ChatGPT And The End Of Our Complacency

Sometimes, complacency is an accident. Nobody wakes up and says, “I think I’m fine with not improving.”

No. Complacency sneaks up on you.

At Blue Seven Content, we’ve tried very hard to be intentional about what we do and how we do it. We’re a company that only provides written content for websites (mostly law firms and, more recently, construction companies). If we’re going to only do one thing, we better be good at it.

And we have been good at it. However, I’m willing to admit that we may have gotten a little complacent.

2022 and the Release of the Beast

2022 was a good year for us. We had a ton of growth, and thankfully, we’ve had amazing clients to work with. We even let a few clients go for various reasons (usually, it’s clients who expect work that’s three times beyond what they want to pay).

Do you remember what happened at the end of November 2022?

It’s all anyone in the industry has talked about since.

ChatGPT.

“It’s the end of content writing.”

“It’ll save companies tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“Look, I just tell it what I want, and it spits it out.”

Okay, I’ll admit. I was impressed with ChatGPT at first. Hell, it’s still impressive. But as time has gone on, the flaws have come out to play. Not only is ChatGPT super dull, but it is a notorious plagiarizer, and it makes things up. Seriously, sometimes it just invents things, including court cases. The writing is predictable, and it’s clear there’s no human behind it. Currently, it can’t connect to updated information.

Will these issues get resolved?

Of course. It would be foolish of me to say, “Ha! See, humans are better.”

ChatGPT was released less than a year ago, and we know OpenAI and other companies are rapidly working to advance the technologies involved in large language models. ChatGPT will gain access to the internet at some point, and these AI programs will learn how to sound more human.

The issue that many have pointed out is that AI will begin to take information from the content that it’s created. Does anyone want to guess how many millions of ChatGPT pages have been published since November of 2023? I don’t know the exact number, but imagine what happens when it gains access to the internet.

This will be a machine that feeds itself, with each iteration slightly degraded from the last. But that’s for a later post. For now, I want to send out thanks to AI and ChatGPT.

Thank you for snapping Blue Seven Content and me out of complacency.

Why I’m Thankful (Begrudgingly) for ChatGPT

Even though I think ChatGPT is currently inferior to human writing (I think it will remain that way for quite a while), I do fully understand that AI has completely devastated the freelance writing community, as well as many agencies that create content.

We built Blue Seven slowly, working only with writers that we hand-pick and continually work with on a daily basis. We train, have manuals, and constantly adapt to industry changes. We respond quickly to client requests and concerns, and our writers really are good at what they do. Not every company does it this way. In fact, many of our writers have written for other agencies, and we have an idea of what their shortcomings are.

The problem is that ChatGPT has become the go-to complaint for clients who have any issues with our writing. What does this look like:

“ChatGPT could have written this.”

“Why should I use you when AI can do the same thing?”

One thing I always try to get from clients when they throw the “ChatGPT” lines at me is more detailed feedback. I want to know, specifically, what the client doesn’t like about the piece. You see, since the birth of website content writing, clients have always struggled when it comes to providing feedback. It can be like pulling teeth.

That’s not necessarily the point, and I don’t fault the client. When you don’t like a piece of writing, you don’t like it. That’s honestly enough for me to get it redone. But feedback would help.

Now, though, clients have ammo when they want to skip detailed feedback. They just say, “This is like ChatGPT.” They’ve got the trump card, so to speak.

We’ve heard it. I’m not sure there’s a seasoned writer or company that hasn’t gotten some kind of feedback like that over the last six months. Even worse is when clients use completely unreliable “AI detectors” to say something was written by AI. Any “AI detector” on the market now is about as effective as a red shirt on a Star Trek away mission – useless and dead in the water.

At Blue Seven, we’ve really pushed to improve quality even more. We’ve taken a hard look at Google’s algorithm updates to see how they’ve responded to AI so far. We stress to our writers that we are a company that prides itself on human content curation, and we’ll remain that way. Our internal content team keeps a closer eye on anything that could be considered “fluff” and have taken the steps necessary to provide consistent feedback. We’ve adjusted to the needs of each client we have.

Our 2022 was great, and our 2023 has been good, too. We’ve actually gained clients in the face of ChatGPT, though I know for certain we’d have more if ChatGPT hadn’t hit when it did. Add that to a shaky economy, and I’m thankful we’re still around. So many companies and firms have hit a pause on additional content and marketing overall.

ChatGPT has snapped us out of complacency. We’re not ignoring it. Why would we? AI is here, and it will improve – but so will we. I’m certain that law firm website content will remain YMYL, which positions Blue Seven to be in the right place when companies and law firms realize that human writers are necessary.

Our goal is to stand out as the content providers to turn to for content that’s not only “Original, Researched, and Optimized” but also “Attorney Driven, Human Curated.”

There will never be a time when we aren’t looking to improve on what we do. Both myself and my business partner Victoria Lozano are dedicated to standing as a company, with every single writer, five years from now (and onward). We know this takes dedication. We know it takes continual improvement. There’s a place for technological advancements. There’s certainly a place for LLMs and AI. We can’t ignore it.

But humans want to read content written by other humans when they need real help. As humans, we all have shared experiences. We can empathize. We can connect.

Blue Seven won’t be complacent. We’re not going to simply assume we have a chokehold on what “good writing” is. We’ll take the steps needed to create writing that meets clients’ expectations. We’ll create writing that meets Google’s expectations.

Most of all, we’ll foster the best environment possible for our clients AND our writers to succeed.

Written By Allen Watson – Cofounder and CEO of Blue Seven Content