AI content creation has taken massive strides in recent years. News outlets rave that robots are writing fanfiction now. A Google engineer claimed that the chatbot he was building was so good, it might be sentient. With all these advancements, it may seem like modern AI can prove equal to a human writer.

The reality is a bit more complicated. Behind every entertaining piece of AI writing, there are dozens of nonsense drafts that didn’t make it to print. Even the most advanced AI struggles to write more than a hundred words on any one subject. Language is an incredibly complex system that evolved over thousands of years, so it’s not exactly easy to code.

 

AI-driven content creation can form sentences, structure paragraphs, and occasionally tell a story. Still, essential human elements of writing — such as mood, intent and emotion — are beyond the reach of even the most cutting-edge tech.

AI content creation programs can provide a starting point for human writers, but they’re still a long way from replacing them. Given how fundamental language is to the human experience, replacing human writers with AI may not even be possible.

 

What Is AI Content Creation?

At the most basic level, AI content creation is programming a computer to write content similar to what a human would write. This tech is based on decades of Natural Language Generation programs. For almost as long as computers have existed, NLG programmers have been trying to teach them how to read and write.

 

Generating or Imitating?

One key thing to understand about AI content creation is that the AI isn’t coming up with content itself — at least, not in the same way a human writer would. There’s no source code for creativity. Instead, the AI is attempting to copy existing human-written content in a way that can fool a reader into thinking it’s genuine.

To do this, the AI analyzes word choice, sentence length, and thousands of other metrics from human-written samples. Programmers can also provide rules and desired patterns for the AI’s output. For example, they can instruct the program to only use the one hundred most common words in English for ease of reading.

The AI then analyses the human-written samples, crosses them against its programmed rules and compiles everything it’s learned into its best approximation of a human-written article.

 

How Advanced Is AI Content Creation Today?

For decades, computer-generated writing could never pass for something written by a real person. Early NLG programs were limited by the memory and processing power of the computers of the time. Today, with much more advanced computers and the internet, AI programs can reference millions of human-written articles to help generate their content.

With advancements in AI-driven content creation, programmers no longer have to enter rules for output. Instead, the AI can reference human-written articles to generate its own rules, effectively learning how to better mimic language on its own.

The most advanced AI for content creation today is called GPT-3. It’s based on a massive language database called OpenAI. You’ve probably seen GPT-3’s work making the rounds on the internet. It’s generated everything from fake Harry Potter screenplays to “Modern Love” columns for The New York Times.

 

What Are the Limitations of AI Created Content?

GPT-3 is impressive tech, but there are still limits to how closely a computer can emulate human writing. A few major problems affect AI created content across the board.

 

The Quality Is Inconsistent

Every piece of AI created content is an attempt to mimic a human, and not all of these attempts succeed. For any project you give an AI to write, there will be several unusable results for every passable draft.

The New York Times’ “Modern Love” experiment referenced earlier is a great example of this inconsistency. The Times asked the GPT-3 to write dozens of short, feel-good columns about how a hypothetical couple may have met for the first time. A few of the stories were offbeat but stayed within the realm of possibility. Many more columns were clearly not written by a real person.

One column contained the phrase “We went for dinner and drinks and dinner and drinks…” repeated on a loop for over a hundred words. As a reminder, this is the most advanced AI content creation program in the world right now. Either GPT-3 was entering its postmodern phase, or there’s still room for improvement on the consistency front.

 

AI Can Only Write Short Pieces

AI-driven content creation is most useful for tiny snippets of text. The NYT columns GPT-3 wrote were only a couple hundred words, and the majority didn’t make sense by the end sections. The cracks in AI created content start to show at word counts over one hundred.

 

For reference, a short blog article comes in at around five hundred words — well outside the capabilities of AI. Even the super-advanced GPT-3 struggles to link ideas into paragraphs that follow a logical progression.

 

AI Created Content Requires Human Editing

The creator of the GPT-3 is careful to classify it as a tool for writing content, not an end in itself. A successful AI-created piece may come close to a human writer’s work, but it still needs finishing touches from a human to read smoothly and naturally.

 

AI Content Lacks Intent and Emotional Impact

The largest hurdle facing AI content creation is baked into its design: it can’t recreate the human element of intent.

When a professional writer sets out to create content, they do so with a goal in mind. The goal may be to persuade, inform or entertain, but there’s always an emotional push behind a writer’s work. Every decision that a writer makes, from word choice to paragraph size, seeks to achieve their underlying goal.

Intent is the beating heart of any piece of writing, even a short branded blog article about socks. You want to persuade the reader that your socks are the best, or inform them of the latest sock styles. Keeping that goal in mind with every word is what makes quality content sing.

In contrast, the goal of AI content creation is always going to be to pass as human-written content. Even the GPT-3 is locked into this objective. AI can’t reach for any of the emotional goals of a human writer, so the beating heart isn’t there.

 

Linguists Agree

A 2021 linguistics study from the University of Washington criticized modern AI language programs, including the GPT-3, calling them “stochastic parrots” (for all the non-linguists, ‘stochastic’ is a fancy way of saying ‘random.’) Without intent behind an AI’s writing, even programs with huge databases amount to little more than parrots repeating words they’ve picked up.

The study argues that any meaning in AI created content is merely the result of chance and favorable interpretation by a human reader. In other words, AI-driven content creation programs are only capable of stumbling upon meaning, while human writers put meaning first.

 

Why Is It so Hard for AI To Write Content?

It may seem strange that AI has so much trouble writing meaningful, quality content. How is it possible that a computer can beat every Grandmaster in the world at chess, but can’t reliably deliver a blog post about shaving cream or car repair?

The truth is, our most basic and ingrained tasks are often the hardest for technology to replicate. Boston Dynamics, a world leader in robotics, spent years and millions of dollars programming their humanoid robot Atlas to walk upright. AI content creation faces even greater challenges. Language, like walking upright, is an adaptation passed down through countless generations. It’s uniquely human.

 

Language Makes Us Human

Unlike chess, language is more than a massive set of patterns. Language contains emotion, tone and musicality that’s impossible to explain in words, let alone numbers and console commands. Since language comes naturally to most people as children, few understand how complicated this system truly is.

Psychologists have yet to fully explain how the brain’s language centers work. That means there’s no code in existence that will give an AI all of the combined knowledge of human language and the skill to use it.

 

Which Is Better for Your Brand: AI Content Creation or Professional Writers?

In very specific applications, AI created content can be a useful substitute for human-written content. Programmers at MIT have had success using AI to summarize scientific papers into plain English abstracts. In general, AI is much better at summarizing and simplifying existing writing than creating original work.

When it comes to branded content creation, AI is still no match for the human touch. Why? Emotion and intent are central to marketing. BKA Content knows firsthand how powerful, sharp writing speaks to customers and sparks brand engagement. A human writer who gets your brand will infuse that understanding into their work, and that just isn’t possible with a program.

 

To Our Valued Customers

As COVID-19 (also known as the Coronavirus) news and developments evolve, we here at BKA Content want to assure you that the health, safety, and welfare of our writers, editors, staff and clients is our highest priority.

Turn Times May Be Affected

Due to the recent closures of school systems across the country, as well as other social distancing guidelines provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), many of our writers and editors now have children that are forced to remain home who would have otherwise been in school throughout the day. For many writers and editors, this situation changes their daily operations when it comes to creating content. We are also sensitive to any writers/editors who need to take time off in order to care for themselves or family members that may be affected by the virus and have encouraged them to do so.

We anticipate that this temporary situation has the potential to extend content creation turn times. Considering that, your account manager will be in touch if they foresee any delays in your current projects’ original completion date.

Enhanced Measures

Our onboarding team is working very hard to vet, train and bring on as many new writers and editors as possible to help strengthen our writing teams and help mitigate the impact the pandemic may have on the content creation process going forward.

We remain optimistic about the future and know that this temporary set back will eventually pass. Thank you for your business and we wish you and your loved ones safety and peace during these times.

 

Sincerely,

Greg Secrist

BKA Content Co-Founder and CEO

 

On Oct. 30, 2018, BKA Content was once again honored as one of Utah’s top 100 fastest growing companies by the MountainWest Capital Network. We are extremely honored and humbled to be recognized at this event four years running!

It’s an incredible experience to rub shoulders with other successful companies at this event each year. We applaud all of the other companies who were honored with this award, and we know that they’ve worked hard to get here! It has also been really fun to see new names on the list every year. This just goes to show that there is a lot of promising, young talent here in good ol’ Utah.

A Year of Change

2018 brought some incredible successes, but it also brought along its fair share of changes and challenges. We experienced some of the natural effects of the “circle of life” when it comes to operating a business.

We had a few beloved team members move on to new opportunities. We also brought on some amazing new team members to help us handle the growth we saw this year. We made many fundamental internal process changes and incorporated new technology into our business to help us give our amazing customers even better service. Ultimately, change has challenged us to be better, and it’s paying off.

While we’ve seen a lot of change this year, one thing that hasn’t changed is the beating heart of BKA Content, which is the treat-you-like-family attitude that we have with every employee and customer. Our goal is to create long-term partnerships with everyone we work with, and that can be accomplished only when there is a foundation of trust, quality work, care and respect.

While we are still the same old BKA at heart, the changes we made this year prove that we are a constantly evolving company with a mission to be the best BKA we can be. Refining the way we achieve exceptional customer service and consistent quality, as well as the ability to customize our processes to match our clients’ needs, really is what has set us apart from the competition.

Thank You

We sincerely appreciate every writer, editor, proofreader, team member and client we work with, as you all are the key to what makes BKA Content so great! We literally can’t thank you enough. We would not be where we are without the exceptional people we’ve been surrounded with – and that’s a fact. We feel very blessed to work with each and every one of you, and we are so proud of what you’ve accomplished and have helped BKA to accomplish as a whole.

Starting, running and growing this business has been a non-stop roller coaster ride, but it has all been worth it. We are extremely proud of all that we’ve been able to accomplish up to this point, and we are even more excited about what the future holds.

Sincerely,

Matt and Greg Secrist

Hi, I’m Greg Secrist, the CEO of BKA Content.

Here at BKA, we are always evaluating our services to ensure that we offer a compelling value to our customers. Over the years, we’ve gained a reputation for providing high-quality content, good turn-times, and custom ordering and delivery through our one-of-a-kind managed services. Today, I’m excited to announce a small change in our account management policy.

Starting Aug. 1st, 2018, account management will now only be available to clients who spend over $1,000 per month on content. To give you an idea, $1000 a month would be the equivalent of around 10-20 blogs a month at 800-1000 words each.  This minimum spend threshold will allow us to better accommodate clients who have larger, consistent orders that need additional customization, whether it be in the form of ordering/delivery, style guides, dedicated writing teams or custom turn times. Ultimately, this change will allow us to continue to offer the best content experience in the industry.

If you are already spending at least $1,000 per month on content, you will continue to be able to use your account manager for ordering, setting up your projects, and customizing content delivery. If you are currently ordering less than $1,000 dollars per month, we still want to work with you! There are two main ways we can do this:

1. First, your account manager will reach out to talk to you about your content creation goals. If we can help you to create a strategy that puts you close to the $1000 a month minimum going forward, you can continue to utilize account management and the perks that come with it.
2. Second, if you only need small amounts of content sporadically you can continue to order from us via our website at bkacontent.com. The process is simple and caters to smaller, a la carte orders. If you have questions, your current account manager can walk you through the process before Aug 1, 2018.

This policy change is small, but we know that it will make a big impact in allowing us to continue to provide exceptional service to all of our customers.

Thank you for allowing me to explain this change, and we sincerely thank you for your business. We look forward to helping you with your next content order soon!

Sincerely,

Google recently confirmed that it made a change to the way that it displays the search snippets that show up in their search results. Search snippets, also known as meta descriptions, are the descriptions that Google shows explaining what the page is about and how it is relevant to the search query made.

Here is an example of a description snippet highlighted:

What Was Changed?

Google’s search snippets have been extended to show up to a maximum of 320 characters. The previous maximum character count was 160 characters.

A Google spokesperson recently told Search Engine Land:

“We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.”

Should You Update All Of Your Old Meta Descriptions?

It depends.

It’s important to note that Google still takes the liberty of how many characters they will show in the 160 and 320 character range. In fact, Google may or may not show your meta description, but may instead pull other information from the page to show in the snippet that they deem is more relevant.

To cut to the point, if you feel like your existing meta description clearly explains what your page is about, there is no need to change it. However, if you feel that a meta description could be rewritten to provide more clarity to a user, fix it.

“There’s no need for publishers to suddenly expand their meta description tags, if they feel their current ones are adequate. … We now display slightly longer snippets, which means we might display more of a meta description tag.” – Google

Should You Make All New Meta Descriptions 320 Characters?

It certainly doesn’t hurt. The reason being is that Google has confirmed that they try to create the snippet from your provided meta descriptions first. If they feel that it isn’t beefy enough, they add to it or show something else altogether. So why not provide a longer, more descriptive meta in the first place?

John Mueller from Google gave some insight in a recent Google Hangout:

“So in general what one of the things we’ve been experimenting with [is] showing longer descriptions in the search results and I believe that’s something that more and more people are seeing.

 

So for the descriptions that we show we try to focus on the meta description that you provide on your pages but if we need more information or more context based on the user’s query perhaps then we can take some parts of the page as well. Essentially from from a purely technical point of view these descriptions aren’t a ranking for anything. So it’s not the case that changing your descriptions or making them longer or shorter or tweaking them or putting keywords in there will affect your site’s ranking. However it can affect the way that users see your site in the search results and whether or not they actually click through to your site. So that’s kind of one one aspect there to keep in mind.

 

And with that aspect sometimes it does make sense to make sure that the description that you’re providing to search engines, that’s perhaps being shown to users when they search for normal things on your website. That description is something that explains what your service is where your page offers, maybe the unique proposition that you have on your page. That kind of encourage[s] people to click through to your page that probably makes sense for a lot of cases. And sometimes it makes sense to say well I know how to describe this best, therefore I’ll write it up in the description and if Google can show this then my hope that people will see my site is being clearly superior to all other ones and click on my site rather than some of the other ones that are ranking in the same search results page.

 

So with that in mind. It’s not a ranking factor. It can affect how your site is visible in the search results. So with that I definitely see it as something legitimate where you might say well I want to make sure that my my kind of proposition is out there in full and therefore I’ll try to write something a bit longer and show that in my meta description.”

Based on this explanation, you might as well create larger, more descriptive meta descriptions that near the 320 limit in order to help with visibility and user engagement. After all, it can’t hurt you from a ranking perspective but can only help a user decide to check out your page!

Need help creating meta descriptions that can utilize this newly updated character range? Check out our meta description writing services.

With the weather taking a nosedive and snowfall just around the corner, the holiday spirit is really starting to kick in. This is especially fitting since we were recently invited to take part in a local fundraising/charity event at Rice Eccles Stadium that involved both holiday spirit AND kicking.

 

 

Yesterday, Tuesday Nov. 7, we had the opportunity to attend the Startup Santa Tailgate at the football stadium at the University of Utah. The Startup Santa Tailgate is a children’s book drive fundraising event that is presented/sponsored by Boomsourcing. To gain entrance to the event, local businesses were asked to bring at least 5 new children’s books for each team member that wanted to attend.

Once inside the stadium, participants got the chance to kick field goals to try and earn some fun prizes. One member of our team, Jon Bingham, even held the record of the second longest field goal made at 51 yards (at least for a while). There were also food and drink items that could be bought, with all proceeds going towards the book drive.

 

 

We had a blast at the event and quickly learned how hard it is to kick a pigskin more than 25 yards (see video).  More than that, though, it felt good to contribute to a cause that is making a difference in the lives of thousands of children in our community and throughout the state.

The Startup Santa initiative uses events like this to collect new books and money to support childhood literacy programs for low-income families in Utah.  Last year, they collected around 87,000 books and nearly $437,000 in donations to support underprivileged kids. This year they are hoping to do much more than that.  At BKA Content, words are our business, so being able to give back in a word format (books) is an absolute perfect fit.

We know there are many ways to give back during the holiday season and we encourage you to do so in whatever way you see fit. If you’re still looking for ways to help this holiday season, the Startup Santa initiative might be a great place to start.  See how you can help by visiting their website here.

 

Last week on Oct. 10, we attended an awards luncheon hosted by the MountainWest Capital Network, honoring Utah’s Top 100 fastest growing companies.  The show took place in the ballroom of the Grand America Hotel in SLC and there we got to see our company, BKA Content, recognized as the 61st fastest growing company in the state of Utah!  While this is our third year being in the Top 100, it never feels any less significant due to all the hard work that goes into getting us there year after year.

The Event

The event started with an address by the governor, followed by a short presentation from Ron McMillan about earning and giving respect to those around us. Then came the countdown – It’s always exciting to take everyone’s guesses of what number we’ll be and then wait for our logo to come up on the screen.  I’m always a little nervous the presenter will botch pronouncing our company name, but in three years we haven’t had any issues on that end (knock on wood).

”Utah is a leading state both in the number of startups and the number of companies that survive their first five years. This annual event is a great ​opportunity to celebrate t​hose innovators, business owners, and entrepreneurs who keep our communities vibrant and strong.”​ – Gov. Gary Herbert

This year, we sent Drew Allen (our VP of Sales) up to collect the award and shake the governor’s hand. This was a really hard decision, and in no way diminishes the incredible impact that all of our other employees have had on our success.  We have so many deserving members of our team we could send up, but we felt that with all that Drew has done to bring in new business over the last 4-5 years, he’s been instrumental in helping us hit the sales numbers we’ve needed to get us into this elite group. I can’t say enough good things about the initiative, drive and hard work he’s put into getting BKA to where it is now.

We hope to attend many more shows like this so that we can deservedly honor the rest of our team members for their limitless contributions. It truly is a group effort.

The “Wall”-Stars

On another note, one thing that we’ve done each year is commemorate a little spot on one of our office walls for this specific award.  Since most of our walls are covered in chalk paint, this has been a fun exercise for me. The first year we won the award felt like an explosion of excitement, like our little startup was really taking off and flexing its muscles.

 

Last year, with it being our second year, I really felt validated. Like the first year wasn’t just a fluke, but that we had actually “created” something special.

 

 

This year I haven’t finished my drawing, but with it being our third year and now having a trifecta of awards, it seems fitting to think we’re creating something of a “legend” here…

 

 

Business wisdom, power and courage never looked so good!  (Follow our Instagram to see the final result). Yes, there are a bunch of nerds here in the office in case you were wondering.

Group Effort

When it comes down to it, winning an award like this is only made possible by the amazing people behind the scenes. Our virtual BKA family consists of 16 extraordinary employees, hundreds of excellent writers/editors, and thousands of awesome clients.  I literally cannot say enough about each group and how much they mean to Greg and me.

We legitimately love and care about our employees and think they each bring something unique and crucial to the company. If it were up to me, I’d hang out with all of you every weekend (which means you are probably very glad it’s not actually up to me).

Our writers and editors are the best in the business, not only in the quality of their craft but also in character. Many of you have been here for multiple years and have seen and been a crucial part of the growth of BKA. We consider you family and always want to know how we can make the BKA experience better for you.

Lastly, we’ve developed relationships with our clients that extend beyond just high-quality content and order fulfillment; we consider them good friends. We are all about long-term partnerships and custom solutions to get you exactly what you need.

We appreciate each of you, and hope to add to our growing family throughout the next year.  We are truly grateful for you all!

Sincerely,
Matt and Greg Secrist

In July of this year, BKA Content had the opportunity to be a sponsor for the 10th Annual Operation Smile 5k Fun Run.  This is an event we’ve been sponsoring for the last 5 years, and hope to continue to do so for many years to come.

Operation Smile is an organization that dedicates itself to repairing cleft palates and lips for children who can’t afford the surgery themselves. Cleft lips and palates make it hard for children to smile, speak, and even eat. All proceeds from the event go directly to the cause. Overall, the event raised over $5,338; enough to give new smiles to 22 children!

The race was held on July 22, 2017 at Jensen Nature Park in Syracuse, UT.  It’s a beautiful setting for a race, complete with a large duck pond and bridge, mountains in the background, and a paved trail that’s stroller-friendly.  The event activities included the 10^th Annual Operation Smile 5k, the Kid’s 1K run, the 1-Mile walk, as well as a gazebo filled with snacks and treats where a raffle was held after the race.  We had a number of BKA team members there, and we really enjoyed the experience:

“There really is no better feeling than that of helping others in need.  The race was a blast, the atmosphere was fun and it’s nice to know that kids in our community can benefit from something like this.” – Caleb Shepherd, Account Manager at BKA Content

If you weren’t able to join us for the 5k Fun Run but still want to be involved and donate to the cause, head to the Operation Smile Fun Run website for more information.