Yes, if you know what you’re doing.
Last week, I wrote about whether it’s a good idea to use AI to create a website. In it, I briefly mentioned content writing, but since it’s a wide topic on its own, I will expand on it in this article.
AI-generated content is becoming increasingly common. Give AI a topic and, within seconds, you can have an article, social media post, or email ready to go.
But good content is about more than putting words on a page, especially if you are trying to convert a client. It needs to be useful, relevant, and sound like it actually came from your business. That is where things get more complicated.
So, how can you make AI content work for your business? Here is what we have learned from using it ourselves.
Can AI really write good content?
Yes, absolutely.
Large language models (LLMs) have improved a lot in recent years. Tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini can research topics, organise information, suggest ideas, and produce well-written drafts remarkably quickly. For some types of content, this can save a huge amount of time.
The catch is that AI does not automatically know your business, your customers, or what makes you different.
If you simply ask it to “write a blog post about website design”, you will probably get a perfectly readable article. But it will probably sound almost exactly like thousands of other articles on the same subject.
The quality of what you get depends heavily on what you give the tool to work with. A clear brief, your brand guidelines, the audience you are writing for, the purpose of the content, and good instructions can make a huge difference.
But even then, the result needs to be reviewed carefully.
Why does AI content sometimes sound so bad?
The biggest problem with AI-generated content is not necessarily that it is wrong. It is that it can be generic, predictable, and lacking in your own voice.
If you use a basic prompt and publish the result without editing it, readers will probably notice.
Basic AI-generated content tends to have some tells, such as:
- The same phrases and sentence structures being repeated.
- An overly polished or formal tone that doesn’t sound like a real person.
- Lots of words that don’t really say anything particularly useful.
- Generic introductions that could apply to almost any business.
- Claims that sound convincing but don’t come with any actual proof.
- Too many headings, lists or “key takeaways”.
- Long sentences with lots of em dashes (–) to join or split clauses.
- Fluffy phrases such as “in today’s fast-paced world”.
- The “It’s not just X, it’s Y” structure.
None of these things automatically mean that AI was used. After all, the models are trained on human writing. But if an article doesn’t read like you at all, it can make your clients question your credibility.
A note on hallucination
AI can sometimes produce information that sounds completely convincing but is simply not true. It may invent statistics, sources, examples, quotes, or details that do not exist. This is called hallucination.
Blindly trusting what you get can lead to serious mistakes and damage your credibility. This is one of the main reasons you should always review AI-generated content before publishing it.
Is the content actually worth reading?
Beyond how the writing sounds, there is a bigger question to ask: Does the content actually add anything useful?
AI can research and summarise what is already out there very quickly. But if your article is simply a rewritten version of ten other articles, why should someone care?
Your customers do not need another generic article explaining the same things as everyone else. They need your experience, your perspective, your answers to their questions, and information that helps them make a decision.
That is the part AI cannot simply invent for you.
Is AI content bad for SEO?
Then there’s the question of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
In short, Google does not automatically penalise content simply because AI was used to create it. Google’s guidance is focused on the quality and purpose of the content, rather than whether a human or AI typed the words.
The problem comes when AI is used to produce at scale simply to manipulate search rankings. Google specifically warns that generating many pages with AI without adding value for users can fall under its spam policies.
The content needs to deserve its place in the search results, with an emphasis on original, helpful, people-first content.
In other words, the same principle applies whether you use AI or not: If your content is useful, accurate, original, and written for your audience, using AI as part of the process is not automatically a problem. If it is just written to fill your website with keywords, it can be.
Further reading: SEO in 2026: What Actually Works Now
Where AI can actually save you time
Used properly, AI can be a very useful part of your content process.
It can help you:
- Brainstorm topics and angles.
- Research questions your audience might have.
- Create an initial structure.
- Turn your notes into a first draft.
- Suggest ways to make complicated information easier to understand.
- Repurpose a blog post into social media content.
- Check spelling, grammar, and readability.
The key takeaway is to look at it as a tool in the process, but not the whole process. In other words, you still need to put in the work. And you need to have the knowledge to know what to ask for and look for, how to edit, and so on.
How we use AI in our content creation
It might sound like we are warning you away from AI, but we are not anti-AI. We use it ourselves.
In fact, this article was produced with the help of AI.
But that does not mean we typed a topic into a chatbot and published the first answer we got. We follow the very ideas outlined in this article.
Our background in content and SEO means we know what we want the content to achieve. We know what questions to ask, what information to include, what needs checking, and what makes a piece of content useful rather than simply well-written.
We use AI as a tool that helps us work faster. The thinking, decisions, and final quality checks remain human.
Is it worth doing it all yourself?
AI has made content creation more accessible than ever. But having access to a writing tool does not automatically make you a content writer.
You can absolutely create content yourself using AI. The question is just how much time you want to spend learning how to use it well, developing prompts, checking the output, researching the facts, editing the writing, and making sure everything fits together with your website and wider marketing.
What looks like a quick way to create a blog post can become a much bigger job once you start checking and improving everything properly. And if you do not already have a good understanding of content, SEO, and your audience, it can be difficult to know what needs changing in the first place.
