I asked an AI tool to write a beauty article

Journalists, freelancers, and hobbyists alike have taken to the Internet recently to discuss the new frontiers of AI writing tools — with some interesting results. (See: Bing's AI tool is feeling some type of way!)

While longer-form AI-generated pieces are beginning to rear their heads these days, the use of predictive language in technology has been around for decades. Perhaps you've recently noticed Outlook or Gmail recommending how to finish your sentence in your latest email to your boss, or maybe you've engaged in a game of allowing suggested options to finish a tweet for you —even the major brands are doing it! Or maybe you have autocorrect enabled on your phone, or you used T9 texting back in the day, or....

You get it. It's been around.

So I decided to hop on the bandwagon and ask an AI tool to write an article from scratch about a hobby I engage in pretty regularly: beauty. Beauty and makeup trends are hotly discussed on almost every form of social media, so I trusted pretty firmly in the AI's ability to find plenty of information on the subject. However, I thought this presented an interesting challenge, too, as beauty products are very personal to the user, and it's often difficult to make a recommendation without having used a product oneself. (Of course I do recognize that influencers and marketers recommend things they've never tried very frequently, but that's an entirely different article.)

I gave the Writesonic AI Article Writer 4.0 (yes, that's right, 4.0!) the keywords "beauty trends" and "new trends in beauty", and it gave me a thousand words. After being assigned keywords and a tone, the tool generated heading ideas, an outline, and, eventually, the full article. I had opportunity to edit at each step of the way (but did not, for purposes of experimental integrity!).

Expectations vs. Reality

Anyone who has played along with a "let predictive text finish for you" games knows that the end results come out a bit clunky, and I only expected slightly more sophistication from a tool that's intended for the use of stringing cohesive "thoughts" and sentences together. I had reservations about the refinement of the writing, but I expected an article that makes sense and identifies at least one product within the established trend categories. With the amount of reviews on retail websites, manufacturer websites, and myriad brand and influencer social media accounts, I'd assumed that, from a data perspective, finding products within a heartily saturated niche would be easy peasy AI squeezy!

My expectations about the writing quality and the ability for the article to make sense were both confirmed: without human intervention or light editing, the piece is uninspiring, repetitive, and formulaic, and the Writesonic software did identify some trend categories I would expect to see continue to flourish this year! My biggest hope for the piece, however, went unrealized. Alas, the AI did not include any products.

I'm curious to learn more about these tools' product indexing capabailities — both as they stand now and how they'll develop — and to discover how the quality of execution will improve over time. Writers have been in a flurry to play with these generative softwares in the past few weeks, and, as they advance, their continued integration into writing professions will be a trend to watch.

Read the full AI-generated article here.