Should You Use AI to Generate Your English Content? (Part One)

AI seems to be everywhere these days! It’s nearly impossible to avoid seeing ads for AI services, funny images created by AI, or articles about alarmed teachers who are concerned that students may try to abuse AI text generators.

AI: A helpful tool or something to avoid?

To get to the bottom of some of the potential benefits and disadvantages of AI tools, we went right to the source, and asked an AI tool some questions. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share those questions and the answers AI provided to us. 

For each of the questions, a TextRanch editor has reviewed the AI-written sentences to identify any English errors or other problems. Below you will see the first two questions, along with editor notes to explain any concerns.

Question 1*: “What is AI?”

Here is AI’s response:

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, it is a branch of computer science that creates machines with human-like intelligence, it can analyze data, perform tasks, and make decisions with the ability to adapt and learn.

Editor comments:

At first glance, AI’s answer looks pretty good! However, our editors spotted a couple of minor errors that need to be repaired. They also noted that the sentence is a little hard to absorb because it contains a lot of ideas. It is possible this is not the clearest explanation of what AI is.

Specific issues with this answer:

“…Artificial Intelligence, it is a branch of…”

Problem: This part of the sentence contains a comma splice. A comma is not strong enough to join (splice) two independent clauses together. An independent clause expresses a complete idea and contains both a subject and a verb. 

Solution: Correcting a comma splice involves separating each clause into its own sentence, changing an independent clause into a dependent clause, or adding a conjunction (like “and”, “but”, or “or”) to help the comma join the independent clauses into one complete sentence. 

“…it is a branch of computer science that creates machines with…”

Problem: This part of the definition is focused on one specific meaning of AI that might be too narrow for the average reader in the general population. 

Solution: To fix the definition, the sentence must be recreated to provide a more general explanation of what AI is. One method of recreating the sentence is to give AI different prompts (it could take many attempts to get an answer that fits this context) until it provides a better answer. Alternatively, the sentence could be corrected by asking a human to rephrase this section.

“…human-like intelligence, it can analyze data…”

Problem: This part of the sentence contains another comma splice. 

Solution: See the explanation about comma splices above.

“…, perform tasks,…”

Problem: This phrase is very vague. It’s not clear what type of tasks AI can complete.

Solution: To correct this, more details must be included about the types of tasks AI can complete. This can be done by giving AI new prompts until it provides a more detailed explanation. Alternatively, a human could add details to make this more clear.

“…make decisions with the ability to adapt and learn.”

Problem: This section of the sentence seems to indicate that “decisions” have the ability to adapt and learn.

Solution: To correct this, the phrasing must be reworded to make it clear that AI has the ability to adapt and learn.

Corrected version:

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is the imitation of human-like intelligence by a machine or computer system. AI systems can adapt and learn, and they do things like analyze data, complete basic tasks as directed by humans, and make decisions using predetermined criteria.

Question 2*: “What are the potential problems that can arise if I use AI to compose my English writing?”

Here is AI’s response:

The potential problems that can arise if you use AI to compose your English writing are that the AI-generated content may lack quality, creativity, or context accuracy and it can also have errors or inconsistencies in the output. It may also struggle to generate truly creative content, as it is limited by the data it has been trained on.

Editor comments:

This answer is too long. At 59 words, it is almost 20% longer than we requested! This will have to be trimmed to fit our target word count. The first sentence could be difficult to read because it mixes positive and negative ideas in an unusual way, and the last sentence might be repetitive.

Specific issues with this text:

“The potential problems that can arise if you use AI to compose your English writing are that the…”

Problem: These first 18 words are unnecessary “filler”. This is a common technique that some students use to increase word counts without adding useful material. 

Solution: To fix this, the unnecessary words can be removed. Interestingly, AI would have been within the requested word count if these words were simply omitted! 

“…may lack quality, creativity, or context accuracy…”

Problem: This phrasing is a little awkward. When phrasing is awkward, it can make it harder for the reader to absorb the information. 

Solution: This part of the sentence needs to be rephrased. It’s possible that AI could provide a better answer with a new prompt, or it may be necessary for a human to rewrite this part. 

“…accuracy and…”

Problem: There is a missing comma before the word “and”. A comma is needed before the conjunction when joining two independent clauses.

Solution: Add a comma.

“…have errors or inconsistencies in the output…”

Problem: This phrasing is a bit awkward and unnatural.

Solution: This part of the sentence needs to be rephrased. It’s possible that AI could provide a better answer with a new prompt, or it may be necessary for a human to rewrite this part. 

“…generate truly creative content…”

Problem: This is either repetitive (creativity is already mentioned in the first sentence) or poor word choice.

Solution: Replacing the word “creative” with “unique” will solve this problem.

“…the data it has been trained on.”

Problem: Although it’s not actually incorrect to end a sentence with a preposition (on), many people have been taught that it is wrong. It’s usually better to simply avoid constructing sentences that end in a preposition.

Solution: Rearrange or rephrase the words in the sentence to avoid ending with a preposition.

Corrected version:

AI-generated content may contain quality and originality problems because AI is limited to using only the data it is given during its training. Due to AI’s lack of human experience, the content it generates may include inconsistencies and errors as it cannot understand context that a person can.

So, is AI good enough to trust with creating your original content?

On the surface, the answers provided by AI look pretty amazing! It only took a few moments for it to generate the answers to our questions, and the output seems really polished. Unfortunately, when we start looking more closely, we begin to see some real errors.

An even bigger potential problem is that AI tends to use a lot of words without providing much substance. If you just need to fill a page with words that seem okay at first glance, AI is the tool for you! For critical pieces of writing, though, AI is not good enough on its own. You will still need to review the content with human eyes to ensure the writing is consistent, correct, and meaningful.

Did you notice the part in the last section that mentions AI is trained with data? Do you wonder where the AI researchers get that data? Next week, we’ll ask AI to explain more about its training data and how that can affect your privacy!