Writing Tips
Blogging Tools: AI Writing Generator Test
Previously when I kicked off my Blogging Tools series, I shared a look at some services you can use to improve your writing by fixing grammatical and spelling errors. Well, today, we’re taking things to a new level and looking at tools that will actually do the writing for you! That’s right, we’re going to be testing some artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, including some that can generate entire blog posts with just a little bit of human input.
Since I hadn’t previously used any of these services before, I decided to experiment with all of them in a similar way. So, before we dive into my experiences, let me brief you on my approach.
The Ground Rules
For this experiment, I wanted to put a few different AI tools to the test. So, I’ll be feeding each of them prompts and other info for an article to be titled “What is Brain Fog and How Do You Treat It?” (I appreciated the irony of having AI write about human brains). I’ll be sharing each of the results.
The other big rule is that I’ll be using only the free version or free trial of a tool in order to generate the content. I’ll be specifying which I’m using for each as, while both are free, you can imagine that a trial version is likely to give you more than a free forever version would. On that note, since many of these are trials, I’ll be attempting to craft content as quickly as possible without diving too far into the options (this helps me gauge how intuitive these tools are as well). So, while I may be bypassing some of the more powerful options, that’s just the way it goes.
With that, let’s get to the testing.
AI Writing Tools for Blogging
AI Writing Tools for Blogging
Jasper
Jasper
- Cost: Starting at $29 (Starter, monthly, 20,000 words), Starting at $288 (Starter, yearly prepaid, 20,000 words), Starting at $59 (Boss Mode, monthly, 50,000 words), Starting at $588 (Boss Mode, yearly prepaid, 50,000 words)
- Option tested: Boss Mode free trial (5 days, credit card required)
Formerly known as Jarvis (before Disney’s lawyers got involved), Jasper is one of the most well-known AI tools. So, naturally, it’s where I started by exploration. Originally, I tried to use the free trail on a Starter account but quickly learned I’d need to try Boss Mode in order to try to “Documents” template for longer content. C’est la vie.
Given the option to start from scratch or use “Blog post workflow,” I went with the former. Then, it was just a matter of entering a Title, Description, Tone of voice, and Keywords to get going. One thing I found a bit odd, though, was that Jasper would stop writing in the middle of a sentence sometimes. You could then tell it to write more but it would regularly stop in fairly odd places.
In any case, here’s a sample of the post that Jasper created (after I cut off some incomplete sentences to start new ones):
Rytr
Rytr
- Cost: Free (Free plan), $9 (Saver plan, monthly), $90 (Saver plan, yearly prepaid), $29 (Unlimited plan, monthly), $290 (Unlimited plan, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Free plan
After trying Jasper, the free version of Rytr definitely felt like a step down. In fact, instead of being able to create a full post, I quickly discovered I was fairly limited in what I could generate. That said, while I could only “write” a paragraph at time, there was a long list of tone options to choose from. Plus, I could create up to three variations of the same content at a time, which was nice. All in all, for free (and not just a trial), Rytr proved to be an interesting and potentially useful tool.
Here are some sample sections Rytr generated, with the first two examples using the “Optimal” setting for Creativity and the other two using “High” Creativity:
Writesonic
Writesonic
- Cost: Free (Trial), Starting at $15 (Short-form, monthly), Starting at $120 (Short-form, yearly prepaid), Starting at $19 (Long-form, monthly), Starting at $156 (Long-form, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Free plan (no credit card required)
With my free trial of Writesonic, I seemingly had access to a number of different tools. Because of this, I wasn’t 100% sure where to start. But, after learning that the Instant Article Writer option would require an upgrade to the Long-form plan, I decided to give the AI Article Writer 3.0 tool a try instead.
Getting started with a full post meant offering up an introduction. For more meta fun, I actually went ahead and borrowed the one that Jasper penned for me. After that, it was able to do most of the work on its own.
As you’ll see, for two of my sections, Writesonic created a literal list that fit the topic, but there were no paragphaphs and the bullet points weren’t formatted in a way I’d like. I have to imagine this could be rewritten and expanded upon — but this is what I got first, so it’s what we’re sticking with. Making up for this, I did like how Writesonic provided a relevant image for my post complete with credit! I found this to be very cool, honestly.
Here is the sample post I got from Writesonic using their AI Article Writer 3.0 platform:
Copysmith
Copysmith
- Cost: $19 (Starter, monthly), $192 (Starter, yearly prepaid), $59 (Professional, monthly), $600 (Professional, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Free trial (7 days, no credit card required)
Next up was Copysmith. Admittedly, after getting to the dashboard for this one, I was a bit concerned, as templateS such as “Facebook Ad” and “Social Media Captions” didn’t meet my needs. Luckily, I finally spotted the “Long form content creator,” which sounds more up my alley.
After I got this template open, I realized it wanted me to enter an intro. So, once again, I utilized the Jasper-generated intro to get things rolling. From there, I was able to generate paragraphs to be added. However, while Copysmith provided me with different variations of the same paragraph that I could add to my post, I didn’t have much luck getting it to write additional sections. It’s quite possible that this was due to failure on my part (I did warn you at the top), but was a bit annoying.
Nevertheless, here is my (rather short) article created using Copysmith:
Thundercontent
Thundercontent
- Cost: $7 (Starter, monthly), $48 (Starter, yearly prepaid), $14 (Pro, monthly), $84 (Pro, yearly prepaid), $29 (Unlimited, monthly), $168 (Unlimited, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Free trial (no credit card required)
I’ll tell you at the top: I didn’t get too far with Thundercontent. While things started well enough — with me selecting “Create new content” and “Text” (as opposed to “Audio), I was a little disappointed to see that there wasn’t a full article option. Instead, I settled for a paragraph.
My plan was to create a few different paragraphs with different topics to build a post. Alas, this was foiled by the fact that, despite changing the input, I seemed to get similar results. Thinking this was just because the tool wasn’t made to do more than one at a time, I backed out and tried again. Sadly, though, the results I got from that run were hardly on topic.
I present the single paragraph I selected from Thundercontent’s options:
Texta
Texta
- Cost: $10 (Starter, monthly), $48 (Starter, yearly prepaid), $29 (Pro Max, monthly), $199 (Pro Max, yearly prepaid), $49 (Pro Max Plus, monthly), $350 (Pro Max Plus, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Free trial (no credit card required)
After creating my Texta account for a free trial, I found there were a number of options to choose from. This time around, the one I wanted was fairly obvious: Blog Post. From there, I could go with “Simple” or “Advanced” — so I, of course, went with the latter.
Step 1 of Advanced required me to describe my post as well as select a “Title Type.” Options included “How to,” “Asking a question,” and the ever-popular “Clickbait.” I choose “Science backed” given the topic. The other part of this step was to select a tone (Friendly, Formal, Optimistic, etc.) and style (Informal, Expository, Creative, Persuasive, etc.) as well as confirm the language.
Step 2 involved choosing a title while Step 3 was signing off on a generated outline. You can also make additions or adjustments to either if you wanted. With these steps completed, hitting “Finish” resulted in a short wait followed by… a fully written post!
Let’s take a look at the post Texta penned for me (it was long so it’s displayed across three photos):
AISEO
AISEO
- Cost: Free (Starter), $19 (Grow, monthly), $199 (Grow, yearly prepaid), $34 (Scale, monthly), $499 (Scale, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Starter
Logging into AISEO, there were a few options that sounded about right to me. So, I went with “Long form assistant” and then “Start from scratch.” Getting started with my post was fairly easy, entering my title and a description. The next step was to create an outline. To do this, AISEO presented the outlines of other articles on the topic, giving me the option to add some of their H2s and H3s to my post. For this, I stuck to the fairly generic ones such as “What is brain fog?” and “What causes brain fog.”
With my outline set, I tried use the “New AI content based on SERP” option. Unfortunately, with the free version, I wasn’t able to generate a fully AI-written post. Instead, I had to settle for “paraphrasing competitor content” — which is not the same thing and, to me, feels cheap.
Here’s the post AISEO created, with the intro based on my description, an outline selected from other posts, and “paraphrasing competitor content” for the body:
Oh, but wait, because I then realized that I should have gone with “Article Generator.” This process was a bit similar to Texta in that it went from keywords to title to outline to post. However, as you’ll see below, there are some odd quirks to the results, which seem to suggest that, once again, it’s spun content and not really AI generated.
While it’s likely unfair to give this platform two shots, here’s my “Article Generator” creation for good measure:
Bramework
Bramework
- Cost: $19 (Basic, monthly), $199 (Basic, yearly prepaid), $49 (Starter, monthly), $499 (Starter, yearly prepaid), $79 (Professional, monthly), $799 (Professional, yearly prepaid), $199 (Agency, monthly), $1,999 (Agency, yearly prepaid)
- Option tested: Basic free trial (7 days, credit card required)
Like other options on this list, Bramework offers a number of different tools. In my case, though, I went for their AI Writing Assistant. Interface wise, I found some aspects similar to Jasper, such as the Output Length section.
As far as creating an article, I had a little trouble with this one at first. But, I soon realized that what I needed was to start typing something and then I could let the tool take over. Still, I’ll admit I didn’t get very far and decided to give up.
Below is the short post I started using Bramework, with the phrases I used to get things going placed in red text:
WordHero
WordHero
- Cost: $49 (monthly), $348 (yearly, prepaid)
- Option tested: None
Finally, we come to the last tool on my list: WordHero. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to try this one first hand as I didn’t see any free trial option. And, as much as I love my readers, I didn’t feel like paying $49 for the chance to check it out. So, while you may want to check it out, I’m going to have to skip it.
My Thoughts and Takeaways from My AI Tool Test
My Thoughts and Takeaways from My AI Tool Test
As I mentioned at the time, I approached this test while “flying blind.” In other words, I created my accounts, found the option I thought made the most sense, and did my best to generate what I could. Under those parameters, there were a couple of tools that stood out to me.
The first was Texta. On my free trial, I was able to easily create a nearly 800-word article that feels, well, complete. What’s more, getting to that point was remarkably straightforward and required minimum input from me (although customization options were there). From suggesting what it thought was a better title to creating an outline, each step was easy to navigate and the end result was… fine. If nothing else, it’s definitely workable.
Meanwhile, the other tool that caught my attention was Writesonic. The reason for that is far more simple: it added an incredibly applicable image. Seeing as finding stock images to go with my content is one of the low-key hardest things I have to do for some articles, I really appreciated this nice touch.
While it may still sound like science fiction to some, the truth is that there are now a number of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that bloggers can use to generate content for them. However, while these platforms can be useful and, at times, impressive, they can cost a significant amount of money to use and the results may vary. Of course, it should also be noted that you don’t need to use AI to completely write posts for you. Instead, you may find that you appreciate these AI engines providing you with additional topics or outline ideas, titles, etc. Even better, plans with these more basic functions may be more affordable. Just one last word of advice: with whichever AI tool you choose to try, make sure to look through any how-to documents or tutorials they may offer so that you can get the most out of the tool’s powers. Good luck!
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Other Articles by Kyle Burbank
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