Introduction
In today's digital age driven by artificial intelligence, we are facing an unprecedented deluge of content. The emergence of AI tools has made content creation incredibly easy, allowing even beginners to quickly produce vast amounts of text. However, this convenience also brings a serious question: in an era saturated with basic content, what kind of content can truly capture the audience's attention? Has "basic content" lost its original value?
Justin Welsh, a prominent X creator, shared three insightful observations in his newsletter, "Basic content is dying (and that's good news)," offering new directions for our content strategies in the age of AI. Justin Welsh began building his personal brand in 2019, skyrocketing from zero to over 20,000 followers in just six months, and now boasts over 690,000 followers, generating over $8.3 million in revenue. His success and unique insights are worth deep consideration for every content creator.
Insight 1: Basic Content is Dead
Justin Welsh bluntly points out that anyone can now use AI tools to generate "good enough" basic content. Superficial advice we often see, like "5 Ways to Improve Efficiency" or "7 Habits of Successful People," no longer capture reader interest. The reason is simple: AI can generate countless similar pieces in seconds, flooding the internet with homogenized, unoriginal "wisdom."
When everyone sounds the same, no one can truly stand out. Justin Welsh gives an example of a friend running a 7-figure annual revenue online course who saw a 30% drop in engagement at the top of his content funnel last month. The cause? Over 50 creators started publishing similar content in the same niche, most of which was AI-generated.
This case powerfully confirms Justin Welsh's point: simply publishing basic content is no longer enough to attract readers. In an age of information overload, readers crave deeper, more valuable content.
Insight 2: A Brand New Content Strategy
Faced with the decline of basic content, the traditional content marketing funnel model also needs to transform. In the past, the content marketing funnel was typically divided into three layers:
- Top Funnel: Attract attention with techniques, trends, and viewpoints.
- Middle Funnel: Build trust with readers through in-depth insights.
- Bottom Funnel: Drive product or service sales with concrete solutions.
However, in the age of AI, this funnel model is gradually evolving into a flatter "cylinder" model.
Justin Welsh mentions a student of his who adjusted her content strategy. Instead of publishing basic marketing tips, she switched to sharing firsthand experiences of marketing campaigns she actually implemented, including failures. Surprisingly, after this strategy shift, her content engagement rate increased by 15% compared to her previous top-of-funnel content.
Therefore, Justin Welsh suggests creators should start by sharing their most practical expertise from the outset, rather than starting with basic content. In other words, stop beating around the bush and get straight to the point, sharing your most unique and valuable experiences and insights.
Insight 3: The Value of Real Experience
In the age of AI, genuine expertise becomes more valuable than ever. To stand out from the crowd of content creators, you must share content that AI cannot easily replicate:
- Stories of Real Problems Solved: Share cases where you used your expertise to actually help clients or audiences solve difficult problems.
- Unconventional Lessons Learned: Be willing to share valuable lessons learned from failures or mistakes in practice.
- Unique Insights and Perspectives: Present your unique viewpoints on specific issues, showcasing your distinctive way of thinking.
This content, based on real experience and deep thinking, is truly valuable and difficult for AI to match.
For example, if you are a marketing consultant, instead of sharing basic content like "5 Tips to Increase Conversion Rates" that are readily available everywhere, delve into:
- How you solved a tricky marketing problem for a specific client.
- Unexpected challenges you encountered during the problem-solving process.
- Important lessons you learned from these challenges and failures.
This type of content, filled with details and showcasing real thought processes, is more likely to resonate with readers and build deep trust.
When AI Replaces Most Writing, What Can Humans Still Write?
While delving into the transformation of content strategy, we can't help but consider a deeper question: when AI can accomplish almost all writing tasks, what is the value of human writing? I attempt to offers more philosophical reflection.
We begins with a conversation with GPT to explore AI's potential in writing and the unique aspects of human writing. We frankly admits feeling amazed and even self-doubt, thinking, "Damn, you write so well, what am I even doing here?" when conversing with GPT.
To further investigate this question, we asked GPT-4o, "When AI replaces most writing, what can humans still write?". Below is GPT's response, we making "no textual changes" but only adjusting the layout to present the original AI text:
GPT's Viewpoint: The Value of Human Writing
GPT first acknowledges the depth and weight of the question and breaks it down into three levels for analysis, attempting to identify potential "blind spots":
1. What You Know But May Not Have Stated Explicitly (Hidden Area): Uniqueness and Irreplaceability
GPT believes the questioner already realizes that AI can eventually mimic personal styles and humor. Therefore, seeing "humans can only write things with personal characteristics" as the only way forward may not be a long-term solution. But the core of the question lies in whether we presuppose that "the value of writing comes from its uniqueness and irreplaceability." Is this premise really valid? If AI can also write, does it mean human writing loses its value? This is a hypothesis worth challenging.
2. What You May Not Have Noticed (Blind Area): Limitations of AI Writing
GPT points out that no matter how advanced AI becomes, its writing still has some inherent limitations, and these limitations may be the answer to "what humans can still write."
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(A) The Purpose of Writing: Not Just Outputting Content
Even if AI is powerful, for humans, writing has never been just about "producing text," but also a way of thinking, expressing, and organizing one's inner world. The process of writing itself is a process of thinking and self-clarification. Even if AI-generated content is flawless, the value of writing will shift inward, rather than outward output. Humans may no longer write for readers, but for themselves, or for "readers yet to come," like their future selves.
→ Even if AI replaces "content production," it cannot replace the essence of "writing as a way of thinking." -
(B) Experience and Trauma: What AI Cannot Truly Possess
Compared to humor, GPT believes "pain" and "trauma" are even harder for AI to mimic. AI can mimic humor because humor has rules to follow, but AI cannot truly understand trauma, loss, love, struggle, etc. – profound human emotions. It can only mimic the "textual expression" of these feelings but cannot truly "experience" them. Human writing, especially the most resonant works, often originates from the pain, confusion, and exploration of real experiences. AI can pretend to know "the feeling of losing a loved one," but it will never truly "know" what that is. This intrinsic "sense of life" is difficult for AI to replicate.
→ Even if AI replaces most content production, "writing based on deep experience" remains a unique domain for humans. -
(C) Creating "New Ways of Thinking"
GPT acknowledges that AI can learn various styles and even write seemingly meaningless "nonsense" and mimic humor. However, all of this is based on "it having learned things that humans already possess." In other words, AI cannot truly proactively create "completely new modes of thinking." It can only imitate and vary within existing language structures and ways of thinking, making it difficult to create things that "completely don't belong to past paradigms." However, humans can invent entirely new vocabularies, language structures, and concepts, just like philosophers, poets, and novelists of the past, creating ideas that never existed in the world before.
→ If AI can only imitate existing styles, then the value of humans lies in creating "new modes of expression" that AI cannot predict.
3. What Neither You Nor I Know (Closed Area): Future Possibilities
GPT admits that we have not yet truly entered an era where AI completely replaces writing. Therefore, we cannot predict how humans will adapt "when writing is no longer a competitive advantage." However, GPT offers a possibility: humans may write more "unnecessary things." No longer writing to earn money or influence others, but purely for joy, for recording, for making themselves live more fully. This might return "writing" to its purest state—like the earliest human cave paintings and myths, without any practical purpose, simply for "having existed."
→ If AI can truly write everything, then humans may turn to "useless but authentic creation." And this "uselessness" may be precisely the value of our existence.
Conclusion: Redefining the Value of Writing in the Age of AI
Combining the viewpoints of Justin Welsh and GPT, we can clearly see that in the age of AI, the value of basic content is gradually diminishing. To stand out in the field of content creation, relying solely on skills and superficial knowledge is far from enough. We need to transform our content strategies, focusing more on sharing real experiences, profound insights, and unique perspectives.
More importantly, we need to re-examine the meaning of writing. When AI can efficiently complete a large number of writing tasks, the value of human writing will no longer be limited to information transmission and content production. Writing can become a deeper way of thinking, a path for self-expression, and a tool for exploring human emotions and creativity.
In the future, perhaps "useless but authentic creation" will become a new direction for human writing. We no longer need to write in pursuit of traffic and commercial value, but can more freely and purely record life, express emotions, explore the unknown, and create truly unique texts that belong to ourselves.
In summary, in the age of AI, basic content is dead, but the value of human writing has not disappeared. On the contrary, it is undergoing a profound transformation. Only those who dare to embrace authenticity, think deeply, and innovate bravely will find their place in the future of content creation and create truly valuable works.
