Is AI going to steal my SEO job?

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Dec 31, 2021 / by
Is AI going to steal my SEO job?

We’ve been collectively panicking about robots taking our jobs since the first Terminator movie debuted in the mid-80s. Fast forward 40 years, however, and the horrors of Skynet are not even close to becoming a reality. What is certainly becoming a reality, however, is the importance of artificial intelligence in the modern workforce.

In the 70 years since Alan Turing posited if “computers would be able to win the imitation game,” computers have beaten grandmasters at chess, flown planes and even designed themselves, thanks to Google’s latest work in AI chip design. But at what point is AI going to filter down the online marketing grapevine and affect the people who make it tick – us?

AI in digital marketing today

While AI might not be doing everything for us just yet it’s certainly taking care of most of the analytical work. A study by Salesforce found that 84% of marketers use AI for their reporting and within the next few years we wouldn’t be surprised to see that figure reach near 100%. Machine learning algorithms are being used every day to filter out useful insights from pointless data and it’s completely changed the way we promote ourselves.

But what about SEO content creation? You’ve undoubtedly seen these content bots being advertised on social media as “even better than the real thing.” But can these bots really generate the kind of impactful content that drives Google rankings these days? It might have been easy in the early days of keyword-stuffed blog posts but Google is too smart to fall for those kinds of tricks these days. Right?

AI and SEO content

For years now, AI has been hyped to the gills by the SEO sector, but in what capacity can it actually make an impact? As a resource for research and data analysis, AI has been incredibly useful and is saving many marketers a great deal of money. But what about the content itself?

Copywriters can probably rest easy for at least another decade or so given the notoriously patchy nature of the AI written content we’ve seen thus far. But there is definitely scope in the future for an AI writer revolution.

Think about it, a writer might take a few hours to research and write a 1000-word piece and it would take an AI literally seconds. Not only that, but it wouldn’t ask for a flat rate either. But there is no AI yet powerful enough to truly understand the true spark of a human brain and there are plenty of reservations about how AI content could be used for evil.

Imagine, for example, an AI that was able to analyse the market and churn out ‘fake news’ articles to suit a particular agenda and then automatically target them at the very people likely to believe them. Then there’s the potential for mistakes and libellous claims – things that a human being might be able to prevent but a machine might not recognise.

Should we be worried yet?

Ultimately, the day when all of our jobs can be automated will probably arrive and it’ll probably do so within many of our lifetimes. Right now it’s a too costly and potentially fraught endeavour for all but the most forward-thinking and wealthy of us. But ask me again in ten years and I might have a very different opinion.