Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to have a positive impact on content creation, but it could also have an adverse effect on content discovery. So finds BMV in a survey of 1,000 content marketers, many of whom express concern about the impact of search engine implementation of AI chatbots on content discovery.
In the survey, 40% of respondents predicted that AI writing tools and services such as ChatGPT will replace junior writers on the content marketing team within the next 5 years, and an additional 29% believe that all writers would be replaced during that time frame. That might have some drawbacks beyond those for the writers themselves, as a majority (58%) of respondents believe that AI-generated content will be penalized by search engines in the future and show up lower in search results.
The bigger issue, potentially, is the impact that AI chatbots will have on content discovery. This mirrors the worry that publishers have, as they derive sizable portions of their traffic from search and fuller results from chatbots without a listof links could significantly dampen traffic.
As such, more than one-fifth (21%) of content marketers surveyed are extremely concerned about the future discovery of their content as search engines implement AI chatbots into search. Another 21% share are moderately concerned and a further 24% are somewhat concerned, leaving just one-third who are slightly (17%) or not at all (17%) concerned by this potential development.
For more, check out the full survey results here.
