4 Dangers of Using AI in Your Online Business
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a competitive tool that many online marketers will be using in their businesses. As with many online tools, it can be used ethically or unethically. I have stayed away from using it until recently. Most of the products I saw promoting it said essentially “This tool can do all your writing for you.” Not a good idea.
This technology has created a deep divide between those who are all in on it versus those who abhor it and won’t touch it. Some see it as something to fear or something that lacks benefits, while others want to use it as a full replacement for any effort they might have to put into their business.
Both of these extremes aren’t helpful, and you should strive to fall somewhere in the middle – being open to the use of AI tools, yet cautious about how (and when) you leverage them.
This all boils down to a lack of knowledge about how AI works, how it fails, what it can do for you, and how it can damage your business. Once you’re educated about it, it can be something you welcome into your business without fear and without risk.
With that in mind, here are 4 dangers of using AI in your online business.
1. The Danger of Relying on AI to Curate Facts for You
Right now there are many different AI tools emerging on the Internet. Some are being produced by global mega-corporations and others by individual marketers wanting to rake in some quick cash by promising push-button profits.
Regardless of what tool you use, you have to be careful about allowing it to take over your business for you. AI guidelines admit that the tools can get their facts wrong. They also state that the AI tool, when faced with a concept it doesn’t know, can hallucinate (make up) answers.
Niche leaders cannot put their business at risk by leveraging a tool that could mislead their audience. Because it won’t be the tool your readers blame if you publish factually incorrect information – it will be you.
AI Gets it Wrong
AI has made many blatant errors. In fact, Google lost $100 billion in market shares when their new BARD AI tool made a big gaffe during a live event where they were trying to showcase how great it was.
In another instance, Bing’s AI tool was arguing with a user about the author of an article and even argued that the person using it was also named Bing because it couldn’t fathom anyone having any other name.
AI has gotten scientific facts wrong. If you’re in any niche and happen to be blogging or selling a product with any sort of advice on health, finances, etc., you could be doling out harmful information that will create backlash for you.
Many of these tools are years behind in the information it’s been fed. They’re working with information from 2021 when it’s already 2023. Others have unlimited access to the Internet to curate their answers, and that sometimes causes them to deliver crazy answers that aren’t from the best (most reliable) sources.
When left unchecked, AI tools have responded in offensive ways, not only being mean and argumentative but also being discriminatory – which, if you failed to catch it before publishing, could decimate your business.
2. Competitors Are Hoping You Use AI the Wrong Way
AI has many positive uses. You can input data and information and have it give you some insight about it or help you create better wording. But when you are in a rush to explode the volume of content you’re creating, you might be tempted to rely on AI to do the work for you.
This is exactly what your competitors are hoping you’ll do. Because when you leave everything up to a sterile robot, in no way can you compete with their human, innovative approach.
Consumers often weed out who they follow, listen to, learn from and ultimately buy from according to the personalities involved. You can probably think of several marketing voices right now – and some have repelled you, while others impressed you.
AI Produces Bland Content
Even when factually correct, it’s not that AI is wrong to use, but it’s simply boring and ineffective in terms of trying to build a list and convert visitors into sales. Without a personal touch, they might as well be reading a school book, not following a cutting-edge entrepreneur.
There is no way for an AI-generated piece of content to connect with the reader on a human level. There is a void of emotion that’s so important (especially with online content).
When they feel a connection to you – to your story – they trust you. They get over their hurdles faster when spending money through your links. They’ll also be more apt to engage with you.
Who wants to leave a comment for a robot? Nobody. Yet Google advises that if you’re publishing AI content, you should disclose that fact to your readers. Imagine how unimpressed they’ll be knowing a tool simply spit out some facts – and if they know anything about AI, they probably won’t trust what it had to say.
3. Outsourcing Takes on a New Risk for Marketers Due to AI
This is one danger of using AI for business that you cannot directly control – other people using AI to produce content for you.
If you think you’ll just steer clear of AI altogether and instead use the talents of freelance graphic designers, ghostwriters, or even private label rights producers, you need to know that you can no longer trust people the way you once did.
The truth is, you’ve always had to be careful about outsourcing. You never knew for sure who would scrape content from other sites unethically, or steal other people’s work as their own.
You had to vet people for their ethics before working with them. Some would use content scrapers and spinners, and others would use images that were copyrighted and they didn’t have the right to use.
The same holds true for freelancers and content creators with the use of AI tools. Ideally, if they used AI at all, it would be in the same vein as you would use them for idea generation and drilling down topics.
But many are going to try to charge you hundreds or even thousands of dollars to simply own an AI creation outright, without any genuine input from the freelance provider.
Watch out for These Products and the People Who Use Them
In fact, there are tools and courses being sold right now and sometimes being awarded deal of the day for showing people how to create listings for services and then in 30 seconds flat, churn out whatever the buyer was looking for using an AI tool.
Unless they are being upfront about this, it’s an unethical concern that you may want to watch out for. This is especially true if you’re using someone’s services based on their portfolio and profile.
Even if they’re fully capable of writing a full eBook, and you enjoy the talent and quality of their work, it doesn’t mean they won’t take a shortcut and use AI to do their work for them, allowing them to work fewer hours and earn more.
This is often a concern among freelance individuals. They only have so many hours in the day, so they can only earn as much as the market is willing to pay for their creations.
With AI, they’re not restricted by time, but you’ll be putting your business at risk. Imagine if you hired a Fiverr freelancer to develop an eCover for you for your first fiction novel that will be published on Amazon and elsewhere.
But after publishing and branding your book everywhere, you were given a notice (either by the platform or another author) that your cover is something that appears to be stolen from someone else.
If you told the graphic designer that you wanted a cover similar to another author’s style (or gave them several authors) so that they would know what kind of look you were going for, they might input that information into an AI tool and it would piece together pictures from the other authors, making you look like a copycat.
You want to get reassurance from the freelancer (or PLR provider) that they have not simply asked for an AI to deliver the output of the content you’ll be purchasing. Whether you’re buying a product or a service, it should be created from the mind of the seller, and no more than ideas and brainstorming are used in the creation process.
If you’re hiring a graphic designer, ask for proof of licensing for the image or artwork they are using. If Amazon has any problems with your cover, you want that proof to support your right to use the images in your own cover.
4. Allowable AI Content Might Be Banned in the Future
This danger of using AI might not appear right away but if search engines change their minds (and we all know they do) your content might be banned.
Even though AI has technically been around for a while, it has just recently become the most talked-about technology among online entrepreneurs. One of the first entities to begin banning AI-generated content is, of course, schools and college institutions.
There are now tools that they can run the content through to detect whether or not an AI has created it. This is true even if it passes Copyscape, which is a tool used to detect outright theft of content verbatim.
Of course, colleges and educational institutions want students to learn the information they’re being taught and not rely on a machine to churn out essays and a thesis on any given topic.
Search Engines can Detect AI Generated Content
Search engines have also been trained to detect whether or not the content that they are indexing online has been created by a human or by an AI robot. Many of them claim to have a 100% detection rate.
Google has flip-flopped on whether or not they will accept or punish AI web pages. Initially, they stated that AI content was no better than spam and that it would be treated as such.
However, when they began creating their own AI technology called BARD, they had to seem to embrace it to some degree, otherwise, that would be hypocritical. They’ve said they won’t punish AI content but will evaluate the quality of it like anything else.
Unfortunately for many marketers, that means AI will have limited use for them, outside of brainstorming and idea generation. Because of Google’s guidelines about the helpful content update, the chances of AI-only content being competitive is low.
Therefore, using it as is will defeat the purpose of using these tools as a shortcut to your success. Instead of ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERPs), AI content (which is often sterile and surface-level) will not have the special qualities they look for to rank high.
As for Amazon and other platforms, as they’ve done in the past with other scraped or mass-generated content, they will likely put bans on AI-generated content in the future, even though it hasn’t happened yet.
In case you missed it, I have a post that talks about 5 benefits of using AI properly in your business.
Learn about the benefits in the article shown below.
