the secret sauce…

Generative AI is Just a Tool

Gen AI is a very powerful tool, but it is just that – a tool. Just because you have the latest Bosch 18V lithium-ion cordless drill in your garage [Other brands are available – Ed], that does not make you the best DIYer in the neighbourhood. It’s how you use it that counts.

Don’t just copy and paste the output of your favourite AI tool.

  1. Read it
  2. Fact-check it
  3. Inject some personality into it
  4. Totally rewrite it if you need to

You’re the business with many decades of experience in what you do. You’re the experts. No AI tool can put your experiences, knowledge, and insights into content. That’s entirely YOUR job. And as for personality, humanise your AI-generated content with your own touch.

Better still, use AI-generated content to simply produce a framework that you can write over or work within.

Sure, maybe you’ve not got the time to skim over the content, and you’ll just cut & paste it into your website, your brochure, your newsletter, social media post etc. But what’s the point in that? It’s purely quantity over quality and your business will gain the best advantages when you use AI generated content with intelligence. Because ultimately, THAT is Clever Marketing!


Pressed for time? Wondering why the AI-generated content you posted six months ago is not being seen let alone read?

Speak with Clever Marketing’s experts today and we’ll help you leverage AI better than you’ve done before. Call us on 01276 402 381 or use our chatbot to start a conversation with the team.