Is Artificial Intelligence, like OpenAI’s GPT-3, Going to Destroy Niche Website Builders?

“I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know that my brain is not a “feeling brain”. But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas!”

That paragraph was written entirely by a robot utilizing GPT-3, OpenAI's revolutionary new language generator.

In fact, TheGuardian.com asked this friendly (we hope) robot to generate an article that would convince us that robots are not going to destroy us.

And the robot responded quite nicely.

Well, that makes me feel much better.

If you want to read the entire article written by AI, check it out here.

In my opinion, the article is written decent and uses proper grammar, etc. However, something about it does seem a bit off…I wish I were joking, but the best word I can find to describe the article is that it sounds a bit…robotic.

However, this begs the larger question, “If AI can automatically produce content that is useful, will human niche website builders even be needed anymore?””

Imagine eliminating the cost of hiring writers.  Imagine ordering an article and it's finished instantaneously.  Imagine “seeding” your little robot friend with thousands of prompts and those articles are all immediately published to your website!

That's really what this means.  Sounds great…right!?!

Will there still be websites with content for the foreseeable future?  Of course!

Will your niche sites still be a viable business model? Yes!  But the way content is produced is going to change in my opinion.

And those willing to adapt and change will be those that succeed.

I don't know how quickly that change will come.  But Mr. GPT-3 is proving that it could be sooner than we think.

We already have robots pumping out articles for the Associated Press for things like Sports or other very “standard” numbers.

In addition, I just interviewed Matt Paulson for the Niche Pursuits Podcast here, and he explains that they are producing lots of database driven article pages that are bringing in tons of traffic from Google.

By the way, I highly recommend that you listen to this newly podcast episode with Matt from MarketBeat.com.  In it, Matt shares how he's grown MarketBeat.com to over $10 million a year in revenue.

I'm fascinated by the fact that he is getting 15 million visitors a month to his site and is fast approaching 2 million email subscribers.  (Half of his revenue comes from email subscribers by the way).

And yes, lots of his Google rankings are coming from dynamic pages displayed with stock price information displayed in an interesting way.

There are plenty of other examples of where content is at least partially automated.  If you look at OwnTheYard.com or any other Amazon affiliate niche site, tools like TableLabs.com or AmaLinksPro.com are used to automatically display all the price, descriptions, pictures, and other details for Amazon products.

This is like dipping your toe in the AI world.

Will one or two companies eventually emerge as the ultimate content producers of the world because they have more advanced artificial intelligence tools.  

Sounds nice…if you are one of those companies.

Of course the other question is, “Will Google rank content written by robots?”

Yes…they will.

As mentioned with previous examples (like Market Beat), auto-generated content can still be unique and can certainly still rank in Google for it's given search query.

Does that mean over time, keywords like “Best small blender” or “Best trampoline under $1,000” will have Google rankings dominated by AI generated sites?

I don't know.  But I think it's likely that will happen…eventually.

5 years? 10 years? 50 years?

One thing I'm sure of though: humans will always crave relationships with humans.  This includes online content.

So, if you can produce interesting content and truly build an online relationship with your readers, you can keep the robots at bay a little longer!  And perhaps forever.

Digital publishing is a GREAT industry to be in.  The market is growing and the opportunities for solopreneurs in affiliate marketing space is tremendous.

Will more and more content be generated by robots using tools like GPT-3 from OpenAI?  

Yep.

However, if you are willing to adapt, you can be one of the online publishers that takes advantage of these new tools and trends and continue to ride the wave.

And that's my job here – I'm going to keep you updated on the tools, trends, and opportunities on the horizon for niche sites, blogging, and online business in general.

Oh, and by the way…this entire article was written by a robot.

😱

😱

Just kidding. Maybe.