Image source: Markus Winkler at Pexels
Website creation has been heavily impacted by artificial intelligence. Very early on into the release of GPT-3 was a flurry of AI-generated websites flooding the internet. Many believed the conspiracy of Dead Internet Theory to already be a reality, and we were even seeing bots take over social media too.
AI doesn’t only generate the written word, but images, ideas, and even the HTML used to create the website. Given that web hosting is cheaper than ever and website builders make low-code sites accessible to everyone, generating a website with 100 pages of content and images could take no more than a weekend.
AI Answers vs New Content
AI isn’t just making it easier to generate content, it’s making it easier to generate answers. Gemini and other chatbots are being directly implemented into our smartphones and browsers so that we can ask them questions, and answers are returned immediately and directly. In fact, Google itself has an AI overview.
However, this isn’t the end of the story, as AI needs to get its answers from somewhere. AI tools need high-quality, structured data to function effectively, as many are simply scraping the internet in real time to find up-to-date answers. Therefore, instead of generating content just for users, generating content for AI is also a consideration, in which the website should be cited as a source in the AI’s answer.
This isn’t to say content will be written solely for AI, but that AI may pick up some of the slack left over from falling Google-led traffic. In other words, content, and therefore websites, do not face a total existential threat, though their revenue models are being questioned as AI will likely never pay quite as much in royalties (though this be the direction it takes).
Content Generation Boom
AI has become the catalyst for boom in content generation. Moving beyond SEO-driven content, we need to also consider copywriting, which is a huge friction for any new website. Ecommerce is exploding, and most shops simply do not bother with organic SEO, but they still need to write an About Us page and product descriptions.
The fact that AI is highly competent (even if it currently has shortcomings) at this means that small business owners have a greater appetite for starting a site. Not only is web hosting cheaper and easier than ever, but so is getting the copy down.
On top of that, AI is helping create websites as web-building tools, where a prompt can generate templates and CSS to style a site in bespoke ways.
Final Word
The web is projected to increase in the number of sites, but estimates vary. Currently, the number is going up, and despite a potential threat to the SEO content-led revenue model, the safe bet would be to assume that more websites will be created from now on. This is because soon, in a single prompt, AI may be able to generate a fully-fledged website in a single prompt, from the structure and functionality to the content and images.
