Ian Whitworth recently described AI-generated content as “infinite words nobody wants.”
He observed:
“ChatGPT is here to make us all the same… The Great Same-ening is upon us…
“ChatGPT, Jasper and all the rest are powerful conformity machines, giving you the ability to churn out Bible-length material about yourself and your business that’s exactly the same as your competitors.”
That’s the path of least resistance in the AI-generated arms race — using the same tools that everyone else has access to in the same way as everyone else.
Sameness isn’t a new problem. Much of what is created is already a sea of sameness, written more to appease Google’s search algorithms than actual people. This is related to what P&G CMO Marc Pritchard referred to as the “content crap trap.”
In 2014, Mark Schaefer coined the term “Content Shock” to describe “the emerging marketing epoch when exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it.” He made this observation about exponential volumes of content eight years before the arrival of ChatGPT.
Whether AI-generated or human-generated, sameness is not a winning strategy. As we figure out what to make of these powerful new tools, doing the same thing as everyone else, just in a more efficient way, is a race to the bottom.
We can’t break through the clutter by adding to it.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
