AI’s Cool, But It Can’t Replace This: Where To Keep It Real in 2025 (Part 1)

0:00Sara JensenAnd then the outcomes that come with that.

0:02Of having a brand that's unique. Because if your graphics on social media look like everybody else's, they're not going to stop the scroll.

0:10Crystal WaddellWelcome to the simple and smart SEO show podcast, where we talk all things, brand building, SEO, helping you connect with your audience, elevate your visibility and grow your business.

0:19I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success. By bringing you insights, stories, and conversations from the SEO community and beyond.

0:30Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out.

0:38So grab a coffee or your favorite tea, and let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.

0:43Hi, and welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO Show. I'm Sara Jensen. I'm here with Shea Karssing, and we are with Brighter Messaging.

0:53Sara JensenA digital marketing agency that helps small businesses manage their online presence, and SEO is a huge piece of that.

0:59Obviously, I'm not Crystal. Neither is Shea. She asked us to just do a guest appearance today and talk about two big topics that I think are probably on a lot of your minds out there.

1:11One being why we don't rely on AI for SEO content creation. And then the second one being what do we recommend or what are our predictions for visibility in 2025.

1:24So we're going to go ahead and jump right in and I hope you enjoy.

1:28So to get us started, Shea, tell us a little bit about how do you use AI in content creation at this point?

1:37Shea KarssingSo I think key to what Crystal pointed out is why we don't rely on AI content creation, not why we don't use AI whatsoever. There are plenty of use cases where AI has made my job as a writer so much easier. So an example that springs to mind is.

1:54Interviews. Often ghost written pieces or thought leadership pieces that require quite in depth interviews with those people.

2:02And previously I would sit with either a word document in front of me or a notepad. And I'd be scribbling furiously trying to make sure I was catching up. And, then your brain gets stuck on your notes and you forget to ask the next question.

2:15We can just shove that all into an AI generated transcript and it's amazing.

2:19And you can pull direct quotes from there. So I found that really helpful. Also just summarizing those notes. What are the key points from this conversation? And there's some wonderful tools that, that do that for you now.

2:31And then also I see chat GPT specifically as a large language model. As my brainstorming buddy.

2:38I work on my own as a freelancer. I don't have any colleagues to bounce ideas off straight away. And chat GPT is there.

2:45Look, it's not, we're not exactly having interesting conversations about our weekend or any water cooler gossip or anything like that. But. It is really great if I'm stuck on an idea for a subject line. Or a headline for an article. And what I'll typically do is I'll ask it to give me a 10 different options.

3:03And it's very rare that I'll actually take verbatim one of the responses or one of the options, but it gives me ideas and then I think, Oh, let me build on that or let me take that and and customize it accordingly. Or I'll combine some of the ideas. So definitely as brainstorming buddy. And just for those real grant worth tasks that we actually don't need to be doing come 2025.

3:29Sara JensenYeah, I think one thing that I want to just clarify in what you said, because you described a lot of ways that you're using AI in your content creation process.

3:40You're not relying on AI for content creation itself. So when we talk about relying on AI for content creation, what we mean is telling chat GPT, Hey, write me a blog about this.

3:50And then taking that and pasting it up onto your website and going from there. To your point, it's really good for a lot of those sort of grunt work or preparation or even assisting you in your creative process, but it's not replacing your creative process.

4:07Shea KarssingExactly.

4:09And I think building on that too, nowadays, it's so obvious now that people have been using chat GPT and other large language models for a while, it becomes more and more obvious when someone has just copy pasted straight from whatever it is.

4:25Onto their website, onto their social media posts, I don't know about you, but I feel like now I can sense it a mile away. In the early days not as much but now that.

4:35They've been around for the last, two years on mass, you can definitely notice.

4:40Sara JensenYeah. I see it a lot in LinkedIn comments. I'll post something on LinkedIn and then somebody replies and just like summarizes what I just said. It's thanks. Why? Why did you comment that? It's just, it's not helpful.

4:53It's not having a conversation. It's not advancing this topic in any way.

4:57Shea KarssingAnd I think this is something we're going to discuss later, but. Does that not actually take more time? If time saving is the goal, right?

5:05Yeah, does that not take you more time than actually just commenting what genuinely pops into your human head?

5:12I don't know.

5:12Sara JensenYeah.

5:13Yeah, We're both writers and so writing comes easier to us than it does for other people. Which is not to say that it's easy. But it's not as challenging as it might be for other people.

5:26And some of the time saving things and things like that, if you're not a writer, it probably seems super appealing to say, let me just have one of these AI tools write all my content for me.

5:37But, what starts to happen, when people are doing that?

5:41Shea KarssingThey're not bringing themselves to any of their engagements. And it's difficult then to discern what makes your response different to anyone else's vanilla generic response that's coming through?

5:55In a way, and I've seen people post about this on LinkedIn too, I would rather see someone with maybe hasn't got the best command of English. Or isn't great at grammar.

6:05It's almost like you would rather see that than some real Spam, AI generated spam.

6:11That sure it's polished. There's no glaring errors per se, but it hasn't been written by a human. And I've even heard of people sneaking into their own writing like writers. making mistakes on purpose so that people can see that it's, I wouldn't take it that far, but it's a crazy world when you're actually thinking of sabotaging your own efforts for the sake of not sounding like AI.

6:34Sara JensenYeah, it really is. I think too, it's about that tone and style or your unique voice. So if AI is creating all of your content, to your point, you're not in it. But also, you sound like everybody else whose content is being created by AI. And the deeper that we get into this AI world that we're apparently in, the better we're all getting at spotting it.

6:59I know we joke about, phrases that are, just show up over and over again. And that's this is a clear tell that This is just AI content.

7:09Shea KarssingSo one that I'm actually particularly sad about is the em dash. So I love the em dash. It is my favorite punctuation and I know this is super dorky writer conversation.

7:22So please bear with us for a moment, but. Please, ChatGPT, stop using the emdash. It's my favorite and I want to be able to keep using it. I

7:31Sara Jensenwholeheartedly agree with that and I refuse to let go of it. It's such a useful piece of punctuation. That's right. It was ours. We staked our claim. Yeah, that's so true.

7:41Getting beyond the voice space. piece of it too, I think are concerns about the content itself that's being put out. Is it accurate? Is it plagiarized? Is it a duplicate of what somebody else has already put out there? Which we all know in SEO, duplicate content is a big no as far as trying to get your page to rank for something.

8:03That'll just get you de indexed.

8:05Shea KarssingYes. Often on people's websites where I've noticed it anyway. Where the content reads like a summary. And something that you should be saying in that industry. Or it's quite jargon heavy.

8:19So I'm trying to think of an example now, but when it's talking about making an impact on business results, for example. It is so generic.

8:27It's a message, sure, it's not incorrect, and it definitely applies and is accurate perhaps to what that company is trying to achieve or do for their clients or do for their customers.

8:36But that tells me nothing about why I should choose you. And that's something that AI can't do.

8:42It all feels duplicate.

8:43Sara JensenYeah, we had an example from our agency. We had one of our clients was experimenting with ChatGPT.

8:50And he sent me this blog for their website that he had let ChatGPT write and I read through it and was like, okay, this is okay.

8:58And then I thought, just for fun, I'm going to run this through, not, I ran it through I think five different plagiarism checkers and they found anywhere from like 40 to 70 percent of the content.

9:10Was plagiarized. And so I know there's a lot of you know It's not a hard and fast science as far as what is and isn't Plagiarized that these tools are putting out. But that is not something that you want on your website

9:25Shea KarssingAgree.

9:26Sara JensenYeah, another one. I know that I've heard you talk about is stats And, hard numbers for things. If you can explain a little bit more about that.

9:36Shea KarssingI remember when I came across someone told me about perplexity, which is meant to be pretty good at pulling stats and sources. I was like, wow, this is amazing.

9:44Really hoping again, speaking to that content creation process, that it was going to save me some time because. For most of the blogs I write, I like to see find some recent research and include some stats and back up some claims.

9:58And I end up spending a fair amount of time digging through the search results.

10:02And trying to find studies that are recent enough and look to be Authentic and well researched and scientific, et cetera, et cetera.

10:11So I was hoping to find a tool that would be able to do that for me. So when I have, and perhaps it's user error, maybe it's my prompting.

10:17That's not great. I'm not sure.

10:19When I've put a topic in and said, please provide stats and sources to back up X, Y claim I get a list and there's always a lot.

10:26There's a lot of data there, which is great. But when you actually click on a lot of the source links, it takes you to more of those sort of stats, aggregate pages.

10:34Or whatever the top Google results is for a similar search using those kinds of keywords.

10:40And then I think, okay, fine. That's given me something to start with. And then you end up in this loop of trying to find where the original source scientific sources or study or survey. Okay.

10:52And all you find is a whole bunch of articles that are just referencing one another. And you can never get to where that research actually came from.

11:00Although I haven't seen hallucinations per se. I also am wary of some of the stats that it spits out. And by the time I've gone and validated the information that's been served, I've wasted more time and I could have just done it myself.

11:16These tools are always improving. So that is something to remember too. I think we've got to put improving in quotation marks because as we'll chat about, there's also issues of model entropy and collapse.

11:28So there's that. But I do believe that there is potential.

11:31And I'm hoping that one day there will be a way that I can and please, if anyone has some tips on doing some really great.

11:39Science backed research using AI, we would love to hear from you.

11:43Sara JensenYeah. I think anybody who is just alive in the world today, is at least hopefully somewhat aware of, you have to check your sources when you hear data.

11:54Because it is so often twisted or used in a way to mean what it didn't actually say in whatever study came up with it.

12:03I think there's just this like sense of well, it's AI and it's giving me all this information right here and it must be authoritative.

12:11You really have to be cautious about that. Do your research, back up, whatever you're saying.

12:17Shea KarssingAnd make sure that the way you've prompted. Which again, this is all very new to many of us.

12:23And perhaps the way that I've prompted it is biased. Or inaccurate. Or whatever it may be. So it might even be a user error. That's reflected in the outputs I get.

12:33Sara JensenYeah. Maybe this exists. I don't know. It wouldn't be super practical for what we do.

12:38But if you're in a very specialized field like in medicine. And then there's an AI tool that can scan all the published studies in a certain medical journal or something like that, That's where this stuff starts to become really powerful and just amazing for synthesizing so much information.

12:54But just asking it generalized questions and hoping to get some reliable information back. I think we've seen it's not there right now.

13:03And

13:04Shea Karssinglike you say, I think, especially with the publicly available tools. So I think. I would presume that a lot of companies are setting up parameters. Private large language models, or some kind of AI tools.

13:16I'm thinking the legal field, for example, that can, instead of a lawyer having to comb through pages and pages of documents, that they can have that information much more accessible. So I'm sure those, they must, they do exist. But when you're working in the public domain, you have to be really careful.

13:32Sara JensenYeah, definitely.

13:34Another thing that we had talked about the, things that AI is not good at is this concept of gray area thinking or ambiguity. Say a little more about what that is.

13:45Shea KarssingThat's what, in my opinion, part of what makes us human is our ability that to think that, and two things can be true at once.

13:55Whereas In code or a robot for want of a better word. They just don't have that ability to see that there's this and there's this.

14:04And there's a middle line in between that as humans, we know because we can read it using our empathy and our emotions. And the kind of intangibles that you can't program into a computer.

14:17Yes. A lot of that comes with our own bias too, for sure.

14:20Because those thoughts that we have are shaped by our experiences and our perceptions and our own realities. But that's what makes us human. And your gray area is different to my gray area. And that's amazing because we can talk about it. And I just don't see a world yet.

14:38Where the bots are able to replicate that. How do you feel?

14:42Sara JensenYeah, I totally agree.

14:43I just saw this news story. I have no idea if this is even true, but it was a news story.

14:48I saw that they are testing these AI robots in China to be police, basically. And there are these little things that kind of roll around, and if they're pursuing somebody, it can throw a net at

15:00Shea Karssingthem,

15:00Sara Jensencapture the person, and it's just oh my gosh, how terrifying. Because, I think that's a great example of something that looks like criminal behavior, maybe if it was programmed into this thing.

15:13Maybe it's actually not and it's just normal, whatever. I can't necessarily think of a great example off the top of my head, but it's like a, Ooh, do I really want a robot making a decision to chase me? It could even chase people through the water. It was crazy. Oh,

15:30Shea Karssingwow. Frightening. That sounds like a horror movie.

15:33It really does.

15:34There's so much nuance in the way we live our lives. For the police robot, for example. Let's say you're with your kid at the store and they run out into the street.

15:45You're still holding something in your hand.

15:47Your priority is going to save your kid, not necessarily thinking, Oh, I've just walked out of the store with this bag of cookies in my hand.

15:54I don't know if the Chinese police robot will feel quite the same. And will pursue you and your bag of cookies and your child into the traffic.

16:01Sara JensenYeah.

16:02That's a great example.

16:03There are limits to these things.

16:06And what makes us human, I don't personally believe can ever be completely replicated by technology.

16:14But marketing is about showing people how you're unique. Compared to other companies in your space.

16:22Every single client we work with, no matter what we're doing for them. We always start by defining, who is your target audience?

16:31What is the unique way that you solve their key problem? And how is that different from the other people who do what you do?

16:39And, I think that's another piece that if you're literally outsourcing your marketing to AI, you're going to miss.

16:47As much as you can, feed it all of your content and your value proposition and all of this like AI is pulling from kind of the masses of what's out there.

16:58And so if you tell it, I'm a custom home builder and here's my website. And here's some things that I've written and here's some other stuff about me.

17:08It's still going to go with what it knows. And talk about you like the other custom home builders that have been fed to it.

17:15Shea KarssingTrust is built. Human to human. A decade ago, maybe a little more.

17:19Before the proliferation of the internet, people would consume content. Maybe that watch ads, see ads on TV or something, and that would be a brand and they would pursue a particular narrative and perhaps we believed it because it was all we had.

17:33Then we got so much information, literally at our fingertips.

17:37Disinformation, misinformation.

17:40And now it's come to a point where we're looking not necessarily at brands to trust.

17:47But humans and people. And that's not AI. We see it, for example, on, on LinkedIn as a professional platform where company pages.

17:56Sure, you keep it running with a bit of content here and there, but that's not really where you building an audience or getting your engagement.

18:03It's on those. Personal profiles that are unique to that person and in this very specific voice that seem to gain more traction.

18:11So more and more, we need to bring that human element into brands to keep them relevant and keep people trusting and coming back.

18:20And most brands find that their best customers come from word of mouth and referral, because that comes with that element of trust straight away.

18:29Sara JensenYeah. I think that's such a great point. That interpersonal trust between people.

18:34And I think that extends into the marketing field.

18:37Because as much as there are tempting ways to automate the people out of it.

18:45There are still people who have a certain expertise. That has taken years to develop to get their instincts to be able to say that's not going to work.

18:55here's how to fix this problem you're having. I liken it to the accounting space where we have had these tools that enable you to do your taxes yourself.

19:07Like TurboTax. But that hasn't erased the need for CPAs. Maybe there's some people who would have worked with a CPA who don't anymore, but there are still plenty of.

19:20Reasons why you should not be doing your own taxes. Depending on a case by case basis.

19:25It's like you talked about at the beginning. It's a tool. It can be helpful in certain ways, but it's not going to replace an entire profession.

19:34Shea KarssingA chat bot on a website is great to a point and depending what you need.

19:38There are times when you actually just need to speak to a human being who can understand the nuance of your situation.

19:44And why perhaps, your solution that you need doesn't fit into a tiny little programmed box that takes you down some kind of branching from here to here. Like sometimes you need someone to say, this is a solution that suits you, specifically.

19:59Based on what I know that perhaps isn't written in the code, it's based on my experience that I'm able to help you.

20:06Sara JensenYeah. I think we've all had that experience of getting so frustrated trying to deal with those chat bots.

AI in Graphic DesignThe Canva Example

20:12Sara JensenAnother example too, is what has happened with graphic design.

20:16With the rise of tools like Canva.

20:19I should preface this by saying I have nothing against Canva.

20:22We use it in our agency. It has its place. It's another great tool. It's not the only thing we use. We also have a real human graphic designer on our team.

20:33If you're using Canva to create graphics, you're probably noticing that you can tell, now. When you scroll through social media.

20:41Like what was made with Canva. Versus what was made by a real human designer.

20:46You just start to see the same thing over and over again. I do it with stock photos, too.

20:52Because we spend so much time in building websites and things like that. It's Oh, I've seen that stock photo before. Canva took something that used to be in the realm of professionals. And it made it accessible to everyone to DIY.

21:05And there are definitely benefits to that, but. You also lose the creativity. And the trained eye of a graphic designer. And then the outcomes that come with that.

21:18Of having a brand that's unique. Because if your graphics on social media look like everybody else's, they're not going to stop the scroll.

21:26Because people have already seen them before and they're just going to keep going.

21:29So I think that's a great analogy in something that, Is probably a little further along than AI for content creation of what starts to happen when you're using these tools, when you cut the professionals out of the process.

21:44Shea KarssingAnd I know even from using it myself in my own business, it's amazing.

21:47It is game changing. I'm not necessarily in my little one man band going to be paying a graphic designer for social media graphics. I did pay for my logo and my website and the important things.

21:59But I can tell I'm not a designer and despite having a template, I'm never 100 percent happy with the output.

22:07It always looks a little messy or just, it just lacks because, I've taken something that's been partially generated for me.

22:16Tweaked it a little, and I must admit it's, Never as good an outcome as if I'd paid a professional human being to do it for me. You also need that eye on these tools that has the experience.

22:28So again, going back to writing.

22:30Yes, we use AI as part of the process. But the outcome is polished because we're able to bring our experience as writers to that. And I think the same applies to any tools.

22:41You can get a baseline with AI. You can have a minimal vibe or product with AI at the moment.

22:48But to really give it that polish and finish it off.

22:50You still need that expertise that comes from experience and proficiency.

22:55Sara JensenYeah. And I wanted to come back to something that you said just now.

22:58You paid somebody to create your logo and your website.

23:01And, I think website copy. For SEO.

23:06Is just becoming rampant with people putting chat GPT content up on their website.

23:12And, if you're going to have a website, you want it to do something for your business, right?

23:18Invest in that. Invest in the platforms that you own. Where you control it, you want it to deliver results for you. Most businesses want their websites to generate leads.

23:30And so that's where you get what you pay for.

23:33If you're making a continuum of when I'm going to use AI for content creation, I would say your website copy, please do not do that.

23:41Shea KarssingThat's a good point.

23:42And yes, again, like we keep saying, it's not that there's no place for it whatsoever. If you're not a writer, but you've got something that you want to say.

23:50And you've got an email to send or whatever it is, and you want it to look fairly good and polished, go right ahead.

23:55But yeah, for those real assets to your business, you want to make sure that you're getting them right from the beginning.

24:02Sara JensenWe touched on this earlier with the stats. These large language models are sucking in a lot of content. But where, like, where is it getting it from?

24:14Is it an opinion piece that's being presented as fact? Is it just old information that has been proven wrong? That's not always clear.

24:23Shea KarssingNo. And especially something like chat GPT where you're not given sources. You, you could be given reams and reams of texts that you have absolutely no idea where it's been aggregated from.

24:34Even the Stats that are, that can be given in an article with no backing to them.

24:40And I think something else that we need to be aware of as these large language models proliferate and people are using AI generated content on their websites.

24:50Is the idea of it becomes self referential. It's just then, AI referencing AI referencing AI, and there's nothing new being added to the conversation whatsoever.

25:00Sara JensenIt's really easy to see with visuals .

25:02I saw this one where somebody told an AI tool, make a picture of this particular statue. So it was like a real statue somewhere in the world.

25:12And so AI did, and then they took the picture and fed it back into the AI. It was like, use this as a reference point. Make a picture of the statue. And they did it ten times or something like that.

25:24And every one got further and further away from what this statue actually looks like to the point that it was completely unrecognizable at the end.

25:32With content. It's not always as easy to see. But it's it's almost like a massive global game of telephone.

25:38By the time the message gets all the way around the circle, it bears no resemblance to what you originally started with.

25:44This is changing a little bit with search GPT because that will tell you the sources.

25:48Shea KarssingAnother example that, that just sprang to mind is I get a newsletter from a writer who's talking about AI.

25:54And she is white and she does have like really crazy curly hair.

25:59And she getting AI to generate an image of herself. And she said, with really wild, vibrant, dark hair.

26:08And every single image that was generated was of a black woman and she could not get it to conceive that as a white woman, she might have some kind of different hair.

26:19So that was also really interesting that those inherent biases that come with these tools.

26:27Sara JensenYeah, it's like a constant regression to the mean,

26:29no matter

26:30what

26:30Shea Karssingit is. I loved

26:31Sara Jensenthe example, you sent me one last week, where you asked ChatGPT the latest score on a sports game, and it gave you the score and said the date that the game took place, and it wasn't, it was a game from six months ago, it wasn't the latest, that you had asked it for.

26:47But if you just ask it that question, and look at the answer. You're not, it like it's a, it's just a beautiful example of something where it's this is not even, it's technically accurate, but it's not what I asked for. .

27:00Shea KarssingAnd I did ask, just to be sure, I said, what what year is it next year?

27:04And it, I must say chat, GPT did say 2025. So it. Perhaps have some concept of time, but that was quite an easy question I gave it there too. So yeah, I'll pass on that one, but definitely not on the sports score. So if you are into sports betting or whatever it may be, do your own research, find something more recent do not rely on AI for that just yet.

27:30MacBook Pro MicrophoneThat is awesome! Thank you so much, Sarah and Shea. And that was just part one of their conversation.

27:36Make sure you come back tomorrow for part two with Sara Jensen and Shea Karssing from Brighter Media. Thank you ladies so much for hosting the simple and smart SEO show.