How AI-Powered Content Generation Software Solves Five Common Business Pains

By Robert Weibgraeber On Jan 8, 2020

The advances you hear about most when it comes to AI are the technologies once discussed in science fiction novels: nanobots that root disease out of the body; cars that navigate relentless traffic better than a human driver; scanners that detect potential skin cancer as well as a dermatologist. What you don’t hear about nearly as much, however, are the myriad ways that technologies powered by AI are transforming routine processes and common frustrations, and helping businesses handle mundane tasks so employees can focus on more interesting work.

There is perhaps no better example of this than content generation software, powered by AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Content generation software is incredibly intuitive and easy to use: most companies can start generating content like BSS reports, e-commerce product descriptions, news content like weather reports, and more within a manner of minutes by inputting basic information via an Excel spreadsheet. The natural language generation (NLG) market includes my company, AX Semantics, as well as other leaders like Arria, Narrative Science, Yseop and Automated Insights.

Here are five common pain points content generation software can help businesses solve:

1. Scaling and Entering New Markets

Entering a new market, particularly a foreign one, is a challenge for any business. Say you are an online retailer based in the US who sells women’s shoes. You have content in the form of product descriptions – but only in the English language. That won’t help you much if you hope to sell shoes in China. You’ll need product descriptions in Chinese if you want to enter that market, which means you now need to pay for translators. If the translation quality is poor or inaccurate, you now have other problems, such as poor SEO, low conversion rates, high product returns, and more. Building your business at scale quickly becomes problematic if you use the old method, but if you use content generation software scale is not an issue because language is no longer a barrier. You simply input basic facts via a spreadsheet or similar method and get unique content in a different language.

2. Regulatory Demands

Many businesses are mandated by law to routinely change forms, contracts, and documents. A bank, for example, might be required to update risk assessments for every active plan on a quarterly basis. Content generation software provides an easy way to handle these relentless demands. In the past countless writers would need to go through forms or documents, items like forms and contracts, whereas now with content generation software, they are easily updated simply by inputting updated information into a spreadsheet.

3. Lack Of Fresh Content

All companies need to think of themselves as media companies. Your presence on social media and blogs is a key way to communicate with your audience. If you let content get stale or don’t update your sites, you will lose potential customers. How do you get this done? Equip writers and content creators with software that enables them to constantly create unique content. “Hybrid” content borne from a partnership between man and machine fills the need for fresh, vital content around the clock, linked to the underlying data, and auto-updating if that data changes.

4. Writing Jobs

It’s a tough time to be a professional writer or be a company that wants to keep a writer gainfully employed. Writers, such as journalists or content producers are under enormous pressure to create fresh content that can be changed and updated at a moment’s notice. Working with content generation software allows them to not only fulfill but exceed their job requirements and expectations. It also allows them to create more content so their employers can thrive. The writing jobs of the future will doubtless have a content generation software component. AI is also helping journalists do better work — a newspaper in Germany, the Stuttgarter Zeitung, won the prestigious European Newspaper Award for reporting on fine particle and nitrous oxide pollution in the Stuttgart area using AI and content generation.

5. Apathetic Customers

Online shoppers are turned off by stale content, bad photos, descriptions that don’t match what they see on their computer or mobile device, and outdated information. A recent survey indicated that 87 percent of shoppers said clear images were important to them. Content generation software provides a better, more thoughtful way to reach potential customers, particularly those looking for a specific item. Customers are better informed and are likely to shop and buy more when accurate, precise copy is generated. When customers find what they want quickly, they also spend less time on e-commerce and can be more productive in their daily lives.

As we continue to look to AI to make big changes in our lives, let’s not forget the many ways it’s already being used to resolve problems that have challenged businesses for decades. Content generation software is just one way a partnership between man and machine is reimagining what is possible.