Summary

The author learned from Reddit users that using ChatGPT to write Medium articles did not meet their expectations and resulted in content that lacked authenticity and failed to engage readers.

Abstract

The author initially saw ChatGPT as a tool to effortlessly create content for promoting financial products and services through Medium articles, using simple prompts to simulate personal experience and human-like writing. Despite the convenience, the articles generated minimal interest, leading the author to seek feedback on a One Piece Trading Cards subreddit. The response was substantial but revealed that readers could distinguish between AI-generated content and genuine human writing, criticizing the articles for lacking individuality and timely relevance. This experience taught the author that reliance on generative AI can undermine the authenticity and resonance of their work, prompting a decision to write future articles personally, using AI only for idea generation and inspiration.

Opinions

The author considered ChatGPT a "cheat code" for writing articles, aiming to avoid the effort of research and fact-checking.
The initial approach was to use ChatGPT for content creation and only manually source images and add referral links.
The author was motivated by the digital nomad lifestyle and saw writing as a potential income stream to escape the traditional 9-5 job.
Reddit users' feedback highlighted that the articles were seen as disingenuous and overly reliant on AI, lacking a unique human touch.
The articles were criticized for being poorly written, using excessive adjectives, and being boring, which was attributed to the AI's generic writing style.
AI-generated content was seen as outdated, as it could not incorporate current events or trends due to its knowledge cutoff.
The author acknowledged the importance of personal tone and consistency in writing, which cannot be replicated by AI.
Despite the initial intention to use AI for convenience, the author concluded that Medium readers value human stories and ideas, leading to a shift in approach to content creation.

What I Have Learned From Reddit Users On Using ChatGPT To Write My Medium Articles (Not What I Expected….)

When ChatGPT was first released at the end of 2022, I like many were excited by the potential of Generative AI. I viewed ChatGPT as a cheat code to write articles using simple prompts, with the intention of promoting financial products & services that I already use with referral links.

I was far too lazy to write articles myself, or rather I didn’t want to put the effort when such a shortcut was readily available for me to take advantage of. I thought to myself, why spend hours doing research and fact-checking on a product or service when I could spend minutes to come up with a few prompts for ChatGPT to output the Article.

All I would need to do is prompt ChatGPT to “Pretend that the Article was written from my own experience” or “Make it sound like the Article is written by a human”. These are actual prompts I have used…. I know, pathetic.

The first few medium Articles that I wrote were fully using only prompts on ChatGPT. All I had to do was source the images for the Articles along with adding the referral links, that’s it.

Why did I take this approach?

Well, I was drawn to the digital nomad lifestyle which has been on the rise ever since the job market was turned upside down by the covid-19 pandemic. I viewed writing as an additional source of income to help me escape the 9–5 rat race like many Millenials & Gen-Zs dream of doing.

My plan was to put as little effort as I could to gain as much value as I could by utilising generative AI in writing my Articles and I was optimistic that readers would not catch on. Oh boy was I wrong…..

Maybe it’s because my prompts were poor by not giving enough context. Below are examples of just 3 prompts that I used to write my most recent Article called “Why I Invest In One Piece Trading Cards And Why You Should Too!”

Prompt 1: “write me an article on why someone should invest in one piece trading cards”

Prompt 2: “mention about how I fell in love with one piece as a 6 year old living in Germany.”

Prompt 3: “Mention why it is a smart decision to invest in one piece trading cards and try convince the reader to do the same. Include at the bottom of the article a financial advice disclaimer”

Unsurprisingly, my or should I say ChatGPT’s Articles were getting minimal traction so I decided to post my most recent article on a subreddit dedicated to One Piece Trading Cards.

I wanted to know what others thought of the Article since I wasn’t getting any feedback from the medium community due to my Medium following still being relatively insignificant but also because I wasn’t active myself in the community by engaging with other writers.

Within an hour of me posting the Article on the subreddit, I received over 30 responses of users sharing their opinion on the Article. I was not expecting to get this much traction and the moderators on the subreddit decided to remove my post after an hour which does not surprise me after the comments I received from users.

Rather than me tell you what the responses were like, I will share with you screenshots of what they had to say:

This response might be my favourite, simply priceless:

Funnily enough, the part of the article that the above reddit user gave credit for was written by myself which required me to do research and use my existing knowledge on the matter.

All jokes aside, what I realised from the feedback I received is that people can easily differentiate between Articles written by humans and using Generative AI.

By being over reliant on using ChatGPT to write my articles, I have come across as disingenuous which is true as at the end of the day, these AI tools don’t know me as well as I know myself so these Articles are written from a generic point of view that is not individualistic.

As one person commented, “The article is poorly written, uses too many flowery adjectives and is boring to read”. Readers on medium are interested in human stories and ideas and want to gain value from the time they spend reading the stories. This includes stories on what is happening right now in the world but Generative AI tools like ChatGPT do not know this by using data that is from 2 years ago (January 2022 as of the time of this writing).

As another person commented, “Maybe if you made this article 2 years ago when they announced the card game. Now you’re just writing an article that barely has any useful information in it.”

Now, what I could do with all of this feedback is to use them to improve my prompts but what my experience has taught me is that it is simply far better to fully write the articles myself using my own writer’s tone.

This would lead to consistency across all my Articles resulting in readers truly being able to resonate with my writing. This cannot be accomplished using Generative AI which uses far too many clichés in it’s writing and I have also noticed that the Articles produced by ChatGPT tends to have a theatrical tone by being far too ostentatious with their Jargons.

This only hit me after the feedback I received from the Reddit users which made me rethink about all the other Articles for which I used ChatGPT to write. Here is an example of what I mean from the very first sentence of an Article I wrote to promote Paypal: “Come with me on a journey through the maze of digital transactions, where choices abound but one true companion stands out — PayPal”

I could still be more creative with prompts to generate Articles that sound like they are written with my own tone but I already know that I would end up using far too many prompts, at which point I may as well write the article all by myself.

I am going to keep my AI generated Articles on Medium and will not edit them as I want them to be a reminder to myself and hopefully yourself to not be dependent on using Generative AI tools in your writing. Going forwards, I will continue to use Generative AI tools like ChatGPT but only to generate new ideas and to help with inspiration for which I still strongly believe that it is an excellent tool.

But, I will no longer use it to write any part of my future Articles since “Medium is a home for human stories and ideas.”