The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: the value proposition for these tools is only gonna get stronger and stronger. The moral, ethical dilemmas will get blurrier and blurrier, but their. it seems as if not gonna stop getting better at the goal, which is, content.
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[00:01:11] Jason: We’re super excited to talk about today’s topic, which is whether content, writing tools that are robot driven, the AI type content tools, whether that’s a good idea or not, is it the wave of the future and should we start to use them in our own businesses? I’m broaching the subject today selfishly because I was just presented with a wonderful app, SumoDealPepper.ai
[00:01:35] For just $99. And I’ve never had one of these content AI tools before, and I’m thinking to myself, Dang, this thing writes eBooks. It writes blog articles, it writes headlines, it writes dis product descriptions. And I’m wondering whether it is a good, kind of use. Automation to help speed up my writing process because for me the value proposition is if this thing can make me faster in terms of content, production, then it’s certainly something that I should be looking into.
[00:02:08] So I open the floor to you guys. I know some of you have used AI type writing tools and do for your teams and others of you have it. So Kyle, you wanna kick it off cuz I think you’re the one who’s got the most experience in terms of using these. Give us your two.
[00:02:24] Kyle: Yeah, for sure. My team uses a version of an AI writer called Jasper.
[00:02:29] No, it used to be called Jarvis, but I think they might have gotten a little trouble with Disney over copyright infringement, but it’s now jasper.ai, It’s interesting tool. I found it to really be effective at driving ideas and concepts and angles. And creating blog posts and just speeding it up. So I played with it a little bit and then just turned it over to the team and they’ve been kicking out blog post content for the website and I was able to write, I say write, I didn’t, I just put in some commands.
[00:03:01] How it works is you give it a topic, right? And then you. Punch out some commands and typically, at least with the Jaspers run off of what they call recipes, right? So they have a series of commands where you give it a topic and then you’re like, write the intro and it’ll give you an introduction and then you run it as an outline form and it just plunks in content.
[00:03:19] So I found it to be fairly efficient in generating content. Now is it gonna be the highest quality writing you’ve ever seen? I would say no. But for the purpose of creating blog content, For a website, it does what it needs to do. There’s a little bit of tweaking that you have to do and sometimes it gets into a bit of a loop, and repeats itself so that, but they have some like hack commands and stuff.
[00:03:42] You can do that to actually force it to actually generate new streams of writing. That’s how you think about it. Writes in streams and sometimes you have to tell, Hey, you. Don’t use that stream, try something different. Like really re-engineer something new. So from a time standpoint, I would say definitely SPS stuff up.
[00:04:01] But the other thing is it’s only gonna op the caveats are, I think it’s only operates as good as the content and topics you give it. And also I think over time they have a tendency to learn what you want, as you say, Yes, I like this content, or No, I don’t like this content.
[00:04:16] And so it’ll actually get smart. As you progress with it as well, but I’ve found it to be a useful tool to speed up blog post creation, for sure.
[00:04:24] Jason: Wow. All right. Super cool. Michael or Chris, what are your. So I’ve
[00:04:31] Michael: got a couple of thoughts. I’ve used, a tool quite recently actually. I guess it’s now becoming a, it’s monkey see Monkey Disney.
[00:04:36] And it’s only everyone’s creating tools to do the same thing as they tend to, use a tool called re notes, which is slightly different in that it’s there to create blog posts for podcasters specifically. But really you just take a recording of any video interview or chat for that moment meeting and it will create me notes out of it.
[00:04:52] I didn’t find them bad. In the end, I wasn’t quite persuaded to, to part with whatever it was, or month, not a lot, because I just felt, here’s the thing, and I’d be very interested to hear from you, Kyle, about this. There’s always a process of the beginning and end of the process rather than the middle, which everyone obsessed about.
[00:05:05] Just writing itself is one thing, but it’s like this podcast. Now what topics are we gonna choose? If you choose a good topic, there’s an energy around it, there’s a buzz around it. There’s a question of keyword research that goes into it. That’s part of it. It’s a question of knowing your industry and, having a feel for the nicest.
[00:05:19] Or, and or doing some actual due diligence to check that’s out there. And then at the other end of it, when you’ve got something, I’ve had, Filipino guys writing me stuff for years for the blog post, which aren’t really high level, but they’re basically mini blog posts.
[00:05:31] And, I end up doing quite a bit of editing if I’m more ambitious for some of the content, in which case than I want to look at the total time taken, the total cost, and the system as a whole, of which the middle may be a machine and it may be a human, but I think it, my experience, it doesn’t make quite as much difference as I was expected.
[00:05:49] It to make, So there you go.
[00:05:50] Jason: Yeah. Interesting. Chris, thoughts on this. Have you ever delved into such things?
[00:05:56] Chris: I haven’t gotten into it personally. I’ve heard of some people using it for blog posts and that type of content. I worry that, the average reader isn’t gonna be able to differentiate between, AI written content and actual person drip written content, and that’s only gonna get worse.
[00:06:10] It’s. I don’t wanna say it’s fairly easy now, people write in different styles where you’d say, Oh, this looks James Clear wrote this versus, AI wrote it. But in the future, could you say, Write this in James Clear style and AI has been fed all of James clear’s books. I don’t know.
[00:06:26] I worry about that and I worry about you. Authenticity on the internet so people know something came from Jason Miles or not, right? And what stuff are you gonna claim is this is my content, my writing, I actually created this versus I kinda created this, I just told this bot what to do and it does a good enough job kind of thing.
[00:06:45] So the,
[00:06:46] Jason: it’s gonna get blurry
[00:06:47] Chris: between, being able to tell what’s real and what’s not, and. I don’t know. I hope that humanity can remain somehow unique, where it’s like, yeah, that’s all good and stuff, but it’s not the
[00:06:57] Jason: same as a real person. You’ve taken this to the next level, which is the moral implications is so great.
[00:07:04] Not just the
[00:07:05] Chris: moral, but being able to differentiate, right? Like when people have trouble. Yeah. Telling what’s real and what’s not. Yeah. Which a lot of times doesn’t matter.
[00:07:13] Jason: It well, but what it matters is when it comes
[00:07:15] Chris: to, things that people take action on, what people believe about the world
[00:07:19] Jason: That can be potentially problematic. Yeah. It’s interesting. Question and it, so The way I was thinking about this topic as I was pondering whether to spend $99 to get pepper.ai, which is really not about the money, it’s about is it, the right like, tool to use. The thinking in my mind was, I was flashing back to when I started blogging.
[00:07:41] My first blog was called Marketing on pinterest.com. My first blog that did anything or went. That was over 10 years ago because, my book that I did that was, came outta, that was, Pinterest Power. That was literally 10 years ago yesterday that it was published. But I got that book deal because over my Christmas holiday vacation, I did, I think it was like 22 articles.
[00:08:06] In two weeks. And I wrote those like a maniac because at the time no one was talking about marketing on Pinterest. And I got the domain name marketing on Pinterest, and I just started knocking out the most obvious ideas related to marketing, adapted and, created in the context of what Pinterest is and how it works and all of that and what we were doing to make it work on Pinterest.
[00:08:29] We had authenticity in that regard. And, so the articles. Complicated. And I’m thinking to myself now, if I had pepper, or Jasper, how much faster could I have done that? Cuz it wasn’t really rocket science. And people who were reading the content didn’t really, they just wanted help.
[00:08:45] They just wanted like, how does this work? How do you wrap your mind around marketing on Pinterest? And so anyways, that was the thinking I was doing the other day as I was wondering about this. I do think your question that you raised is a good one. I would say if I had an AI writing tool, I would own the content as the writer because I would feed at the topic.
[00:09:06] I would give it its ultimate outcome, whether it’s a long form blog post or ebook or whatever. And then I would obviously do a lot of my own re-edit. And then for my process, I would give it to my, my, technical editor. And she uses, Grammarly Pro as one of her steps. So it would end up being authentic content.
[00:09:28] It would just be aided by ai, I guess you could say, in that regard. As I’m thinking it through the process.
[00:09:34] Michael: Yeah. Wow. There’s so much, This brings to mind for me, there’s, so a couple of thoughts in response to this. But first of all, great topic cuz it raises a lot more questions than just the immediate thing, isn’t it?
[00:09:44] First of all, Question of authenticity. I I I guess that’s always been a thing. They’ve been ghost writers probably for long time, but certainly they’ve existed for a long time. Who writes staff and when you see some celebrity who you know, mentioned no, no names in case they’re lawyers on the net, but you think, yeah, that person can’t string your senses together.
[00:09:58] They’ve definitely had a ghost writer to work on their biography. But the other thing that strikes me is this. So back in the day, you had a fairly open market there, Jason, of people who were looking. Stuff on Pinterest. So there was demand, there was no supply of information, so you supplied it, and I guess that’s a bit like Amazon in 2014 with certain product categories.
[00:10:16] It reminds you of my experience there and then. To do that. Now here’s the thing, it’s an arms race, isn’t it? If you bring a knife to a gun fight, as you were saying, then you’re in trouble. But if you have a bunch of, what I see out there a lot with blog post that I read is a lot of, there’s a certain sort of style of Filipino English, if I may say that.
[00:10:34] And I’ve got some fantastic assistance over there, so I’m not dissing anyone, but there’s a certain style for language, which comes across, which isn’t to me as a native English speaker. Great. And. AI is probably gonna develop its own kind of lack of style. But to your point, Chris, like being able to identify a personal style is a differentiation factor, just as a striking logo.
[00:10:52] And beautiful visual design is on a marketplace like Amazon for your physical product. And I think that being able to cut through the noise is still gonna, is gonna be more important than ever. If everyone’s churning out 10 articles a day instead of one
[00:11:04] Kyle: using
[00:11:04] Jason: ai, there’s two bits there that I think are important to un untangle the first bit.
[00:11:09] The availability of content about a topic. Now, cuz what I learned in working with, McGraw Hill, I’ve done three books with them and one has been, second edition. So four cycles of through books. What I learned with them is those professional, the East coast big, publishers, their acquisition editors are on the hunt for new topics.
[00:11:34] To such a degree that I didn’t really understand that they’re looking for fresh, new, interesting angles in whatever the domain or, niche is that they, acquired books. And so for me 10 years ago, that was Pinterest because it was a clean greenfield. No one was talking about it and they knew it was hot.
[00:11:54] TikTok was three, four years ago. I was asked to write a book for TikTok Power. They wanted me to write that. I decided not to do it cuz I’m not a TikTok user and I just didn’t, I didn’t have the, the vibe for it. But there’s a difference between Greenfield. Content strategies where there’s nobody talking about something and super saturated.
[00:12:13] And the difference nowadays I think is fields go from green to, I guess they use the economic terms, the tragedy, the commons, which is all muddy pasture land that’s been destroyed, very quickly. You could have a topic, let’s just say there’s a brand new tool. And, let’s say it’s TikTok and they’ve got a hundred million users inside of a year or two, and no one’s talking about marketing on TikTok.
[00:12:37] And then of course, you’ve. 5,000 marketers who all are in the pursuit of content, books, webinars, courses, lectures, all of the ways in which you monetize that type of content. Nowadays that arms race, as you describe it, is literally like months. Or weeks. Whereas, 10 years ago I had, I think three, three to six months where I had a monopoly on marketing on Pinterest as a topic.
[00:13:04] And then of course what happened was, as all things do, the biggest. Internet publishers took away my key phrase ranks and, my, my authority in the, in the topic. Because they’re bigger, and bigger reach. So that’s a different issue, than is it your own authentic voice or that kind of thing.
[00:13:22] But anyway, all that to say, I think there’s a lot here to geek out over,
[00:13:25] Chris: absolutely. .
[00:13:28] Kyle: It is interesting though. You can actually with, Jasper tell it if you want it in a certain tone. Like you can say Joe Rogan or Optimist Prime, honestly, like cartoon characters because what they did with that, with the AI is they actually, took 10% of the written internet and loaded it into their AI engine, and That’s way more data than any human can, really process.
[00:13:55] And so what it’s trying to do is try to figure out different patterns, to be able to communicate. And I think as these systems get more and more sophisticated, they’re gonna be faster, more efficient, and probably more persuasive, in their writing than we are because they’re gonna be, look at the writing that’s.
[00:14:10] Successfully across the internet and just incorporated at a much faster pace. Yeah, and so I think where we go from a future standpoint is I think AI is gonna be doing a lot more of the copywriting. It’s probably gonna be a lot more of the image creation as well. I can definitely see a day, and it’s already starting to take place now where you have ai that it’s, that’s looking at the images that work well for an a.
[00:14:34] Gathering the best information about it now, it’ll then be able to create that, version of the graphic for it, and then write the content for the ad and do it in real. I think you’re gonna come in a day where you’re gonna get customized. You think it was a problem that Facebook understood, what you liked and targeted you with that.
[00:14:50] Imagine if you had custom built ads directly for you as the consumer. I think that’s where it’s gonna be going to. And I think AI and the content writing piece of it Wow. Is going to, drive that as
[00:14:59] Jason: we move into the future. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:02] Michael: Interesting. It feels a bit like some kind of slightly dystopian, I dunno if Blade Runners brings to mind or something like people screaming ads at you as you run through this sort of LA up full of armed gangs.
[00:15:11] I dunno, sounds a bit scary, efficient, but I guess on the other hand, if you are on the marketing side of it, it sounds have an amazing opportunity. Chris, do you have already dark view of this? You were implying earlier that you felt uneasy about it somehow.
[00:15:22] Chris: There’s the light side and the dark side to all of it.
[00:15:24] You can be a, white hat marketer and do all the things because you have a product that you know will bring value to your potential customers and that’s why you’re telling them about it. Or you can be a salesman and use techniques of persuasion and get people to buy something that they don’t need.
[00:15:39] And I just hope more of it is on the side of, hey, this allows me to create more content, better content, For all the good things instead of, because as someone who’s published books for the past, 12 years or so, it’s gonna be easy where anybody can publish a book on any topic and hey, write this book about, starting a side business in the tone of Gary V.
[00:15:59] And all of a sudden they’ve got a book published with like fairly good content and they don’t actually have any knowledge of what they’re doing. And yeah, I’m not trying to be negative on it, but I, this is where I tell my kids like, this is why nft. NFTs in a sense, not this is exactly an NFT application, but like certifies.
[00:16:18] Yes. This came from Chris Green, from Jason Miles from Gary, from James Clear versus, Hey, this really looks like it came from Gary V, but doesn’t have that stamp on, it doesn’t have that blue check, it doesn’t have the nft, whatever is out there to like really authenticate what’s real and what’s, yeah.
[00:16:32] I don’t say not real, but auto generated not, pure content from an individual. And so those things sorted out, before I go and teach everybody how to write an AI book and set up a funnel.
[00:16:42] Michael: It reminds me of the world of, rare musical instruments, which I’m sure is chief for other antiques, but I’m not versed in them.
[00:16:47] Like a rare violin, had a flat that you had a violin made in the 18th century somewhere, and it was worth about 15,000 pounds then, and probably about 30,000 now. And they’re incredibly valuable things for somewhat 40,000 bucks or about 30,000 bucks depending on when you’re listening and what the market’s done to my currency.
[00:17:02] But if it had been authenticated as a, whatever the name of the maker was, it would’ve been worth four times as much. Almost basically a certificate or a pasted name or anything like that. So to your point, Chris, that there are, there is gonna become some kind of a secondary market in authentication of, is this written by AI using Gary V’s.
[00:17:19] Voice? Rather, Like that guy used the same kind of pattern for making it violin. Or is that actually Gary V? This is a very instant point and I think as a marketing point, it’s gonna be more and more. Authenticity is gonna be even more at a premium than it is now. Anyway,
[00:17:33] Jason: my thought. Yeah, it’s interesting.
[00:17:35] I guess the way I was metabolizing these ideas and topics was, my point of reference, between my own, just grinding it out on topics and writing was, our implementation of Grammarly. So Grammarly is an interesting tool if you haven’t checked it out, it’s really, it’s, it takes the best elements of Microsoft Word where you can, you.
[00:17:52] Auto correct things and, spell check and stuff like that. Punctuation, correction. And it really leans into that. So far it’s amazing. And it has features like Kyle described where you can have tone, applied to your writing, but what it does is it perfects your own content. And, and I have a technical editor that when I write, she’ll read.
[00:18:14] When I’m writing in a confused way, she’ll just make a comment and say, Hey, this is confusing, or, But she’ll also correct all the obvious stuff. And it was probably a couple years ago where I had poked around with Grammarly and then I just said to her, let’s just get Grammarly Pro and you can run it through Grammarly Pro.
[00:18:32] And then still do your process. But the Grammarly Pro stuff fixes all of, and really fine tunes for punctuation, grammar, that, that kind of, issue in the writing process. So to me that the top, if you think about your. Writing is like a multi-level kind of effort.
[00:18:50] The Grammarly work polishes the final product, but the guts of it was still all your own choices. This would take the, this would go further down into the creation process, which is what’s interesting to me, as a, an aid or a tool. And so I, I think that’s how I’ve been thinking about this is, do you know, do I wanna go deeper?
[00:19:08] Now, I will say that with grammar, it will, I guess what you could say, generic eyes, your writing. Like one time I had a manuscript that she put through Grammarly and she did all of the, pro supposed or proposed, changes to my writing and it took my sentences that I. Interesting. Had a hook or a writing tone that was really catchy.
[00:19:33] Little short phrases or, repetition deliberately, stuff like that. And it just obliterated all that stuff because it made it more, standardized writing. And when I read it back I was like, What happened? All my good stuff. Felt super generic. And so I told her, in our process we had to tune that up so that my stylistic choices didn’t get butchered out, in the process.
[00:19:53] So this is what I’m thinking about as I think about adding Pepper or, Jasper, to the next step. And I think I’m gonna do it and see how it goes and, anyway. So that’s how I’m thinking about this stuff. Great.
[00:20:06] Michael: We do. Around the table. Wrap up or come? Sorry, Go on. Yeah, I think
[00:20:11] Kyle: it, it’s.
[00:20:12] You, it’s a tool like anything else, right? And any tool requires you to invest some time and energy into mastering it and figuring out how to make it work for you. So I think in between the time before all the AI is doing all the marketing in the world, and now, you have the ability to leverage those tools as best and try to give yourself an edge in, in whatever you’re using it for.
[00:20:35] So I think it’s, Just like any other piece of software and you use in your business, have a plan to use it, play with it, get good at it, leverage it, see if it actually provides value for it, and if it does, great. If not, you scrap it. I think that’s the mindset. But you don’t want to bury your head in the sand.
[00:20:51] I think you need to be aware of what’s happening in terms of the advertis space with ai because it’s already all around you, not even beyond just the tools for writing. In analytics, in, in all the stuff. The way Amazon uses AI in its business, for analyzing data, in advertising. There’s already a lot of AI driven stuff and it’ll continue to be more.
[00:21:12] So it’s already becoming more and more part of everyday marketing. And I think so we understand it and we’re utilizing in our business that just allows us to, beyond the leading edge of where we need to be competi.
[00:21:27] Jason: Love it. Final thoughts.
[00:21:32] Chris: So someone should make a, kind of an AI driven Amazon product page generator.
[00:21:37] Say, Look at the best selling products. Look at the ones that convert the most. Look at the ones with the best reviews, with the lowest return rate. And yeah, make me a listing, in complete with lifestyle. And everything. And if it’s a good product, hey, go for it. That’s, I like that as more of a commercial application versus, attaching, a personality to something.
[00:21:54] , if you’re gonna write with ai, you gotta, disclose it. You gotta say, Yeah, this is, it’s gonna be weird. It’s gonna be interesting. So you got content, you got you, like I said, you got images and you’re gonna have it video and it’s not gonna be long. And you say, Hey, make me a a 22nd Gary V Instagram video about this.
[00:22:09] and it’s gonna have Gary v. Deep video, it’s gonna be convincing deep,
[00:22:14] Kyle: fake of his, face. That’s
[00:22:16] Jason: the, that’s not
[00:22:17] Chris: that far away. Yeah. And, as society has trouble, like you, discerning what’s real and not real, what’s true and what’s false on things like social media and any type of content, this is going to be worrisome if people are not well versed in skepticism and withholding judgement.
[00:22:32] And you know what I’m not sure I have an opinion on that until I get some more information that’s gonna be problematic. And if AI contributes to that is honestly something I worry
[00:22:40] Jason: about.
[00:22:41] Kyle: Yeah, for sure.
[00:22:42] Michael: Skepticism And not having an opinion. Yeah. That doesn’t sound like any social media platform I’ve ever been on.
[00:22:47] Chris: you realize how refreshing it is to go off topic. to say, You know what, I know you asked me my opinion on that, but I don’t have enough information to make an informed opinion on that. And that’s the end of the conversation. That’s where more things need to be, especially when it comes to ai. Hey, I read this, but let me verify, let me validate.
[00:23:01] Let me go to a trusted source. Let me go to a blue checked NFT verified actual expert in the topic to see, Hey, do you agree with this or not agree? Is this a good source? Should I, pay attention to this? Yeah, we need more of that across the board.
[00:23:16] Michael: Arm into that for
[00:23:17] Kyle: definitely. If you wanna learn more about ai, I want you to, My new website is Chris Green and ai.com.
[00:23:24] That is my, No, I’m just kidding. That site doesn’t exist yet. I love
[00:23:27] the
[00:23:27] Michael: fact we’re gonna witness that the first podcast in which somebody lives sues somebody else on air from this identity. That’s beautiful. Love it. The other obvious call to action is possibly more conventionally to go and get some actual expert help from somebody if you need some help.
[00:23:42] So I suppose we ought to mention where people can get that if they wanna do
[00:23:45] Jason: that. Yeah. Let me, just mention final thoughts. The other consideration on my mind is the cost structure. Pepper.ai is $99 lifetime for tier three service. I just looked at Jasper. It’s basically I think $39 a month for the lowest tier.
[00:24:00] But then you evaluate that compared to what if you did have a full-time copywriter that was, based in the Philippines or somewhere else, maybe that’s a 400 to $800 a month, outsourced expense. And then what if you were doing it. And just grinding it out yourself, what’s your hourly rate worth?
[00:24:15] And, so that’s a different consideration. I think that’s really important. And I I think as these tools get better and better, it’s gonna be, first of all, it’ll probably end up being somebody who’ll make a free tool. So you, they’ll eliminate the cost structure and then they’ll sell you on something else, their educational products or membership or something like that.
[00:24:32] But I think this, the value proposition for these tools is only gonna get stronger and stronger. The moral, ethical dilemmas Chris is describing, will get blurrier and blurrier, but their. It seems as if not gonna stop getting better at the goal, which is, content. So anyway, that’s my final takeaway is that’s another consideration to think about and I appreciate you guys’ perspective on all this is really an interesting topic to dive into.
[00:24:57] Michael: Yeah, it’s been great. I suppose I feel like I can’t end a podcast without simple call to action, which is get us in human form before the robot’s fake us over there at, Spotify and Apple and other places where you can consume your podcast. And yeah, really interesting discussion. I like that a lot.
[00:25:14] Thanks guys.
[00:25:14]