I tested an A.I. (artificial intelligence) tool to help me write the previous six blog posts. This is the final post in that A.I. series.
Here’s what to expect:
Table of contents
If this is your first visit, you’ll notice this “A.I. disclaimer” in each of the series’ posts:
Disclaimer: A.I. helped me write part of this post! Thanks, You.com, for creating YouWrite, an easy-to-use and effective A.I. blogging tool! In the meantime, read my 5-part Innovation Series starting with innovation leadership or the first post in this A.I. series.)
Who This Post I.S. For
Content Creators, A.I. naysayers, and anyone interested in this A.I. revolution we’ve found ourselves in.
What this post is NOT for
This post doesn’t provide a framework for using AI, a list of best practices, or anything else. It is intended for those who want to gain perspective or insights about using AI as a blogging tool.
First, why I was looking for an A.I. tool
Before writing this A.I. series, I didn’t intentionally seek out an A.I. tool in hopes of it becoming my virtual assistant, content creator, or anything similar. Nor was I looking for something to generate blog posts without thought or effort.
I was looking for a tool to help generate ideas.
My road to (A.I. tool) discovery
A couple of years ago, I took a course called “Strategic Marketing in a Global Workplace.” During that time, I was working on a competitive marketing team project based on the Internet industry. While researching, I stumbled upon a few things regarding how businesses could adopt technologies (like AI) that could negatively impact privacy rights and consumer protection if implemented without governance, thought, or understanding.
If you know my blog, I write about digital transformation in startups and nonprofits, A.I. and Automation, and more. For the last decade, I’ve been a citizen developer and business architect working on technical projects to use tech for good.
To stay on track, I’m an avid supporter and practitioner of privacy rights and consumer protection. Relating that back to A.I., I initially set out to find a search engine that values data privacy and personalization.
That’s how I stumbled upon You.com!
When I first signed up, the tool didn’t exist. However, You.com had the option to join their public beta release waitlist!
Then, when I initially signed up for the service, I also agreed to receive their newsletter. From there, I discovered that they’re not only a search engine but developers creating privacy-first integrated tools that help improve productivity.
After their public beta release in November 2021, I created an account and explored it a bit. It was easy to use, but I couldn’t find any tools they were working on. Then, in March 2022, I received one of their new letters titled, “This email was written with the help of A.I.”
My First Impression
In general, YouWrite is super easy to use. At its core, it’s meant to help generate topics, ideas, and more!
Of course, learning any new tool involves trial and error. To my surprise, though, YouWrite was easy to understand. From the get-go, I started to see some potential benefits A.I. could offer, especially for bloggers and content creators, who sometimes suffer from writer’s block and other issues.
I could ALSO see companies easily mistaking the tool for a content creator and using it to replace them, and I’ll cover that in another post.
Why use an A.I. tool for content creation?
Well, creating (worthwhile) content can be challenging! Think about the last time you had to develop a new idea with related, easily digestible content for a target audience. Anyway, that’s where YouWrite comes in, and it can help with (not a complete list):
- One of the most challenging parts of blogging is coming up with post ideas. YouWrite can provide prompts and exercises to inspire new content ideas.
- It also helps by giving you prompts to inspire new content ideas.
- It can help you develop catchy headlines by giving you a list of headlines or blog post titles to write about.
- Writing structure: Once you have an idea, it’s essential to structure the content in a way that makes sense (P.S. I have content licenses with an EdTech startup for this very thing, so reach out if you need help). YouWrite can give you different options on how to do this effectively.
Likes and Dislikes
YouWrite Dislikes:
- Missing citations and/or sources missing.
- Spelling and grammatical errors (hence why I mentioned Grammarly).
- The writing style doesn’t sound “human”- YouChat is another one of their AI tools that you can chat with!
- 1000 characters & 10 requests (in the free version) limit
- YouWrite cannot be used in Private Mode.
It becomes more accurate as you “teach” (typing in words, commands, ideas, and formatting preferences into YouWrite). Aside from that, remember that’s how A.I. tools work — the technology depends on data input (pssst: data isn’t tech, by the way) and is not meant to replace people or jobs. Of course, some companies will fail to realize that and will most likely upend entire industries, but we can dive into that another time.
What I liked
First and foremost, despite my dislikes, and based only on this post’s perspective, YouWrite doesn’t need to improve those things since I’m using it solely as an idea generator. After all, humans have gotten this far as a society through creative thinking and problem-solving.
Right, RIGHT?!
Handing it off to a machine could open a door that should stay closed, especially without adequate legislation and governance.
- Easy to use
- The user interface is solid.
- Settings are easy to figure out.
- They have an app store.
- They also offer a paid (annual/monthly) or free plan.
Overall, it’s a neat A.I. writing tool!
If you ever dreamed of living in the future, the future of business, or working with A.I., here we are!
The only part we should have remembered was figuring out how to use all the different A.I. tools and ensuring everyone else did/does the same. Nonetheless, the possibilities of using artificial intelligence are vast, if not never-ending.
