I was asked if I could create a fully automated AI blog posting system
Yes. I could. Next question.
Oh, you want more than that. Fine.
A few weeks ago, someone asked me, with the bright-eyed energy of a person who has just discovered that technology exists, whether I could set up a system that would automatically generate blog posts, automatically publish them, and basically run their entire content operation without any human being needing to be involved at any point in the process.
I said I could look into it.
What I meant was, I could, this would be a terrible idea, and I’m going to need a moment to work out how to explain why without sounding like someone’s suspicious grandmother being shown a smartphone.
Let me describe what this system would actually produce
It would produce content. Technically. In the same way that a photocopier produces documents, or a vending machine produces snacks.
The output exists. It is, by most measurable definitions, a thing. It has words in it. The words are in sentences. The sentences are, broadly speaking, about the topic.
It would be published on a schedule, which would feel like momentum and would not be momentum.
It would accumulate, which would feel like an archive and would not be an archive.
It would be consistent, which is the one thing in content marketing that people have decided is an unconditional virtue even when applied to consistently producing nothing of value.
Google would read it, make a series of judgements and mostly ignore it.
Readers, on the rare occasion one arrived, would leave.
Not rudely. Just with the energy of someone who opened a door, saw that the room was empty and closed it again.
The thing people are actually asking for
When someone asks for a fully automated content system, they’re usually asking for the appearance of content activity without the cost of content effort.
Which is understandable.
Content is effortful. Good content is genuinely, stubbornly, unreasonably effortful and if a machine could do it convincingly then I’d be the first person signing up because I have other things I’d like to do with my afternoons.
But the effort is not a flaw in the process. The effort is where the value comes from.
The reason a well-written post builds authority is precisely because authority is hard to fake over time.
It requires knowing things and having opinions about things and expressing those opinions in a way that makes a reader feel like a specific human being wrote this for a specific reason, rather than a content-shaped object was deposited here on a Tuesday because the schedule said Tuesday.
An automated system removes the human. The human is the whole point.
What I actually recommended
Using AI as part of a process run by a human, yes, enthusiastically.
AI for research, for outlines, for drafts that get interrogated and improved and shaped by someone who knows what they’re doing.
That’s AI augmentation and it’s genuinely useful. I use it constantly and I’m not embarrassed about it.
An automated pipeline that generates, schedules and publishes with no meaningful human in the loop?
No, and also please don’t, and also if you do, please don’t tell people you have a content strategy because you don’t.
You have a content printer and the output quality is going to reflect that at some point in a way that will be annoying for me to fix.
The short version
Could I build it? Yes. Should you want it? No.
Will someone build it for you if I don’t? Almost certainly, and they’ll charge you less than I would.
But, in eighteen months you’ll be paying someone like me to audit why your site is full of content that reads like it was produced by a very tired robot who learned about your industry from a Wikipedia article and hasn’t been outside in a very long time.
I’d rather skip to the part where we do it properly. It’s more work. It’s also the only version that actually works.
Get in touch when you’re ready to go.
