If you rely on AI to create your content for you, you might as well hang a sign outside your dev tool office that resembles a golden arch.

"Over 1 Billion Content Burgers Served"

Because it's now really easy to generate 1 billion fast food content burgers on tech topics with ChatGPT and equivalent services.

I recently came across a great example of this naturally while browsing the ReactJS tag on Hashnode.

As soon as I started reading it, I knew it was written by AI. I mean, the author didn't say it, but I knew it in my bones.

Why? Well, two big reasons:

• It had no personality
• It had no point of view

In other words, it said something without saying anything.

It was empty calories. And I regret paying attention to it.

No, wait, it was worse than that actually. For technical content, the meat is the code. This was sold in the headline as a "Getting Started" guide and it had NO code. None whatsoever. Nada. Zilch.

Marketing is making a promise and good marketing is keeping or even overdelivering on that promise. And this my friends was a Promise<Marketing>.reject().

As much as I'm excited about the potential of AI in speeding up workflows and handling mundane tasks like ordering my Instacart groceries, I fear that companies will assume it can output quality content for developers but, newsflash – it can't.

It can't because quality content has personality, it has a point of view, and most importantly, it has thought put into it, and ladies and gents, generative AI cannot think. It can only... generate. And its point of view is rear-facing, reflecting all that is but never what could be.

I expect we'll continue to see a lot of race-to-the-bottom, industrialized content burgers that people will consume, but ultimately, regret.

And what do you suppose developers will think of the companies that serve them empty calories?

Have a lovely day,
Kamran