How to use AI without flooding the internet with garbage content?

Joya Scarlata (00:02) I mean, to me, doesn't work that way. So it's not like, okay, I have an idea, chat, chibit, write it, and then you just post it. And I, I come from the B2B world and it's very, you know, where brand, your brand is so important. It's, it's based on long-term trust. So the moment you publish something that is sloppy or very AI generated, you're going to. you risk losing your customers trust and that transparency as well. Ben Ard (00:57) Welcome back to another episode of content amplified today I'm joined by Joya Joya Welcome to the show. Joya Scarlata (01:03) Thank you for having me. Ben Ard (01:04) Yeah, Joya, I'm excited. This is going to be a conversation that I think a lot of people can relate to. We'll have a lot of fun with. I also think a lot of people have opinions on this. I'm excited to learn yours. But Joya, like every episode before we dive into the subject, let's get to know you, your background, all that kind of fun stuff so we can kind of know who's talking with us today. Joya Scarlata (01:10) Right. Sure. So once again, my name is Joria Scarlatta. I am the director of marketing for a tech company called Intera IT. So I've been in the marketing space for over 10 years now. And I've been in the AI space for about five years, so before COVID and whatnot. it really... came out of just a fascination on how AI was just transforming different industries. And I was really interested and fascinated to see how it was just transferring marketing. And obviously this is before generative AI, chat, GBT and whatnot. And it just, it's crazy to see how fast and how different the industry is now compared to five years ago. And it's just, Obviously, as we see is just changing before our eyes. I write about AI and marketing, and I speak about it with a particular lens on leadership and strategy and also AI literacy. That's also a topic that I'm really fascinated and passionate about as well. That's me in a nutshell. Ben Ard (02:33) I love it. That is so cool. I love you were in AI before AI was ever cool. Like you said, it's been around forever, but as soon as that chat GPT 3.0, everyone knew what generative AI was real quick and real fast. And I'm excited. So as someone who's spent so long with artificial intelligence and the very early stages of generative AI, there's this new term. Joya Scarlata (02:44) Yeah. Definitely. Ben Ard (02:59) that I feel like every new marketer knows and may have a love hate relationship with, but it's AI slop. And to kick this off, we're going to talk and focus this whole episode on AI slop, what it looks like, how to avoid it, all that kind of fun stuff. But let's kick it off with Joya. What's your definition? Joya Scarlata (03:06) Yes. Ben Ard (03:20) of AI slop just for anyone in the audience who isn't familiar with this lovely term we throw around day in and day out. Joya Scarlata (03:27) Yeah, I think that there's an important distinction that needs to be made. think maybe there might be a belief that AI slot means content equals content created by AI. And it's not necessarily that. I wouldn't define it as that. It's not AI slot is content made with AI. It's AI slot. What it is is content that exists because AI has made it easy. Not because it was needed or it's not. You get a sense of this idea of sameness that because there's no thought behind it, there's no reasoning behind it. It's almost just sounds robotic. So after a while, all the content really sounds the same. So That's what I would say. It's almost like automation without intention, content without intention. That would be how I would define AI's log. Ben Ard (04:25) love it. Yeah, absolutely. And for all the AI slop out there, there's absolutely AI usage that is productive and good and quality. AI slop is the one word prompts that produce really crappy content and gets overshared, all that fun stuff. So I love your definition though. It's not just AI generated content. It's poorly generated AI content, things like that that are generic, things of that nature. Joya Scarlata (04:49) Yes. Ben Ard (04:52) So AI Slop is a recent thing, obviously, within the last three years as AI has come out. Where do you think AI Slop starts to creep in for most teams? Like, where are you starting to see teams actually experience this phenomenon? Joya Scarlata (05:06) So I think in my opinion, AI in general has just made our life obviously very easy in a lot of ways. It's able to automate workflows and whatnot. It's able to speed up a lot of tasks. And I think where AI Slop kind of comes into the picture is that teams just skip. And they just go from, going instead of going starting from a to B, they go directly to B and they jump straight to the output. They don't put, again, they don't really think about maybe the brand voice. They don't really think about, you know, what, what, why should we publish this content? So instead of, so I think AI Slop is, okay, what should we publish right away? You know, how many different variations should we have about on this? Let's use AI instead of asking, why are we publishing this content? What problem are we exactly trying to solve or what is our target audience? I think that, you know, we, shouldn't, AI shouldn't really speed up our thinking and, you know, the, the quality that we should put into it. And I think that's what's happening. And again, that's where we see. you know, the sameness, it's just very generic content. And after a while, you just, you notice it. And I think that's why there's so much discussion around it, because there's really not any thought. And then, and also I want to emphasize that if there is no clarity at the beginning, AI is just amplifying that. So, you know, if there's really no thought, ⁓ if there's confusion, if there's whatever AI is just making that, you know, just putting a magnifying lens on it and making it even bigger. So, there can be, don't get me wrong, there can be very good content, but it could also lack intention and thought behind it. Ben Ard (06:58) I love that. And I love how you're talking about having upfront a lot of clarity, a lot of understanding about your objectives, what you're trying to do. I worked in the agency world for so long that if someone were to come to us and it was, and this was back in the early days of SEO where it was all blog posts, right? Somewhere to say, I want a blog post on such and such a thing. And that's all they said. Honestly, the only result we could give them is a generic piece of slop. It would have been freelancer agency slop, whatever you want to call it back then. However, if they had said, hey, here's my unique point of view. Here's the angle I want to take. Here's my first party research that I have. By the way, I've got quotes from a dozen experts and they're all showing this cutting edge data, yada, yada, yada. This is what I want you to write. Night and day differences between those two things. It doesn't change because it's AI. It's all the same. The instruction set has to come with uniqueness and value upfront. Joya Scarlata (07:46) Yeah. Exactly. And I think even as just with prompting, I mean, we hear all the time garbage, garbage in garbage out. If you have a not a great prompt, then you're not going to have a great output as well. So I think that also, you know, comes into play when it comes to creating content using AI. As well. Yeah. Ben Ard (08:07) Yep. A hundred percent. So there's a lot of people that like to kind of train their eye and maybe it's intentional, not intentional, but they can kind of see from a mile away if something was generated by AI, if it was slop, what are some of the telltale signs for you that something is AI slop that you can tell, Hey, maybe this isn't like a high quality piece of content that I'm about to consume. Joya Scarlata (08:34) I know probably the, the short answer. Well, no, I mean, I know a lot of people say the dashes, you know, there's a lot of conversation. there's an dash that must be AI generated and whatnot. I honestly, I would say that, I don't have like an AI, AI swap radar, but I think that if, if content tends to sound a bit, again, generic. There's really no point of view. know, it's, there's no opinion. mean, and I guess it depends on the content. Maybe someone is just reiterating what they've read and whatnot, or maybe summarizing something. Okay. I mean, maybe it's a little bit hard to know if it's AI slop or not. but maybe I would say that. And a piece of content that doesn't really have any. polished to it that doesn't have, like I said, a point of view. It's just flat, emotionally flat. I would probably venture to guess that is a little bit AI generated. I've in my personal experience, I mean, I think the most frustrating thing I've seen, especially on LinkedIn is I and I've it's kind of slowed down, but I've seen where I've written a post. And the comments are literally regurgitating my post. And, and it's, it's a little bit, and I've called people out about that. So it just, it's very obvious when they fed it into chat, GBT, and then it's like, you know, help me write a response to this, but it's just res you know, summarizing my, my post. And so that's a little bit frustrating, but, yeah, I would just say there's it's just flat, flat piece of content. So yeah. Ben Ard (09:51) Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that definition flat. so with that said, how do you use AI to produce quality content or can it even write on flat content? Is it a matter of prompting or is it a matter of human editing? What's kind of your threshold and you feel like, okay, this is for me where AI can actively play a role and I can still have a good. Joya Scarlata (10:16) haha Ben Ard (10:40) products that I'm producing when it comes to content. Joya Scarlata (10:43) Yeah, I mean, I think with anything when you're using AI, I think it's important. And maybe this is where a little bit of that AI literacy comes into play. You have to be aware where that AI, sorry, human AI handoff comes into play. So obviously, you know, I think you can use AI for, drafts. Things like that, maybe helping brainstorm ideas on what type of content you want to write. But at the end of the day, you know, I think you still have to have that human voice. What is your brand voice? What is the angle that you want to try to look at? What is the perspective, the unique perspective that you can bring in? I think AI can help with that. It can be a partner. but I still don't think it can replace, entirely replace your voice. So I think it's important to really understand what AI is good at and helping you and then where that human touch is important. So for example, editing, and I keep telling folks, I think it's very easy to forget because yes, We see that, you know, there's different model upgrades. seems like almost like every week, know, chat, GBT, Claude and whatnot. And yes, it is. These models are definitely getting smarter, but they're still prone to mistakes. They're still prone to hallucinations. And I think that's very important to recognize that it's, can't just be like, summarize this and I'm going to trust you chat GBT. It doesn't. I mean, to me, doesn't work that way. So it's not like, okay, I have an idea, chat, chibit, write it, and then you just post it. And I, come from the B2B world and it's very, you know, where brand, your brand is so important. It's, it's based on long-term trust. So the moment you publish something that is sloppy or very AI generated, you're going to. you risk losing your customers trust and that transparency as well. Ben Ard (12:53) I love that. That's amazing. Okay, Joya, you've been working with AI for the last five years. You saw generative AI hit the scene. I want you to pull out your crystal ball. Where do you feel like AI is going in the next few years and how will it continue to evolve? How can we kind of prepare ourselves for the next steps of what AI is going to look like? Joya Scarlata (13:04) You I mean, there's, there's so many different ways I can answer this question. think one is, I think we will continue to go down the agentic AI route where I think where AI is increasingly embedded changes the way we do have our workflows and whatnot. But if we are talking about content, you know, where, where is that piece going? I think that. because of this conversation with AI Slab, it's very evident that people are getting increasingly more aware with what is AI generated content, whether it's images, videos and whatnot. And I do see that there's a little bit of backlash towards it or can be backlash towards it. So I like to think that content, there's going to be this a little bit of correction towards intent and taste. think I like to think that that, you know, I think when brands start seeing that, hey, audiences are not really open to AI generated, whatever, I like to think that companies are going to start moving away from volume heavy or volume first content, maybe fewer pieces, more stronger points of view. to really be able to differentiate that brand. I mean, now I think the question is, okay, now we're in this world of sameness. How do we differentiate? How do we stand out again? like to think that maybe there will be more human editing, more human involvement in these workflows and that, again, audiences are gonna be much better at identifying, and they are right now. you don't have to be an expert in AI. It's, mean, it's just obvious, you know, kind of to see that. So I think, ⁓ so in short, I to think that brands are going to move away, maybe fewer well-crafted pieces that really will help their brand, ⁓ stand out. So let's see. I maybe I'll be completely wrong. Maybe. ⁓ Ben Ard (15:17) I love it. ⁓ I hope your future is right 100%. I love the idea of more well thought out, high quality content that we actually want to consume. So I'm way more likely to get good stuff. That would be amazing. Joya, this is incredible. Thank you for the insights today. For anyone who wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you? Joya Scarlata (15:30) Yeah. Yeah, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I think that's the best way. Just find me under Joya Scarlatta. And I'm happy to continue the conversation. Ben Ard (15:48) Love it. And all of joy has contact information, LinkedIn profile, that kind of fun stuff will be in the show now. So just scroll down, click on the link and connect with joya joya again. Thank you so much for the time and all the insights and honestly, the really cool insights that you have into AI today really do appreciate it. Joya Scarlata (16:05) Thank you for having me.