Authenticity was a buzzword in events in 2023, and there's no denying, based on many predictions posted for 2024, that the word will play a role in many event and marketing strategies for the year ahead.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has not only revolutionized content generation but also impacted what many people assume to be genuine content or not. 

There are many advantages to utilizing AI in your content marketing strategies, such as personalization, time and cost efficiency. However, there's also a danger of losing authenticity if it is not used correctly.

This is where the art of authenticity comes into play - being able to spot AI-generated content and maintaining genuine and transparent communication with your audience. The lack of authenticity and human touch makes AI-generated content stand out. However, when you know what to look for, you can spot it a mile off. 

While there are a growing amount of online tools available to help identify AI-generated content, I've not yet found one to be reliable, based on testing dozens of articles. 

So what do you do to ensure content is authentic? 

There are some tell-tale signs that you can look out for yourself. Use these 10 ways to spot AI content to not only identify what's authentic or but also to help bolster your own content efforts with the support of AI in 2024. 

1.     Overuse of transitional words: AI often uses words like furthermore, secondly and moreover more frequently than a human writer would. This is the first noticeable sign that your writer is being lazy. It's so straightforward to spot once you know the pattern. 

2.     Lack of genuine examples: AI may struggle to provide relevant, real-world examples, as it lacks personal experiences. It is fantastic at helping write the supporting material or even helping to make sense of jumbled words, but it doesn't know what went down at your last event, does it? Unless, of course, you've backfilled it with inputs, but that's a whole other article.

3.     Absence of personal anecdotes: Unlike human writers, AI doesn't have personal stories or emotions to share, making its content more generic. It can be written in an emotional manner – but that warmth and personal touch can be missing – though not always. Just ask yourself, do you really connect with the content? That doesn't detect if it's AI-generated, but perhaps it could tell you if there’s a real human connection with the content. 

4.     Repetition of phrases: AI might struggle with the repetition of phrases. Do I need to repeat myself? In longer articles, it's easier to spot.  

5.     Perfect grammar and spelling: Humans are prone to errors, and while AI-written content is typically error-free, it's not always the base. Either way, use a platform like Grammarly to double-check your work but don't solely rely on it. 

6.     Lack of contextual understanding: AI can sometimes misinterpret the context of a topic, leading to irrelevant or incorrect information. If you post it blindly, you're in for trouble. For example, with an event, you could be talking about lead generation, but the article goes off about website lead capture.  

7.     Absence of slang or idioms: AI usually sticks to standard English and rarely uses colloquial language or idioms unless it's been trained specifically. If you use the word "yeet" in your copy (please don't) you'll know it's likely to be genuine. 

8.     Unnatural tone or flow: AI-generated content can sometimes sound robotic and lack the natural flow of human-written content, making it easier to spot. It may also jump from one topic to another without a smooth transition if it hasn't been carefully edited. 

9.     Keyword stuffing: If you're piling in the keywords and don't check "your" work, AI is more likely to cram keywords into content, leading to awkward sentences. Remember, SEO is important but so is readability and authenticity.

10.  Sentences drop off: If the content hasn't been proofread, you may see sentences that just haven't been finished, or perhaps a random full stop in the middle of a sentence.

While AI has become an integral part of content generation and an amazing tool to any marketer’s arsenal, it's essential to maintain authenticity by not falling into the trap of relying solely on your robot buddy to do all the heavy lifting for you.

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