How To Create Authentic Content in a GPT World

Anyone who has ever Googled the source of a strange rash, the best time of year to visit Iceland, or fun facts about penguins knowns that the internet is awash in copycat content. It's causing a serious pandemic of déjà vu. You'll find that penguins are monogamous and that penguins mate for life on just about every single listicle about penguins. 

We can thank cheap, albeit successful, attempts at SEO wins for the proliferation of copycat content. Brands hire copywriters with shallow knowledge of the subject at hand. Business owners who are too busy to do real research regurgitate anything that's easy to find. 

Sometimes, copycat content provides a consensus answer to a question, but can it be trusted if it lacks sources and citations? And is it actually helpful to find the same information over and over? 

AI exacerbates copycat content because it's so dang easy to crank out an SEO-rich blog post with cleanly organized and perfeclty-stitched together information. But a lot of this information is shallow. It lacks the depth necessary to flesh out a complete picture. It is rarely fact-checked, because checking for accuracy would only slow the production process. 

Google's latest update to its 'content helpfulness system' refrains from penalizing AI-generated content, taking the clear stance that content created for people is more crucial than content generated by people. 

Google knows that AI is fuel for the echo chamber, which is why it emphatically tries to promote authoritative content, but also that AI is the future. AI is a freight train, trying to stop it is futile. In our content-obsessed-zeitgeist, individuals won't be penalized for using AI. But culturally, we'll find ourselves swamped in a monotonous knowledge ecosystem, with far greater imitative content than unique and thoughtful pieces. 

To create authentic content in a post-GPT world, we have to go deep. 

Somewhere, hidden deep within Google Scholar and pages so far down in the search engine that they may as well exist in the dark web, lay first-person accounts, long-forgotten knowledge, and peer reviewed studies. This is the data that even Chat GPT 4 neglects to scrape. It's not trendy, but it's the kind of stuff that might allow you to originate ideas that are greater than the sum of the recapitulations on the first page of Google. 

Going deep is hard - it involves thinking for ourselves, tying together disparate ancedotes and untenable original research. It stretches our cognitive abilities. It hurts a little. 

But in the wise words of The Fray, "Sometimes the right thing and the hard thing are the same."

Here's how to go deep while others stay shallow. Note: You don't have to eschew AI to do so. 

Have First Person Experiences

Here's a refreshing thought, if you're concerned about AI replacing you entirely: Generative AI can't have first-person experiences. Yet, at least. 

Go out and do something. You already are. So write about it and tie it back to your platform. Use the principles of story to craft a compelling narrative that builds out a rich context for your brand. Chances are, you've done more story-worthy things than you realize. You just need to organize and frame them. 

Philosophize

Take any philosophy, and it's often relevant to every area of your life. You can pick a saying at random from Descartes or Epicetus and support or refute it with the evidence of your lived experiences. 

Here's one, plucked from a list of Plato quotes:

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

This probably means that life is an uphill battle. If the quote isn't too off-putting, you can tie it back to your company's mission, which is the motive for enduring the Sisyphean task of keeping your business from rolling back down the hill. 

Philosophical ideas are great prompts. Muse, and tie it back to your business. Everything is connected to everything else. 

Use the Library

Underappreciated and overlooked, the library is a repository of knowledge that's not easily found on the internet. The vast majority of books written prior to 2023 were not generated by AI (obviously), so the library is where you must turn if you want generous access to the messy, complex, and reaching work of human minds. 

You're paying for it with your tax dollars, and if you use it, it's possibly the best deal you're going to get in this age of chronic monthly subscriptions. With access to thousands of audio and ebooks from the Libby app, the good old-fashion library is a compelling alternative to Amazon and the internet. 

Use AI For Research

AI and original content are not at all incompatible, and there are ever more AI tools available to help you dig up those peer-reviewed studies and primary sources of information. 

Perplexity.ai offers a free version that combines ChatGPT and the Google Search engine. You can ask a question, and it cites the sources of its answers. The best part is that Perplexity.ai allows you to filter for the source type that it pulls from; filter for academic studies, Reddit, and even WolframAlpha. 

This is an excellent comparison of using Perplexity.ai against Scite.ai, and Semantic Scholar, all of which are excellent alternatives. 

AI tools can help you decipher the thick language of a study, but it's recommended that you learn how to decode yourself. For as quickly as AI improves, it's not faultless. And neither are you. So work together in a beautiful, studious synergy. 

Do What You Know

No matter the industry you're in, there's a TikTok trend for it. The pressure to garner relevance and views from a fleeting burst of excitement spares no industry. But a trend is here today and gone tomorrow, and it's as transient as it is captivating. The pursuit of riding an trend diverts valuable resources from nurturing a business's core strengths and objectives. 

I used to play the defensive in chess. I never won. But when I embraced the potential of my few well-positioned pieces and played offensively, I called checkmate for the first time. Sometimes, we need to focus on our strengths, and not go chasing the short-lived opportunities. 

When a business consistently operates within its area of expertise, it exudes authenticity, and it's more sustainable in the long term. So create content around what you know to be true. 

Chasing anything that's not core to a brand dilutes its credibility. Create content that approaches your brand from every angle. If you think deeply about something, and share it, then it's authentic.