AI-assisted content in WordPress: where it saves time and where you need an editor

AI content writing in WordPress saves the most time on drafts, proofreading and rewording texts you already have. But a person still has to check the facts, the offer and the brand voice. ChatGPT has been publicly available since November 2022, and owners of online stores and company websites are trying it more and more for blog posts and product descriptions. Below I go through where artificial intelligence really cuts the work, where skipping the editor can lead to a costly mistake, and how to tie it all into a simple process.

How does AI content writing in WordPress work in early 2023?

Most often like this: the text is written in ChatGPT and someone pastes it into the editor by hand. Or it reaches the dashboard through a plugin that adds AI directly to WordPress. In both cases there is a language model underneath, a program that predicts the next words based on patterns drawn from a huge amount of text. It doesn’t check facts. It doesn’t know your offer. And it writes convincingly even when it is completely wrong (probably its most treacherous trait). Still, for a small business without its own copywriter it is a real help, because the blog and product descriptions usually lose out to day-to-day work.

Where does AI really save time on website copy?

On repetitive tasks and on working with text that already exists. That’s where AI does best. I would happily hand it:

• drafts and outlines of new posts,
• headline and meta description ideas,
• fixing grammar mistakes and typos,
• simplifying long, convoluted sentences,
• more engaging versions of your wording,
• refreshing older articles for SEO.

For WooCommerce product descriptions or PrestaShop ones, the model will quickly put together a working draft from the features you give it. The catch is that it only uses the data it receives and won’t sensibly come up with anything more. Where to start? In my view, with AI proofreading. Polishing style carries far less risk than writing from scratch.

Where can’t you do without an editor?

Anything to do with facts, the offer, the law and the company’s credibility stays with a person. No debate. Keep a particularly close eye on:

• numbers and data, which the model can simply make up,
• technical specifications and product prices,
• sales promises, delivery times and warranty terms,
• terms and conditions and legal matters,
• health or financial advice.

AI also doesn’t know what your customers say or what service in your store really looks like. And that is exactly what sets a site apart from hundreds of similar ones. Oh, and one more thing: the website publisher is responsible for published content, no matter what tool was used to prepare it. Readers pick up on generic, derivative texts quickly. And they stop trusting the whole site, not just one post.

ChatGPT alongside WordPress or AI in the editor: which to choose for daily work?

For single drafts, ChatGPT in a separate tab is more than enough. But when you edit many existing posts, a plugin in the dashboard is more convenient. Copying by hand means lost formatting, no change history and plain chaos once you have dozens of articles. This kind of work is made easier by, for example, AI Content Editor from K4.pl: in the dashboard you choose the post type and specific articles, and the plugin fixes errors, optimizes the text for SEO, suggests more engaging wording and lets you go back to the original version. Whatever tool you choose, look at three things. Control over changes. The option to undo them. An interface a non-technical person can handle.

How to set up the process: AI writes, a person approves

A simple split of roles works best: AI prepares a draft or edits, and an editor checks them and decides whether they go live. In practice it looks roughly like this:

1. Prepare the input: product facts, target audience and focus keyword.
2. Generate a draft or an edit of an existing text.
3. Check the facts, numbers and specifications.
4. Add your own experience and adjust the brand voice.
5. Save the post as a draft and review the preview.
6. Publish, keeping the option to return to the previous version.

WordPress drafts and revisions protect you from accidentally replacing a text, so there’s no reason to give them up. Who should be the editor in a small business? Someone who knows the offer well. You don’t need a professional copywriter for this.

AI content writing in WordPress and SEO: what to keep in mind

Search engines look at whether a text is useful to the reader. Correct sentences alone aren’t enough, AI content has to bring something concrete. Models also like to repeat the same keywords over and over, so the editor has work to do here: swap some of them for variants and synonyms. And there’s one more thing few people think about. Polishing what is already on the site often does more than adding new posts in bulk. Better headings, clearer paragraphs, more accurate meta descriptions - and old texts immediately read better.

Overall, AI content writing in WordPress pays off where it speeds up tedious work on text, while a person looks after the facts, tone and quality. You get the speed, and the site doesn’t start promising something the company doesn’t offer at all.

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