It goes without saying that AI technology has come a long way recently. 

For example, graphics engines like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion have been challenging the way people think about concepts like stock imagery and even fine art since 2025.

Now the introduction of ChatGPT has everyone wondering about the future of pursuits like education, content writing, and even search engine optimization itself. 

And even if you don’t believe ChatGPT signals the end of them, it seems inevitable that it will affect SEO and perhaps change it forever.

But what is all the AI ChatGPT debate really about?

What does the rise of AI technology mean for SEO on Google, and how can digital marketers prepare for the future? 

Here’s a rundown of what you need to know.

It can’t get ahead of trends

As any experienced SEO professional can attest to, a large part of the success of a digital marketing campaign has to do with figuring out where things are going next.

To create viral content, you need to be able to understand trends.

And to hit on the next big thing before it happens, you need a full understanding of not only other human beings, but of what they respond to and why.

This makes it easier to predict how they will or won’t react to a new idea, topic, or approach to a given niche.

AI can’t do this accurately.

This is partially because it doesn’t have or understand human emotions.

In order for the program to know more, it needs to learn more via additional training. More training, in turn, requires additional testing. All of this takes time, labor, and resources.

By the time the newest round of learning and testing is finished, the knowledge gained is already at least slightly out of date.

The internet-based world we live in moves extremely quickly – so quickly sometimes that it’s hard for even humans to keep up.

ChatGPT and similar programs can’t even begin to match human beings in this regard, let alone actually outstrip them.

The elements that make the internet as appealing, connected, and timely is unique to human beings.

That said, it’s best to think of AI and ChatGPT as really detail-oriented assistants – helpful tools that can make the rest of your job as a digital marketing professional easier.

You might also notice that many of the largest brands are sort of quietly threading AI-generated copy into their content strategies. It’s not always obvious, but shift your attention to the consistent, sometimes slightly bland style you’ll see on big brand homepages and landing pages—there’s a good chance some heavy AI lifting is happening under the hood. Oddly enough, audiences don’t seem to mind until tone becomes noticeably generic or off. It turns out, people crave relatability, but for transactional or repetitive stuff, AI can blend right in and save teams a chunk of time.

Of course, there’s a flipside. Not every business gets away with copy-pasting from a language model and calling it a day. Some sectors (think legal, medical, or financial) are held to a higher standard, both by regulators and by reputation-savvy readers. The tolerance for fuzzy or awkward phrasing is pretty much zero, and getting fact-checked in public or penalized by Google is a real risk. So while AI might churn through basic FAQs or summaries, there’s still a clear lane for niche expertise and human intervention—especially anywhere nuance matters, or consequences exist for being just a hair off.

How to Use AI in your SEO strategies?

The importance of digital marketing should be considered when it comes to helping your website rank higher, gain more traffic, and ultimately convert readers into buyers or customers.

AI technology is becoming increasingly popular with digital marketers for search engine optimization (SEO), as it can assist with fast content creation.

Unfortunately, there are some caveats to using AI for SEO. As search engines become more innovative, they may not recognize AI-generated content as valuable and useful content, although it might be able to fool some unsuspecting readers. Therefore, the quality of your content should never be compromised when using AI technology.

Although you can use AI-generated ideas and outlines for your bigger content strategy, relying on heavy AI for the bulk of your blogs can have disastrous consequences for your site’s SEO.

This is especially true if Google’s search algorithms decide to ding AI-generated content. Nevertheless, there are some key ways AI and SEO can work together (for the better).

For quick outlines

For starters, AI can generate quick outlines for your content. With the assistance of natural language processing (NLP), AI can quickly come up with keywords and topics that are related to a given query.

Content marketers can use these outlines to brainstorm new topics.

If you’re stumped or don’t know about an industry enough to create meaningful content around it, AI is a great tool for mapping out ideas.

Remember, while AI-generated content might produce a strong outline, it’s up to you to fill in the gaps and create an engaging and authoritative blog post. Using ideas generated from AI is also a great way to refresh older content that seems to have gone stale.

For instance, if you pump out weekly articles on a particular topic, you can use AI to generate fresh ideas to keep readers engaged.

For meta descriptions and titles

Meta descriptions and titles are vital for SEO strategy and can be as effective as the content itself.

AI can help you create titles and descriptions that will entice readers to click on your page.

It can generate a synopsis of your content within seconds, providing you with a pitch that readers won’t resist.

Keep in mind, the shorter, the better when it comes to meta descriptions, as readers are more likely to click on your page if they know what they’re getting into.

For related content

Using AI can also help you connect the dots between different pieces of content on your page. By using algorithms, AI can recommend related topics that readers might find interesting. For instance, you might be generating an outline of the latest trends in fashion, and your AI might generate a related topic, such as streetwear.

Would you have ever thought about this niche sub-topic? Probably not, or at least not after doing the same research over and over again.

AI can help you break out of your content rut and keep readers engaged with more topics related to their interests.

It can help you generate new ideas for related content, and add more depth to your existing content.

The Future of AI-generated Content

Many digital marketers and content creators view AI as an evil source for plagiarism and low-quality content that threatens their craft.

However, if appropriately used, AI can be a powerful tool for SEO.

Here are some things to consider about AI’s future in the SEO sphere and for other digital marketing specialists.

Not punishable – unless it’s low quality

Google has said that it will continue to reward high-quality content.

So, as long as your content continues to provide engaging, thoughtful, and authoritative information, Google, at least for now, won’t punish your blog by algorithmically reducing its rankings in search results.

The good news is that responsible marketers can use AI to create helpful and engaging content for their users.

AI gets smarter, editors get more careless

AI’s continued development is a double-edged sword.

It’s not a replacement for thoughtful and authoritative blog posts, but an aid to create outlines and discover new ideas.

As AI gets more intelligent, so does the content it generates, but this can lead to marketers and editors becoming more careless.

Even some extensive publishers, such as Men’s Journal, have used AI to generate blog posts that contain significant inaccuracies.

This isn’t a sustainable strategy and could lead to serious penalties from Google in the future.

Google is especially strict regarding YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content, which can affect a user’s money or safety somehow.

Even in the future, when AI could generate good YMYL content (health, finance, wellness, etc.), we should still require human editors to verify the accuracy and trustworthiness of the produced material.

Google’s Bard and AI and What This Means For SEO

If there was ever a doubt about Google’s commitment to AI, the company’s recent release of its new, AI-powered chatbot Bard should be enough to put you at ease.

Bard is a conversational assistant who can help answer your most pressing questions in-depth. With machine learning and AI, Bard can give you better-than-human insights on the latest trends in anything from SEO to rocket launches to nutrition.

While Bard is still in testing and continuously learning how to communicate using information gathered from the World Wide Web, it serves as a reminder that AI & SEO are both here to stay. Marketers have yet to show whether they can make them act side by side.

Wrap Up

In conclusion, AI ChatGPT isn’t going to get rid of SEO or do away with Google.

And it’s definitely not going to eliminate the need for original, heartfelt, human-created written content.

If anything, it will only make genuinely authentic human creation more valuable and important, especially moving forward into the future.

That means you need the best SEO content writers out there, putting their unique experience, insight, and skill to work for your brand.