Guide To AI For Content Creation (From A Content Creator)

Wondering how to get started using AI (artificial intelligence) for content creation in a way that’s safe, legal, and beneficial for your business? This guide will help you navigate when to use AI for content creation and provide helpful tips for getting started.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’ve probably heard advice about AI from content creators. “It’s nothing but bad, generic writing. It’s great for SEO. It’s bad for SEO.” The debate goes on…

Personally, I don’t think it’s a tool we need to ignore or fear. Avoiding it would be like ignoring helpful accounting software and choosing to do all your bookwork on paper. However, just because you have the software, it doesn’t mean there won’t be times when you need an actual accountant.

I’m a big proponent of offloading unimportant manual tasks and spending more time on technical work that matters. So if you’re looking for advice on using it to compliment your business content, you’ve come to the right place.

Get To Know Your AI Tools

What Is The MMLU Test?

MMLU scores are a benchmark being used to test different AI models. As you get started, this score is a great way to assess which model is the best tool for your task. 

This test covers 57 topics around humanities, social sciences, and a range of other specialized areas, with questions ranging from elementary through advanced levels. Similar to ways we evaluate ourselves, the test tests knowledge and problem-solving capacities. Its depth and breadth also help identify an AI model’s weaknesses.

Find the latest MMLU scores for AI tools here. 

Note: For many paid tools available right now, you won’t be able to find MMLU scores for those proprietary platforms as easily. To assess a paid tool, you’ll need to research documentation about their model. Now let’s get into which free and paid options are great if you’re looking into AI tools for content creators.

Free AI Tools For Content Creation

	ChatGPT 4.0	Gemini	Claude 3.5	Grok 3	DeepSeek V3
Prompt Limits	5-10 every 5-6 hours	Unavailable*	40 messages a day	Unavailable*	None
Multimodal Support	Text, image, video	Text, image, video	Text, image, video	Text, image, video	Text, image, video
Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) Score	84%	87%	86%	Unavailable	87%
Better To Use For	•Generalists •Casual users	• Google users & workspaces •Multimedia projects	•Technical document analysis •Enterprises	• Developers • Data analysis • Technical reasoning	•Developers •Logical work •Non-English tasks

Paid AI Tools For Content Creation

Assessing paid tools is a bit different, since these are from smaller companies and there’s a paywall involved. As I mentioned, it’s likely you won’t be able to find the MMLU score for them. Instead, let’s look at these paid tools through a practical lens by sharing their strengths and weaknesses from firsthand trials.

ContentShake AI (Semrush)

JasperAI

Other Helpful AI Tools For Content

Here are some other neat tools worth exploring that can help make your content better. All of these are tools our team at Tower enjoys using! Just be sure to properly vet the security of any free AI tool you find, including any website plugins.

• Photoshop Generative Fill (Paid): uses AI to fill in your images.
• TextFX (Free): a content creator’s dream for creative brainstorming around content.
• CoSchedule Headline Studio (Free/Paid): brainstorm strong headlines for all types of content.
• ChatGPT GPTs (Free): access specific GPTs built by the community for niche tasks (researching, writing, productivity, etc.)
• Grammarly (Free/Paid): easy for editing content on the fly, although it’s not always grammatically correct and accurate.
• Language Tool (Free): another AI-built language editor.

The Pros & Cons Of Using AI

Figuring out when you want to use AI starts with understanding its pros and cons. And then figuring out how using AI aligns with your business values. 

For us, AI is a tool that can assist our content creators and speed up less critical tasks or facilitate parts of the creative process. But it’s not strong enough to use on its own for full content creation or unique ideas. (Yet.) 

*DeepSeek Hallucination Example

Skills To Develop If You Use AI For Content Creation

The truth is that AI can replace novice or basic writing skills. This makes it all the more important to become strong in technical ones. If you’re using AI for content, develop these skills to polish and make sure the finished work you’re sharing is strong:

Key creative skills you should work on include:

• Knowing how to edit content so it’s interesting/relevant for your audience
• Using key copywriting tactics like parallel structure, alliteration, and proven psychological copywriting tips
• Developing a brand voice that’s actually unique to you (and not generic)
• Researching for reliable information that’s as factual and unbiased as possible
• Thinking of new concepts because AI pulls from what it’s trained on (and doesn’t necessarily create something new)

When (& When Not) To Use AI

Tips For AI Creation Prompts

The quality of the output you get relies on what you put in. After using various tools for the last two years, here’s my advice. (Some of it will not be record-breaking. But if you’re newer to using AI, it’s what you need to know.)

• Be as specific as possible 
• Add context about your request
• Break apart complex prompts to be as simple as possible
• Add in directions about tone (eg. confident) and style (eg. conversational)
• Review different drafts (usually you can view 2-3 different answers)
• Provide feedback on the response, especially if it’s inaccurate

For example, say you want to draft a business bio. Instead of simply asking for one, here’s a prompt that puts some of those tips into practice. (See highlighted parts.)

If you’re interested in getting better at prompting and digging further into this area, I highly recommend exploring Snack Prompt. It’s a library collection of user-generated AI content creation prompts.

What’s The Future Of AI, Content, & SEO Online?

“Is Google dead? Is writing dead? Is SEO as we know it over?” The questions are different, but the underlying novelty and fear reminds me a lot of how humans have responded to every unique invention. 

Books? Plato feared they’d ruin our memories. Cars? Loud and noisy contraptions leading to job loss. The list goes on.

The truth is, each new invention is a chance for us to reinvent ourselves. Carriage makers turned into car makers. And I believe the same will happen with marketers. We’ll adapt. Content creation and SEO are always prone to change, whether we have AI tools in the equation or not. 

Traditionally, SEO has focused on figuring out which keywords help you get found in search engines. AI is just a different sort of “search” tool.

AI goes through a series of complicated probabilities to arrive at its output, so it’s feasible to imagine a world where we figure out how to use keywords in the right context to appear more frequently in those chats too. (We’re already seeing that long-form content with a depth of helpful information and proof you’re a real expert can help you get found.)

And this year, many large AI companies are struggling to make it profitable. There’s still an incredible amount of work and research to be done at a high cost with no guarantee of an ROI. Although disrupters like DeepSeek are showing notable progress in lowering the costs of R&D.

If we’ve learned anything from social media sites in the 2000s, it’s that often tech companies offer a service for “free” to users, but they’ll use the data they gain to drive revenue from advertising. So it wouldn’t be a surprise in the future to see companies figure out how to do that within AI.