The popularity of AI has grown immensely over the past few years, and with the introduction of software like ChatGPT in early 2023, there is little doubt that this trend will continue. AI can be hugely useful in so many situations, from automation to customer insights, and to inspire ideas.
If you use your AI for content generation or other larger tasks as part of a marketing strategy, however, it raises the question of whether you should let your clients know. Read on to discover 5 key reasons why you really should, and why disclosure should become the industry standard today…
1. You can lose your client’s trust
Honesty is always the best policy, and while not everyone wants to see how the sausage is made, they deserve to know what it contains before sitting down to a meal. If a company chooses you to create content knowing that you use AI that is one thing, but to find out later could lead to very big problems.
You don’t want it to seem like you have falsely represented your business, or that you have deliberately withheld important information from your customers. They can feel scammed, like you don’t value them or even that they have been taken for a fool. So, it is better to be upfront and tell the truth from the very beginning.
2. The potential for plagiarism
One of the benefits of AI is that it technically has a low potential for direct plagiarism. Plagiarism is when you copy someone else’s content or similar, while AI uses common patterns and algorithms to create new and original content. Or at least that is the aim.
When you fail to disclose the use of AI you are also failing to properly attribute the source of your content.
While it may not be plagiarism in the current and more widely accepted definition of the word, there is definite potential here that can be avoided. Full disclosure is the best and only way to avoid any chance of plagiarism here.
3. Issues with quality
Not all AI are created equally – and it’s all about who is in the driver’s seat. If you utilise AI as a kind of ‘partner’, carrying out certain amounts of work for you, you should have to disclose this much like you would any other partner that you worked with. Your customer should know who you work with and their levels of quality and skill before agreeing to work with you.
AI may be fantastic for many jobs, but it will still not create the levels of content that your Los Angeles SEO agency will, and your customers deserve to know that from the start.
4. Problems with data collection and information
AI is created and trained to carry out various tasks, and how and when it was trained plays a part in its success. AI output is based on the data it has and that is available at any given time. It is not an all-knowing all-seeing partner that can give you everything that you need. Disclosing the use of AI allows businesses to treat it like any other source among all the rest, to be viewed and balanced accordingly.
5. A lack of ethics
Finally, one of the key reasons is that it should be the industry standard to disclose whether or not you utilise AI in your marketing to ensure that every business is acting ethically. There may be plenty of grey areas when it comes to plagiarism, how much you rely on AI, or the levels of quality. But there should be no grey areas when it comes to ethics.
In this way, revealing when and how you use AI in your marketing is the right thing to do, and should become the norm. We should get to a place where all businesses act with honesty and integrity to bring you the best marketing strategies they can while still maintaining their ethics.