In recent years, generative AI tools have been adopted by businesses for a number of tasks, such as writing blog posts, creating headshots and crunching data.
While it is believed that AI has the potential to boost a business’s overall productivity, the sudden rise of such tools has exposed a number of significant problems. Here we explore five major concerns that accountancy firms should consider, if they are considering the move to AI-generated content.
Inaccurate information
Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, work by predicting what comes next in a sequence, based on patterns they have been taught. They are designed to generate responses that are plausible, but not necessarily factually accurate. If they are given a prompt that is vague, or open to interpretation, they may generate responses that are incorrect or misleading.
When this misleading information is published online, especially in customer-facing applications, it can harm a business’s reputation. In regulated industries like finance, accuracy is crucial. If AI-generated content provides incorrect financial advice, it could result in severe consequences, for both your business and your customers.
Unintentional bias
Generative AI tools are only as good as the data used to train them. If the training data contains inherent biases, whether related to gender, race, socio-economic status, or other factors, these biases can make their way into the content they generate.
Generative AI tools are trained on large sets of data taken from the internet, which may contain biases and even discriminatory content. When used in customer-facing applications, AI-generated content can increase the impact of these biases, potentially influencing customer behaviour and encouraging bias without customers even realising it.
If the AI tool used by your business is consistently producing content influenced by specific biases, it could lead to accusations of specific political bias, or even unintentional discrimination. This could damage your business’s reputation.
Information overload
Generative AI tools can create text, images, and other content quickly and at scale. They can generate large volumes of content in seconds, increasing the already ever-growing amount of new content available online every day. This constant information overload has already created challenges for businesses in relation to finding, sorting, and managing relevant data.
As generative AI creates more content, traditional methods of managing information can become overwhelming. The quick creation of content can lead to clutter, making it difficult to find valuable information. As content volume grows, businesses need scalable storage solutions that can handle the load. Existing storage systems might not be able to keep up with the demands of generative AI-generated content.
The sheer amount of AI-generated content can make it challenging for businesses to analyse and extract meaningful insights. For example, identifying which content contributes to which specific outcomes. With so much content being generated, assessing its quality and relevance is even more challenging.
Differentiating between human-written and AI-generated content can be difficult, leading to potential issues with credibility and authenticity. Excessive information can lead to decision fatigue, where you, or your customers struggle to make informed choices due to the sheer volume of content presented to you. With this increased volume of content, the risk of misinformation spreading also increases, potentially undermining trust in businesses making use of AI-generated content.
Legal issues
There have been lawsuits alleging that some generative AI tools were trained using existing data and artistic styles without proper authorisation. Businesses that use generative AI tools for content creation could face legal risks if the AI-generated content inadvertently infringes on someone else’s intellectual property.
If a generative AI tool creates content that infringes on existing works, it is still unclear who is liable. The developers of AI tools may potentially be considered liable for training their software using copyrighted material. But given the ambiguity of the situation, businesses making use of these tools should also be prepared to navigate such issues.
Another legal question arises around the ownership of the content created by generative AI tools. Who owns AI-generated content? The business that commissioned it? The AI software company that developed the tools? Or is the work in the public domain, since AI-generated content lacks human authorship? Current rulings suggest that works created by humans with AI assistance can be copyrighted, but as it is still a relatively new phenomenon, not all of these questions have answers.
Low-quality content
The use of AI-generated content coincides with the increase of low-quality, unoriginal content designed to manipulate search engine rankings. This can be a problem for accountancy firms aiming to use AI-generated content, as search engines like Google are becoming increasingly strict in their attempts to filter out low-quality or spammy content.
Accountancy firms need to be aware that automated content generation at scale can lead to the creation of pages that lack substance or seem designed primarily to exploit search results. This could negatively impact the firm’s online visibility and reduce the effectiveness of its website in attracting clients.
Firms should be cautious about relying too heavily on AI-generated content without thorough quality checks and human oversight to ensure the content adds genuine value and aligns with the firm’s reputation for professionalism.
In need of original content?
Providing original, accurate information is crucial for any business. But that doesn’t always mean it’s easy. Even with the use of AI. Sometimes, it needs a human touch.
At Rapport Digital, we are experts in digital marketing services for accountants. We offer a range of digital marketing solutions, from SEO to email marketing.
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