First of all, I want to note that zero AI was used in the creation of this blog. Absolutely none. This is just my stream of conscious writing during one warm afternoon when I feel a spark of inspiration.
AI, for better or for worse, has penetrated every facet of the digital marketing and SEO world. As I sit here writing this, even the backend of WordPress looks different than it once did. There are no less than three “generate with AI” buttons on the backend of WordPress, injected by the Yoast SEO plugin and the Elementor page builder, just tempting me to click them to take away the responsibility of writing my own Page Title, meta description and Featured Image. I have chosen to never click those buttons, but many have.
This is just one example of the proliferation of AI tools in the digital marketing space, but there are countless other examples. Three years ago, in 2023, when ChatGPT first started exploding onto the scene, it was standard for people to visit a website, such as chatgpt dot com, and type with the AI just like a chatbot, with users copying and pasting information to and from the chat screen to gain the benefit of the the AI. Today, it is just as common for a person to have one or more desktop applications where a swarm of AI agents accomplish tasks in every area of life and business through integrations with their website, online shopping, social media, email, and even online banking and medical information.
Is giving an unproven AI system access to your personal information really a good idea?
With so many huge corporations today giving access to these tools for free or dirt cheap prices, funded (almost) entirely by investors, it is clear that we are seeing millions of people become hooked on a product that will soon have its price jacked up through the roof. That is the entire business model and yet few are preparing for when the free ride ends.
Millions of fly-by-night start up digital mareketing businesses depend entirely upon free or very low cost AI tools to generate “work slop” that could have, in theory, been done by anyone else with a Claude Codex subscription. What are they going to do when they are priced out of existence?
It is honestly a shame that AI has enabled millions of “newbs” to infiltrate every industry, including my own. What is a gatekeeper such as myself to do? All I can do is acknowledge my sour grapes and try to fight for a better way of doing business.
I believe that spending time on real work, such as writing (like this), coding (the old fashioned way), taking photographs, editing videos, talking to people, drawing, or learning a new skill, are still the things that people care about the most. Even the most utilitarian, results-focused capitalist would agree when you phrase it correctly.
Imagine a Stradivarius in your left hand and a Francois Xavier Tourte bow in your right hand. Now imagine a violin from amazon dot com in your hands coming out of a cardboard box that was rained on sitting on your front porch while you were at work.
Which level of craftsmanship would matter more to you?
Obviously, the different between AI slop marketing and old school human led marketing is not going to have such a large price disparity as the violin example, but the principle still stands: you get what you pay for.
The other thing that bothers me about AI products and AI marketing is the “Trust me bro” mentality that is so pervasive to all of it. We hear about companies being hacked almost every day now by AI companies themselves and we are always told to not worry or met with silence about what will be done about it, even by our own government; in fact, just yesterday an AI tool discovered a critical vulnerability in PHP, which sparked a rush for websites all over the planet to upgrade their PHP versions and patch endless tools that were not yet compatible with the newest version of PHP. In short, it was, and remains, a total and complete cluster kcuf. Are we going to just “trust me bro” into the dark ages again?
Of course we are all glad that AI discovered this one particular problem, but I suspect we are now playing a never ending game of whack-a-mole with ever increasing stakes. Not to mention I have heard whispers of an AI bubble (said with more than a little sarcasm).
With so much uncertainty around AI’s future, it would seem illogical to get too invested in artificial intelligence lest you risk it all disappearing one day. Perhaps all of this is just a fever dream that will soon disappear.
Perhaps I am wrong and these are just bumps in the road towards an artificial nirvana just over the horizon.
I suspect I will be proven correct one day though. I will hate to say I told you so.