Trustworthiness is an attribute of a living being, while accuracy can be attributed to humans, cars, calculators, thermometers and what not. Non-living things can be reliable, but not trustworthy.
What makes a human written content trustworthy?
A human centred content that is relatable and not just logical forms the bedrock for being trustworthy. I have read somewhere that humans are emotional animals that use logic to justify ‘unreasonable’ emotional choices.
This is the age of AI (artificial intelligence), but only 14% of AI users fully trust information generated by AI (a Semrush research ), and 40% people trust AI information only to some ‘extent’.
These percentages are a reflection of people’s need to connect with the human on the other side to accept the logic and the emotion behind that logic.
A $ 1000 shirt may be illogical, but when sold an idea of confidence building by your favorite brand or influencer, it becomes an aspirational and suddenly rational choice.
While creating the content, you need to stay abreast with the latest fads, trends, lingo, slang, etc to connect with the audience of the century. You cannot write too academic or corporate style when your target audience is Gen Z.
As a copywriter, I sit with interns to learn their world view, to understand what is ‘rizz’, and which brand is ‘cool’, and which product advertisements are ‘sigma’, so that I am not in ‘delulu,’ when it comes to content writing.
As a copywriter, building content frameworks is not about scribbling guidelines and rules. Content frameworks are made for the brands but are owned by the audience.
I tell my copywriters:
“Clothing companies sell confidence, and not clothes, motor-cycle companies sell masculinity or being a stud and not some machines, similarly you as a copywriter sell the emotion, not the product.”
Rajat Jhingan
You can call it empathy mapping, but I’ll call it ‘common sense’.
Understanding personal choices, writing, drafting, rewriting, finalizing takes time, bursts of creativity, and chances of discovery. These are random and not just rewriting or summarizing the words of the same ranking websites.
Copywriting is research, study, exploration, imagination, capturing the commercial intent, and thousands of retakes.
Being ‘trustworthy’, means going too many extra miles to connect with the fellow online in different parts of the world. Don’t think that just writing in English or any focused language will let you generate trust.
As they say on social media, ‘believe me bro’, when you put effort, other human notices, and it is clearly distinguishable from AI generated content.
Why does AI lack trustworthiness even after being accurate?
Most people are not aware of how AI works. The algorithms, the neural schema, weights, and routes. But where is the human element, the connection, personalization, style, and emotion?
‘AI Mode’ scrapes websites and recreates content. Recreation or rewording is not value creation, it’s ‘Repackaging’.
More than 80% of the content in 2025 is AI generated, and 80% of them report that this strategy helps them scale and perform well. (Reference Source)
Writing short and temporary content like ‘ad campaigns’ is doable, but long form content for organic rankings needs some skill to ‘inject trust elements’.
The trust-deficit comes, because AI content is as effective as the ‘prompt’ of the user. Many people cut-costs and try to scale content with AI, and that’s not wrong, the wrong part is when you accept anything and everything an inference engine throws at you and you accept it as it is.
AI has unmatched reliability in the ‘technical domain’, where human fatigue causes quality issues, but when it comes to the realm of creativity and emotional connection, AI has given results, but they’re not long-lived.
Those who are aware of the workings of AI know that AI guesses the next words. It’s a ‘guess’, not a deliberation.
Garbage In Garbage Out
AI is an algorithm. It produces or processes the content depending on your prompts. No, I am not nudging towards prompt-engineering and selling online courses for it. Am nudging you to ‘think’.
Think about what you want to write, for whom, how they love reading the content, what they may be wanting, what your company has to offer, etc.
Being an MBA makes it a bit easier to get to know the commercial side even before writing anything. The clarity you have in mind will be shaping your prompt and not some fancy certification on prompt engineering.
If you as a writer are confused or are simply led by the GPT cues, then you are not producing content and you are not a copywriter, but a failed AI user disguised as a copywriter.
Even before writing, you should be knowing the output you want, and then you begin. The routes and the journey may change, but not the starting and ending destination.
Mediocre or non-performing content usually means poor instructions at the start and even poorer follow-up from the creator.
Why Google guards up against AI based content?
Google is a search engine that spouts ‘links’ and now AI generated content for your search queries and search intent. If people will get relevant results as per their expectations, they’ll keep using Google or else Google will be a fossil. Simple.
Out of billions of pages in its records (indexing), Google has its own rules or criteria (algorithm) to find the results that suit your search intent and not just the keyword. This makes AI generated content less valuable, as it is not customized to a particular user group but instead targets a generic user base, which actually do not apply to any person.
A human content creator or a copywriter who actually knows copywriting knows the ins and outs, the patience, the research, the rewriting, reframing, multiple drafts and all about aligning the content with user intent. Entity mapping is surely a premium skill which does not come by just mentioning it on the resume.
It’s been more than a decade that I am handling content teams and the amateurs think content writing is just rephrasing what you find on Google Search. They just pick 4-5 top search results and mix the content and rewrite. A perfect recipe for disaster. Knowing English is not content writing, it is a scam in the name of content writing.
When people are using AI to get a factory output of the content, this populates a lot of similar in intent, seemingly original in language, but ultimately valueless content. This makes content and the whole website lose its value and Google will be discouraged to serve its users a valueless content. Pure business logic. In some other article I’ll deal with how to make a content valuable but making a content valuable is far different from achieving authority for a website.
Google is not against the use of AI in making the content, but how you use it. It has to be valuable, relevant, and well intended content. In the next section I’ll be discussing how to use AI in your content creation process.
I always tell my team that,
“Copywriting or content writing, don’t go by the name of it. Go by the last user, know the sales funnel, the competitors and your company’s products, services, and sales funnel. Know all this and while making the content map it to the real buyer on the street. After this you begin scribbling.”
Rajat Jhingan
Smart Use of AI Writing
AI is to be used smartly and integrated with your content creation process. But there is a thin line between using AI and depending on AI.
Pros: Use cases for “Using AI” in Content Creation:
- Grammar and Spell Checks
- Researching on the internet
- Finding and classifying sources
- Writing customized meta description (not meta title)
- Entity-attributes mapping
- Overcoming writer’s block
- Brainstorming
- SEO Research
Cons: Use cases where usage becomes “Dependence on AI” in Content Creation:
- Making content strategy
- Trying to build a content funnel
- Creating whole “long form” content and just editing it a bit
- Making summaries of articles using generative AI
- Decisions regarding article structure in terms of headings
- Strategizing for content drip
AI is good for scaling, repetitive tasks and using templates to create ‘similar’ content. When it comes to creativity, empathy, emotions and depth then we need human creation and not just simple intervention.
“Artificial intelligence for repetitive and scaling tasks and human intelligence for depth, insights, creativity and customization”
Rajat Jhingan
AI is to be integrated within the content creation process. AI should not be leading it. You cannot outsource thinking, innovation, creativity and emotions to AI. Rest of it you can. But still not AI but you are responsible for the content you create.
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