AI-generated content is a useful first draft and a terrible final one.
I have used GPT, Claude, Gemini and a few other models to draft blog posts, ad copy, landing pages and email sequences. The output ranges from “saved me 30 minutes” to “obvious AI noise that hurt the brand”. The variable is whether a human stayed in the workflow.
Where AI is genuinely useful in the content workflow
Drafting. The blank page problem is real. AI gives you something to react to in 30 seconds. The first draft is rarely usable. The first draft is rarely usable from any source.
Restructuring. “I have these five points but they are in the wrong order. Suggest a better structure.” AI is good at this.
Writing the boring bits. Product descriptions for an e-commerce site with 200 SKUs. Property descriptions for an estate agent. The work that is too repetitive for a person to do well at scale and too important to skip.
Translating between formats. Take a long-form blog post, draft me a LinkedIn version, an email subject line and a tweet. Useful.
Where AI breaks if you let it
Voice. AI default voice is the average of every business blog on the internet, which is “competent and entirely forgettable”. If your brand has a distinctive voice (sharper, drier, more opinionated, whatever) the AI will smooth it into the average within two paragraphs. A human has to put it back.
Specifics. AI invents plausible-sounding numbers, names and case studies. They look right. They are wrong. Anything that needs to be true requires a human to verify it.
Strategy. What should we write about. Why. For whom. AI is bad at this because it does not know your business. It will produce content that sounds like it was written for nobody, because it was.
The honest version: AI can write the first draft. A person has to write the first sentence and the last sentence and put a brain on the bit in the middle. If your content is being shipped without that step, the AI is hurting you.
If your team has been pumping out AI content and the engagement numbers do not match the volume, you know the conversation we should have.