AI has been the big bogeyman ever since ChatGPT's burst onto the scene, especially in the Web Development and SEO world. Ignoring the claims of people losing their jobs to AI (no matter how true that may be), there is a genuine reason for this. When it comes to SEO for example, AI content will generally be punished if it is identified by Google, pushing your site further down the rankings. One of the four pillars of SEO, after all, is Authority. If your site's answer to someone's Google search is provided through ChatGPT or Copilot then Google will assume you have no authority on that subject, otherwise you would have written the content yourself.

AI Content may be the most obvious evidence of AI affecting website creation, whether this is the words that we read or the images that we see. This, of course, has a great deal of controversy behind it and should probably be avoided on your website.

So how should AI be used on your website?

(Not the world's greatest) Assistant taking notes on notepad

AI should really be treated as the world's greatest, albeit occasionally maliciously compliant, assistant. There is no denying that AI can save us all a great deal of time by taking away many of our repetitive tasks. So our first tip, use AI as much as you like when it comes to any brain-numbing work. This may be debugging snippets of code, spell and grammar checks (but not proof-reading), generating ideas for you to expand upon, and much more. There have also been plenty of implementations of AI that have long being around before tools like ChatGPT that we would still recommend using:

• Chatbots are a great way of enhancing customer support whether it be a matter of navigating your site quickly, or perhaps in the case of Vodafone's "TOBi", help the customer choose the right product for them from your selection on your eCommerce site.

• Recommendations based on the user experience can be prompted by AI, whether this be other items automatically selected based on user history on an eCommerce site, or something similar to YouTube/Netflix where they offer recommended videos to watch next.

In fact, its fair to say that plenty of services and sites we've all used regularly pre-ChatGPT simply added the word "AI Tool" more recently to make the most of that trend. However, there has certainly been a huge influx of AI tools and products post-ChatGPT where many may be thinking they are perfect for their website.

These tools, unfortunately, are sometimes too good to be true though.

Cartoon woman speaking to AI on her laptop

Some newer AI innovations may seem great on the surface, but the biggest problem you may face when creating your new site, whether by yourself or through a web developer, is the temptation of using AI tools that speed up a process or fully take it out of your hands. This may be an AI tool that optimises your SEO, having AI write your content for you as we have already discussed, or having any part of your site automated through AI-generation.

Why should you avoid using AI here? AI learns from existing data leading to biases meaning that it's stuck in its own feedback loop. An AI SEO tool might start recommending incorrect changes to your site because there is no way to tell if something is being recommended genuinely or due to AI bias. AI also lacks originality and emotional intelligence - blogs and content in general will be generic and also lack any nuance, humour, or tone that you might want to inject into it. These are fundamental things that really give a brand its voice. AI-generation will also suffer the same fate, but more importantly this will damage your SEO. The quality of an AI generated Alt Tag may be fine and technically correct but it won't follow the context or keywords of your page.

These tools will certainly be better than doing nothing at all, but human knowledge and maintenance will always be superior.

A statue thinking with its head on its hand

So to answer the question "How should I use AI on my website?", the very basic answer is carefully and with plenty of human oversight. The longer answer is that nothing can replace human creativity or "soul" for lack of a better word. AI is essentially the best collaborator you could ask for, it's there to enhance your work and efficiency.

We highly recommend that you take a look at our Services page. All these services are provided by us and will always best what an AI tool can provide you. You wouldn't trust Google Translate over a trained English-to-German translator, the same way you shouldn't use AI over one of these services that we provide. AI is just another tool that can be used now, but it's no magic fix to a problem, nor will using it speed up some kind of AI-run apocalypse. The difference now between a website that thrives and one that gets buried isn't whether AI itself was used, but if it was used to enhance, optimise, and generally support your work, and not be the sole creator of it.

The personality, the voice, the branding, everything that makes your brand your brand must be done by you. That is why AI is the secret weapon for successful modern websites.