Writing a Blog Post with an AI Writing Tool
This blog post was not written with AI (except for some clearly defined quotations) and was not sponsored.
Years ago when I first learned about AI writing tools, I instantly imagined the rise of automation. I had a sinking feeling that eventually these tools would replace the work of professional writers – usually a job that involves skill as writing is definitely an art form.
Not long after, I remember seeing a short news article on Accuweather.com and at the end, it said it was written by an AI tool. I genuinely couldn’t tell and was instantly horrified. It was pretty short and formulaic reporting just the facts of a weather event or disaster. Nonetheless, it fueled my burgeoning fear of being replaced as a worker by an AI tool. (This slight paranoia has helped motivate me to invest, so you know, it should be good for something).
AI writing tools popped up again when recently, I watched a YouTube video from creator Drew Gooden who explored one of these tools as the topic of his video.
I have to admit – I was curious how an AI writing tool would work, but never had a reason to check it out. When I landed a freelance writing assignment, I thought it would be a good opportunity to test one of these tools by inputting the outline in the brief and seeing what it produced.
I definitely give Drew credit for the idea behind this blog post but also, he is a famous YouTube creator and this website gets like 200 views in a month when I regularly share links to my content prompting people to visit… so I would like to think he will be okay with me borrowing the concept.
Drew used Jasper, but I used Rytr because Jasper wouldn’t let me make an account at the moment.
My prediction before using an AI writing tool
Going in, I thought the whole post was going to be terrible, with copy that didn’t make sense; either overly fluffed, or conversely limited to very simple sentences.
In Drew’s video, he prompted the AI tool to write a number of short creative stories or social media captions with many different wacky prompts. The quality of the results varied, with some of the copy suggestions being near exactly what he inputted, some were pretty generic, and some were just bizarre and clearly where the AI tool failed.
Since I was trying to compose a long form business blog post, I figured that in addition to what Drew experienced, I would get a lot of repetitive sections. I predicted it would struggle to come up with unique content for a whole 1000+ word blog post.
In short, I had low expectations.
Rytr as an AI writing tool
Rytr has a nice editor and different types of copy to choose from. For this example, I stuck with the defaults - a “convincing” tone and a creativity level of “optimal”. I just wanted to see what it came up with as the default, and I wanted to see what I deemed optimal. The user can input up to 125 characters each for the section topic and keywords.
I fed it the 13 key points from my brief and some keywords. It produced the results quickly – didn’t time it, but maybe 30 seconds maximum per section? It generated about 100 words per input with the lowest being 61 and the highest being 149 words. The overall blog post is 1341 words.
I generated the copy for all the points in my outline, then read the blog post fully as if I was reading it on a web page for the full effect.
Review of the blog content that Rytr generated
Now, let’s dig in to my thoughts on the actual content that Rytr produced – with some examples for your reading pleasure.
1) The content was definitely disjointed
The resulting blog naturally did not flow well – not that I expected it to. I did feed it 13 different key points. But, if someone were to use this for a real assignment, they would need to be prepared to substantially edit the overall blog post.
2) Some of the copy was repetitive.
I input a section topic that a sales leader should provide training that is easy to follow. One of the keywords was “coaching.” This is all it generated:
“The sales leader should provide training in a format that is easy to follow. They should also provide coaching, so that the salesperson can go through the training and get the information they need.
Sales leaders should provide training in a format that is easy to follow. They should also provide coaching, so that the salesperson can go through the training and get the information they need.
This will help them learn about their work more effectively and gain new skills.”
As you can see, the first two paragraphs (or, well, groups of two sentences) are nearly exactly the same, with two of the sentences being exact repeats.
I also noticed in general the sentence structure was repetitive for the most part, with a formulaic approach. This makes sense due to the nature of the tool. But, it definitely made the overall piece hard to trudge through.
So, my predictions of the tool producing fluffy writing and simple sentences were somehow both true.
3) I was pleasantly surprised at some of the sections
Some of the sections were composed pretty well and did not seem like AI writing. These were definitely sections based on simpler concepts where I provided guidance with more keywords. For some of these passages, I’ve definitely read worse writing from a real human being.
4) It came up with some broad generalizations that were funny because they were wrong
For one section topic, I inputted that sales representatives can be resistant to change, and this is what it spit out: “Sales representatives are not the only ones who are resistant to change. They just happen to be the ones that have been around for a long time and have seen technology come and go. But they will eventually see the light because they know that technology is not going away anytime soon.”
So apparently to them every sales rep is like pushing retirement age and a technophobe in general. I wonder where it picked that up?
This made me laugh, but would be unusable in a blog because it’s just off the mark. Plenty of sales reps are young and not adverse to technology. I did appreciate seeing that it tried some kind of defined take or angle on the situation instead of just generating some generic lightly instructional copy.
5) It decided to talk about a CRM tool to demonstrate the value of something
One of the points I prompted it to “write” about was about the benefits and advantages of sales tools. So, it generated, “However, there are many benefits and advantages that come with adopting new tools like CRM software.” Then it launched into four further sentences about the benefits of CRM software.
This was an interesting choice – because coincidentally the real blog is for a company that makes a tool to automate work in a specific CRM (Salesforce), but I didn’t specify that at any point in the process. I kept it general about “sales tools” because I didn’t want to overcomplicate the AI system. So, I’m impressed because it created more advanced content than I thought it would produce. However, it didn’t hit the mark, so I wouldn’t have been able to keep the copy as-is.
6) It created an oddly specific anecdote
I asked the tool to generate some copy about “how to demonstrate the value of a new sales tool” and it generated this:
“We have all been there. You are in a meeting with your sales team and the VP of Sales is asking for feedback on a new sales tool that was just released. It’s not your responsibility to know what this new tool does, but you need to answer their question and make it sound convincing.”
First, this is definitely not a universal experience. This is why in my writing, I stay away from anecdotes unless if I can boil them down to a near universal common pain point for the niche in which I am targeting in the content. An anecdote that makes an incorrect assumption about the reader is an instant “no” from me.
Second, what a weird scenario for it to conjure up. If someone is asked a question that explicitly doesn’t pertain to their job, why wouldn’t they just direct it to the appropriate team member? Is this person just trying to suck up the VP? My mind is spinning.
Notably, the actual tips it generated in the following lines were quite on target for what this section called for.
Ultimately, I didn’t take anything from this AI-generated blog into the real blog post.
Would I use Rytr again?
So, would I ever use this tool again? I definitely intend to check out the other tones, use cases, and creativity levels. (Maybe I will even do a followup blog post!) I’d also love to see how it handles another totally different topic. Rytr bills itself as a writing assistant, and if you view it through that lens, I think there are some benefits.
For a future blog post, I could see myself inputting some sections and using that as a jumping off point if I was stuck. There are a few individual sentences I would consider using without editing if I wasn’t concerned about plagiarism with other people using the copy from this tool. (In Drew’s video, the tool turned back multiple sentences verbatim from a Poshmark press release, which he picked up because it was blatantly different from what in putted – but it just goes to show these tools may be sharing existing full sentences).
The overall blog post simply lacks substance. Naturally, there are no data points cited or customer quotations to add some interest or variety. There was that one made-up anecdote, and one rhetorical question asked. The information is very surface-level, and coupled with a repetitive writing style, the overall blog is not a fun or engaging read.
I can’t see myself doing this same process where I input all of the sections of a brief and then would hypothetically edit the draft of the blog and turn it in. It would be like blogging for the sake of blogging. It definitely reminds me of the blogs on the websites that are obviously for the sole purpose of link exchange. The content on those covers broad topics but the individual posts are short and surface level content with generally low-value pieces. (It’s very likely some of those were written by AI tools.)
If you’re considering using these tools, I wouldn’t try to use this to generate a blog post in a few minutes to do that assignment you forgot instead of actually writing it – at least not if you care about your job. I also wouldn’t use it to compose on topics you don’t know anything about. Otherwise you may be including an insulting assumption in the form of a weird scenario anecdote!
But, if you’re a sole proprietor business owner or a marketing department of one and you need something to expedite your process because you’re overworked, something like this could help beef up a post. Or, if you have a manager who tears apart your writing no matter what you turn in and you’re just trying to turn something in to stay employed while you job hunt, that’s a use case too.
All joking aside – I will be revisiting this for some of the other options. But, this tool is not ready for prime time long-form content. I only fear how long it will be until it is.