AI startups are helping writers tailor articles that appear near the top of Google’s search results.
What’s new: At least 14 companies sell access to software that uses GPT-3, the language model from OpenAI, to generate headlines, product descriptions, blog posts, and video scripts, Wired reported.
How it works: The services enable people who have little experience or skill in writing to make content that’s optimized for web search engines.
- ContentEdge allows users to type or paste text into an editing window outfitted with GPT-3-powered tools for improving it. One tool suggests frequently searched-for keywords. Another generates paragraphs sprinkled with words found on web pages that are highly ranked by Google.
- Jasper provides templates for 50 common types of marketing posts including YouTube video scripts, LinkedIn bios, and Amazon product descriptions. It creates tailor-made prose given a company name, product description and selected tone of voice (such as “professional” or “Hulk Hogan”). A plagiarism checker flags instances when GPT-3 reproduces its training data verbatim.
- Copysmith focuses on generating cohesive language across marketing campaigns. Users can enter an outline or keywords into a template, and Copysmith will generate text and check it for plagiarism.
Machine privilege: Google’s guidelines state that it may take action against automatically generated content. However, a Google spokesperson told Wired that the company may take a more lenient approach toward generated text that has been designed to serve readers rather than manipulate search results.
Behind the news: Neural networks are reaching into video production, too. Given a script, Synthesia produces customized videos, rendered by a generative adversarial network, aimed at corporate customers. Given a finished video, Mumbai-based Videoverse tags key highlights and renders them into clips optimized for sharing on social media.
Why it matters: Producing text for online marketers is an early commercial use case for text-generation models. The tech gives people who don’t specialize in marketing a leg up and raises the bar for professional writers — assuming it produces consistently high-quality output. In any case, AI has found a lucrative place in advertising and marketing, helping to drive $370 billion in ad sales this year, according to the marketing agency GroupM.
We’re thinking: AI may write compelling marketing copy, but it’s still a long way from producing a great newsletter. Right?!