Should You Edit AI-Generated Content?

AI-generated content can do some pretty amazing things, such as writing entire blogs, articles, and reports in a matter of minutes. However, it isn’t perfect. It can create content that’s repetitive, disjointed, or missing information. As a result, it’s imperative to check all AI-generated content for both structural errors (e.g., the overall flow of arguments or ideas) and organizational errors (e.g., headers, subheadings, and paragraph order). 

Throughout this process, you should also check the language quality, including any grammatical, spelling, or punctuation mistakes. While these sorts of errors are generally caught during the final proofreading, you should still identify and correct them on every read-through. 

Check out our comprehensive proofreading checklist for information on how to effectively proofread your work.

We love style guides! They’re the glue that holds content teams together, and they ensure that all content is clean, cohesive, and consistent – things that readers from all brands and businesses appreciate. 

While some of the more sophisticated AI-writing assistants promise to implement style guides, they’re not perfect. Before publishing any content, always double-check that it follows your style guide. If your content or editorial team isn’t using a style guide, read our guide on how to create your own here.

Using a consistent brand voice across all your content is also important. This should reflect who you are as a brand, what you stand for, and your core values. It should be unique and recognizable to your readers.

While most AI-writing assistants have options to adjust the tone or style of a piece of content, you should still manually check that your brand voice is on point. This includes making sure your target language is being used for product descriptions or adjusting for a serious, friendly, or upbeat tone, depending on the type of content.

Fact checking is critical when publishing content online because your credibility and reputation as a writer are on the line. Providing accurate and up-to-date information establishes a sense of reliability for readers and prevents your content from being flagged as spam or ranking poorly on search engine results pages due to violations to Google’s E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) qualities. 

Additionally, AI-generated content may contain mistakes. Some things to fact check include statistics, names, biases, content related to recent or current events, and any information that appears questionable or potentially incorrect. To learn more about why and how to fact check AI-generated content, read our article here.

While AI-writing assistants can provide context to improve a piece of content, this is limited. For example, AI cannot create a personal story that readers can relate to, write with emotion to persuade readers to take action, use literary devices to add depth and complexity, or include relevant cultural references that readers would understand or connect with. 

If you’re using AI to write content, always identify areas that would benefit from a personal touch. This could be using a storytelling technique to illustrate the main idea or humor to make it more original or edgy. 

These creative flares make content engaging and interesting to read. They contribute to your style or voice as a brand or writer, so don’t become 100% reliant on AI to produce content at the expense of your creativity and writing style.

While AI is not biased, the data it’s trained on is. Why? Because most AI-writing assistants are trained on data available online, such as social media, news outlets, and other online sources. And as know, most information online contains bias for a plethora of reasons. As a result, AI-generated content will also contain bias, especially if the content discusses sensitive or controversial topics. 

While editing, always look for potential bias and consider removing or reducing it as needed. This could be as simple as changing the language used, removing some lines that lean too far in one direction, or finding credible external sources to support a claim. As a writer, you’re responsible for your content once it’s published, so make sure that it’s representative of who you are as a business or individual.

AI is not programmed (at least not yet) to comply with laws and regulations. As a result, it may produce content that violates copyright infringements or contains libel – both of which could quickly destroy a writer’s or business’s reputation. 

To avoid this, always make sure you check for areas in your content that make strong claims against another person or organization. Additionally, ensure you give credit where it’s due for any claims, stats, or figures.