Should I Use AI Generated Content for my Business?

Rogue Marketer
6 days ago
4 min read

Red Deer digital marketer reviewing AI generated content for business on a laptop

AI generated content is being used by businesses everywhere right now, and the question isn't really whether you should use it. It's whether you're using it smart or using it lazy. After 10+ years in digital marketing, working with businesses across Central Alberta and Red Deer, I've seen what happens when brands lean on AI too hard and what it costs them. Used well, AI is a legitimate tool that saves time, sharpens your process, and helps you move faster. Used without thought, it produces something I call a "sea of sameness," content that technically exists but says nothing, connects with nobody, and does nothing for your brand in the long run. Here is the honest breakdown.

Where AI Generated Content for Business Actually Works

Let's give credit where it's due. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and others are genuinely useful for getting the ball rolling. Brainstorming, drafting, pulling together a rough structure for a blog or caption when you're staring at a blank page at 9pm on a Friday, that's a real use case. AI can help you move faster, cover more ground, and take the pressure off constantly generating ideas from scratch.

It's also decent at SEO research and drafting initial content frameworks. If you know what keywords you're after, AI can help you draft something to build on. The keyword there is "build on."

For small business owners and entrepreneurs managing their own marketing on top of running the actual business, AI can be a lifeline for efficiency. The problem is that most people stop there, right at the draft stage, and hit post.

What AI Generated Content Can't Do for Your Brand

Here's where things fall apart. Your audience knows. Not always immediately, and not always consciously, but they know.

The giveaways are everywhere. The overuse of em dashes. The three-part sentence structures that follow the same rhythm every single time. Captions that read like a checklist rather than a real person talking. And the one that genuinely makes my entire body cringe: AI pulling statistics (or crucial business information like phone numbers...) straight from thin air and it going live on your social media without anyone catching it. That happens more than we realize, and once that trust is gone, it never comes back easily.

AI generated content for business only works if a human is in the driver's seat reviewing it. That means confirming every claim against your actual expertise, filtering it through your knowledge of your business, your ethics, your practices, and then injecting your own experience into it. A first draft from AI should never be your final post. There is only so much a machine can do without your thinking to operate it.

In places like Red Deer and Central Alberta, this matters even more. People here want to support local. They want someone to root for, a face behind the brand, a story they believe in. That kind of connection does not come from an algorithm. It comes from you showing up and sounding like yourself.

According to a 2024 Accenture study reported by Trendwatching, nearly 60% of consumers now doubt the authenticity of content they see online, and 62% say trust is a key factor in whether they engage with a brand at all. That number is only going up as AI content floods every feed.

The Visuals Conversation Nobody Wants to Have

AI generated visuals are an even harder no from me, and I say that with full awareness that I work in a visual-first industry.

There are exceptions. The AI toy trend that went around for a while, where people turned themselves into an action figure that came packaged with the tools of their trade, was fun, relatable, and self-aware enough to land well. That is the kind of trend where hopping in makes sense because the whole point was the joke.

But if one of your strongest selling points is being a community-rooted small business, you cannot build that brand with generated images. Your audience needs something real to connect to. A photo of your actual space, your team, your product, your hands doing the work. That is the stuff that creates emotional connection and keeps people coming back.

A Getty Images study of over 30,000 consumers across 25 countries found that 98% of consumers agree that authentic images and videos are pivotal to building trust. Nearly 90% want to know when an image was created using AI. And people feel measurably less favourably toward brands using AI generated visuals to represent people or products.

Consistently using AI generated images signals to your audience, even subconsciously, that you are not willing to invest in your own brand. And the brands that keep going that route tend to find themselves with an audience that eventually stops trusting them altogether.

What to Do Instead

Use AI to help you think, not to replace your thinking. Draft with it, then rewrite in your own voice. Use it to beat writer's block, then make it sound like you.

And for visuals, invest in the real thing! Central Alberta has incredible photographers and videographers who specialize in exactly this, capturing the kind of content that makes your audience feel something. I've specifically used:

These are people who know how to tell a brand story visually in a way AI simply cannot replicate.

If you want to see what a real content strategy looks like for a Central Alberta business, learn more about how Rogue works or check out the Rogue blog for more no-fluff marketing education built for business owners who don't have time for the noise.