The overuse of AI to create marketing content is eroding brand trust. In this article, Marcie Lord, the founder of Digital Dynamo, outlines how Digital Dynamo will only use AI in ways that improve operations but keep brand trust intact.

Lately, I’ve been second-guessing starting a business in digital marketing. Not because it’s failing, but because the places where digital marketing lives – Facebook, Instagram, Google, the vast universe of the internet – have become an insufferable place to be.

And it’s all because of AI.

Every day, I see social media posts crafted by AI. I see people publish articles written by AI tools. I see AI-generated answers to questions in search results. I see AI-created images, infographics, and illustrations. I see AI-generated engagement. I see more content than I ever have in my feeds.

And all this content sucks. It all fucking sucks.

(Not ALL of it. There are authentic creators out there – but all this AI junk is burying them).

An AI-generated video of an armadillo carrying a capybara. One example of the many AI-generated junk videos out there.

AI-generated content is not interesting or well-written. It (still!) relies on cliches, an overabundance of adverbs and adjectives, and it doesn’t really say anything. It appears to hit all the right notes and use all the right buzzwords, so to a non-marketer – especially one just trying to produce content, and not craft it – AI can create what appears to be a high-value article, social media post, or visual.

AI-generated slop, about AI, on Reddit.

But to a reader – even a non-discerning reader – the content offers no real value. 

Think about the last time you scrolled Facebook. Facebook has become a wasteland for many reasons, but one of the main reasons is all the junk your friends are sharing – AI-generated trash. It’s also because of all the shitty AI-generated ads.

Look at Super Bowl LX, where the commercials sucked canal water through a straw! The commercials used to be one of the biggest draws of the Super Bowl, but Super Bowl LX brought us commercials that were either selling AI or (proudly!) created with AI. I’m sorry, but the vast majority of the commercials that aired were boring and lacked the humor and cleverness from Super Bowls past.

A still from the AI-created Svedka commercial from Super Bowl LX

As for how search engines are now using AI – well, look at this screenshot from a search I conducted while I was writing this:

It was too perfect an illustration of what AI is doing to user trust, and I swear to the flying spaghetti monster I didn’t manipulate this to happen. 

So this brings me to the impact I’m seeing AI have on digital marketing. People can produce more content than ever before because AI has removed the barriers to producing content – you can whip up a 2000-word article in 2 minutes, AND you can get the guts to pretend to be an expert on a subject without ever cracking a book on the topic.

But notice how I didn’t say AI-generated content could make you sound like an expert.

What motivated me to write this post was reading “The Coming Marketing Trust Crash” by Kathleen Booth. In it, she outlines many of the worries she (and I) have had as of late with the advent of AI in marketing. She states:

AI makes it easier to produce more — more content, more messages, more variations — without increasing quality or clarity. It reduces the friction between having an idea and publishing it. That’s powerful, but it’s also dangerous.

As output becomes easy, it’s also making it easier to outsource thinking and judgment.

The result might not be a single scandal or public failure (although that will likely happen too). Instead, it will show up most frequently in small moments that are easy to ignore:

  • Content that sounds fine but doesn’t really say anything
  • Claims that feel inflated, even if they’re hard to disprove
  • Messaging that checks every box but doesn’t quite feel authentic

Individually, these may not trigger alarms.

Collectively, they teach buyers a pattern: this is noise.

Kathleen goes on to encourage marketing agencies to document how they plan to use AI.

I have no experience in codifying a business’s approach to technology or technique, and this document will surely evolve, but here is how Digital Dynamo will – and will not –  use AI so that it may not erode marketing trust.

Digital Dynamo WILL NOT use AI in marketing projects (for clients & ourselves) to:

  • Craft the written expertise that goes into making marketing content valuable
  • Craft the written prose that makes marketing content actionable 
  • Pretend to know about a topic on which we’re writing. Instead, we’ll rely on our client’s expertise and round it out with our own trusted research
  • Rely heavily on AI-generated information for research purposes
  • Neglect to fact-check research from AI-generated web searches
  • Create content for content’s sake
  • Craft audience engagement posts and replies on social media 
  • Conduct entire metrics reports or data analyses on marketing performance 

More will be added as they come up.

Digital Dynamo WILL Use AI in marketing projects (for clients & ourselves) to:

  • Streamline transcripts of interviews we conduct with clients, so that we can draft content with clarity and highlight the expert’s expertise
  • Spell and grammar check content
  • Create new tools and web design elements that save money and achieve new technological and design achievements
  • Streamline the technical process of getting marketing materials published – e.g., getting written content published to websites or social platforms
  • Make videos that help summarize written marketing content. All videos will be fact-checked
  • Streamline communication, workflow, and timelines to meet deadlines
  • Allocate hours, track, and finalize scope
  • Record and transcribe meeting minutes
  • Help streamline reporting and data analyses, but fact-checking with human due diligence

More will be added as they come up.

How Digital Dynamo MAY use AI in marketing projects (for clients & ourselves), but we’re going to try to avoid it:

  • To create static visuals to be used in marketing collateral

More will be added as they come up.

The bottom line in all this is that Digital Dynamo will endeavor not to use AI in place of authenticity and human expertise – for our clients, and for ourselves.

And for the record, I didn’t use a lick of AI when I wrote this article. It probably would have told me to cut out all the swearing, haha.