Will AI kill blogging?
It may feel to some that blogging is under threat by the likes of ChatGPT and other large language models. It’s so easy to generate decent-enough writing that many professional writers are quickly having to change the way they operate. On top of that, I’ve had to update Bear’s review process to catch an increasing deluge of well-written spam. Despite this, I’m not too concerned. AI generated content certainly threatens content marketing and the rest of their ilk, but that threat doesn’t hold true for personal blogging.
First off, the economic incentives don’t line up. No-one reads content marketing SEO goop for fun. However, reading an essay by a blogger, especially one you’re familiar with, about their personal experience is fundamentally different. We like to see into the experience of others, understand how they think, and develop (sometimes para-social) relationships with these writers.
While fighting spam on Bear, the easiest way for me to spot generated content was to check whether the blog itself was cohesive and “taken care of”. But the biggest tell was whether they were advertising anything (which is pretty obvious).
Furthermore, the creative process behind crafting a blog is a meaningful and rewarding experience for the blogger. Through this process, they can reflect on their own thoughts, learn from their experiences, and engage with their audience in a way that is genuinely human.
Ultimately, blogs are a person’s place to express themselves. Their planting of a flag in the digital realm. It is their shout into the void, their way of saying “this is me”.
--