Published by Jeremy. Last Updated on March 18, 2024.
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AI-related products and services have exploded onto the scene in recent months, and, in our opinion at least, are still in their infancy with a long way to go.
While our general motto is “we caution against use of AI products for your sites,” the simple truth is that is not always the case. Yes, you should not be using AI to write content that you are publishing. We'd argue that using AI to create images or other tangentially related content could be equally as unhelpful (in context, at least). But, that said, we do admit that there are some pretty cool uses of AI coming out for content creators and bloggers all the same- ones that even we highly endorse using within reason.
So, what ways can we use AI to improve our content? We have a few ideas!
Fix Imperfect Images
When it comes to images, the trendy use of artificial intelligence is to create images outright. This can be good for creating some images for illustrative purposes, but for the time being, AI is unlikely to replace a real, human artist in most categories.
In fact, when it comes to using images you don't create yourself, we are big advocates of paying artists, giving fellow creators backlinks in exchange for use, and/or licensing stock photos on places like Deposit Photos.
But one use of AI that we love is fixing up images you took yourself that aren't quite perfect. AI can do many tasks related to editing images, and one of my personal favorites is image upscaling.
Upscaling is a process where computers use predictive analysis to fill in the gaps of what is missing. This could be as simple as sharpening an image that may not be perfectly in focus, adding pixels to increase the effective size of an image, and more. While these are often best used when you want to improve an image's quality at a larger size, they can also be used for mild adjustments to make the image look more aesthetically pleasing.
AI to help make your own work better without putting artists out of work? We're in for that.
- Note: We want to reiterate again that “fixing images” and “creating images from nothing” are two different things. Fixing a small flaw, to us, is called editing. Changing a photo to the point that it is completely different from the captured scene is not. That fine line may be blurry, but it is still there.
Check Your Grammar
Thinking of a grammar tool as an AI product feels a bit unusual, but most are just that. Services like Grammarly have used the power of machine learning and language models to perfect their grammar-related tools and services to help make you a better writer.
That said, we do caution those who may use these kinds of services as they are trending into the generative style AI that many companies are testing out these days. While AI can detect poor grammar and offer suggestions, we strongly advise caution when utilizing any tool that creates text for you outright. Likewise, we also override recommended fixes in these tools quite often as some cases of grammar modeling can take away from your unique style.
As such, simply do not go crazy with these services if you lean on them all the same!
Organize and Analyze Data
We all know that there are many elements of AI that could be improved upon- writing, creating images, logic, thinking, err, well, most everything, really. But there is one department that it can do pretty well- math. Not just calculating equations but figuring out what math functions to use outright.
AI can save time for those who like to perform data analysis of traffic reports, affiliate conversion rates, income streams, etc. Simply upload a table into ChatGPT, ask the bot to analyze it for trends, or ask for a specific analysis, and more often than not, it may come back with some useful details you may not have even thought about.
When I uploaded an Excel file of data from Stay22, for example, I asked ChatGPT to broadly analyze the data by referencing specific columns and then asking to see if a condition was present or not. For example, comparing the lead times between the booking date to the start of the stay. In just a few moments, it came back with total count of bookings, mean lead time (49.37 days), standard deviation (62.66 days), minimum lead time (0 days), 25th percentile (7 days), 50th percentile (27 days), 75th percentile (68.75 days), and maximum (422 days).
I asked it to refine the data, only looking for bookings made in my city, to try and identify any variation in performance from my local blog, and it found 231 bookings with an average lead time of 39.91 days. Other data like standard deviation (53 days), minimum lead time (0 days), 25th percentile (6 days), 50th percentile (20 days), 75th percentile (44 days), and maximum (320 days) all highlighted that yes, my local blog had much shorter timescales from booking to completed stay than global bookings.
Can I take this back and do anything with it? Maybe. Maybe not. But it is also possible to refine data further to see if any specific booking tag had an outlier, if any destination country had an outlier, and the like.
Can this data be easily calculated by adding some equations and manipulating Pivot Tables? Absolutely. But if you don't know the process from past experience, figuring this out can be quite time-consuming, too. Likewise, one great thing about using AI for analysis like this is that it may come back with an idea that you simply never would have thought to try (like the percentile breakouts from above).
- Notes: It is always good to assume that your input into AI may be stored and utilized elsewhere without your knowledge. I try not to upload anything that has personally identifying details (account numbers or photos of people) and I will sometimes rename columns or row titles to be a bit more generic as well. Do I care if a program sees my affiliate data points? Not really. Do I care if they see my account number? Absolutely.
- Likewise, if you prefer to do data analysis on your own but are stuck, AI could also be a good tool to simply figure out what equation to use. A request like “I have X, Y, Z data and am trying to figure out A, B, C. What equations can I use” or, better, uploading a limited number of data points in a table, often results in the correct equation being recommended in return in moments.
Brainstorm Ideas When in a Rut
Although we cannot, in good faith, recommend using any AI tool to generate content that you'd subsequently publish, primarily because AI content can be easily detected these days (not to mention it is being removed from places like search engines), there are other uses all the same.
One of our favorites is for generating ideas before writing an article outright.
Let's say you're writing an article and you want to share 10 ideas within the topic you know pretty well. A “10 Ways to [Do a Thing]” post, if you will. You, as an expert, should have no problem coming up with most of these yourself. But what if you can only hit six? Well, “6 Ways to [Do a Thing]” just doesn't have the same marketing ring to it like 7 Ways or 10 Ways. What do you do?
Here, I like to pop into ChatGPT and ask it to give me more examples than I would need. So if I am writing an article about a gardening technique on my homestead site, I may ask ChatGPT to give me a list of 20 or 25 things within that technique.
Odds are good it'll come up with the ideas you already have, and then give an untold number of extras that may be relevant or may be terrible (it is AI, so of course a lot of the responses will be terrible). But you, as an expert, may see one idea in the list and have a lightbulb go off. You thought of something that was in the back of your mind but you forgot about, and now you are inspired to keep writing.
Using AI as a way to alleviate writer's block is an excellent opportunity here. But, as always, the onus to do the actual writing is on you.
Smart Detection for Affiliates
Our final use of AI that we love in blogging is not necessarily something we control, but something our brand partners will likely be integrating more and more in the future- smart product detection using AI.
We've seen a few examples of these come out from places like Stay22 and Travelpayouts, and the premise is quite novel. Products that incorporate AI can analyze your content and recognize its core topics. For travel bloggers, which these companies serve, it could be identifying the country, region, or city that any given article is about.
The novel solution that these tools then find relevant products on the fly (like tour recommendation widgets or a destination landing page) to serve to your readers. So a tour widget may use AI to recognize you are writing about Oslo and then automatically recommend day tours from the city- Travelpayouts has a great one from Get Your Guide shown above. Or for Stay22's Optimized Redirect, a basic Booking.com link can automatically redirect to the landing page for Oslo- thus serving your reader with a better destination page overall.
As this is a use of AI that we cannot control, we're mostly taking a wait-and-see approach to find out what other brands may be coming up with. That said, we expect smart detection for curated promotions based on content to be a stellar use of AI, and we anticipate seeing many more product-based solutions in the coming months and years.
Do you have a favorite use of AI in blogging that we have not featured? Comment below to share!
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