The pros and cons of using AI for website and content management

AI is increasingly impacting the way we manage and create websites and any related content. The latest releases from the larger Digital Experience Platform (DXP) vendors include mind-bogglingly advanced AI-powered features that cover virtually every aspect of website management, content management and digital marketing, across the full site and content lifecycle. Our recent coverage of the launch of SitecoreAI and Optimizely’s native AI capabilities explores features and agents that mean you can more or less create a website or campaign from scratch just using AI.

Is this rapid advance of AI capabilities into the world of website and content management positive or negative?  Since ChatGPT went public in late 2022, generative AI and increasingly agentic AI have been the subject of intense debate. Often this has been quite polarising; AI is either the future of everything or the end of the world. Even before ChatGPT debates about the AI and the future of work tended to be clouded both by utopian and dystopian views of where we will end up.

Of course, AI is very much here to stay and as it stands like any profound change, there are both positive and negative elements. We are also still very much in the early phase of AI and to a certain extent navigating this new world.
Below we explore some of the pros of using AI on your website, as well as some of the cons.

Six pros for using AI for website and content management

First, let's explore the benefits.

1.    Content optimisation

Website content is not just about creating some copy, adding some images and arranging it on a page.  That content also often needs to be optimised with metadata for SEO, AEO and GEO, a summary that might appear in content spotlights or search results within the site, various tagging added, making it accessible, and more. All this takes time and usually needs to be completed by the central website team.
One of the ways AI can help is to do some of the heavy lifting on content optimisation and automate or partly automate many of these processes, saving time for busy content marketing teams, and potentially even handing back some of the content optimisation to individual content owners. It can also make pages more accessible, which benefits everybody.

2.    Reducing the barriers for content creation

People within your business outside the marketing team are sometimes tasked with creating website content, for example, something which is more technical or requires their professional input. However, writing an engaging article might not necessarily come naturally to them, and the content creation process might actually be quite difficult. Content creation can also be hard for people who are not native speakers or for some neuro-divergent people.  

Content creation might come more naturally to digital marketers, but even they suffer from those “blank canvas syndrome” moments when they find it hard to get started or need inspiration.

AI can help content creators overcome these potential stumbling blocks, and be a great source for getting started, coming up with a little bit of inspiration, making suggestions for images, and the like. It can even be like having a writing coach looking over your shoulder, reducing barriers for the creation of engaging content that is the foundation for high-performing websites.  

3.    Translation

One of the most powerful aspects of AI is the ability to translate content at scale which is accurate. This ability was in place before the rise of generative AI, but it has arguably got even better since. You will still likely need to check with a native speaker or translator for a final review of translated content that is sensitive, technical or prominent to check for accuracy and brand consistency, but the overall translation process is still much quicker and cheaper.

4.    Speed to market

When you’re working to a deadline to get a website live, there is a lot to do. Using AI to speed up processes for example around content generation and optimisation can absolutely help increase your speed to market without having to cut corners, and potentially reduce the stress sometimes associated with ambitious (a.k.a. crazy) website project deadlines.   

5.    Personalization and marketing automation 

We’ve written many times on this blog about how CMS and DXP features have increasingly automated processes for implementing personalisation, comprehensive analytics, automation and other aspects of digital marketing. Many of these more advanced approaches are on the wish list for digital marketing teams, but up to now they haven’t had the time, knowledge or confidence to implement them. 
AI is going to be a game-changer in enabling advanced digital marketing for all with agents capable of carrying out processes and doing the heavy lifting, while keeping humans in control at the right moments. These capabilities within Sitecore, Optimizely and their competitors are already very impressive, and they are only likely to become more advanced and come down in price.  

6.    Brand governance

AI is certainly a double-edged sword. For all the challenges around it undermining brand credibility (see below), it can also support brand governance by referencing tone of voice, layout, spot warning signs and more on your content.
Both Sitecore and Optimizely have realised that control and governance are critical for using generative and agentic AI, and have built in facilities to specify rules and reference brand guidelines.  This potentially has the power to ensure new or existing content is on-brand and consistent. This is important in larger sites or digital ecosystems where there may be multiple people creating content or being responsible for different sites.  

Six cons for using AI for website and content management

And now here’s the flipside!

1.    Undermines brand credibility, consistency and voice

“AI slop” is a term that is increasingly being used to describe the vast quantities of AI-generated content that is being introduced onto the internet, social media and other digital channels. Some surveys are even suggesting that more than 50% of all articles on the web are AI-generated.  AI-generated content can be generic, bland and obviously produced by AI. It also can lack personality and appear inconsistent with human-generated content, with obvious risks undermining your overall brand credibility, consistency and voice.

2.    Errors and risks from hallucination

Hallucination is still a key issue with generative AI; LLMs can make things up which sound very plausible and are presented confidently as facts. The nuances of the phrasing of prompts can also generate false information that you would not assume is fabricated. For example, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper published a summer reading list of recommended books that had been partly derived using AI, and included titles that didn’t exist. Not checking your facts, has the potential to incur reputational damage or worse

3.    Undermine the marketing team

There has been media attention on how AI is displacing roles and will have an impact on many professions, including marketers and developers. If you have a digital marketing team who are adding value and doing an excellent job, using AI for core website and content management processes has the potential to undermine the value of their contribution and skills. This might not only put their noise out of joint, but could even place their jobs under threat, likely negatively impacting your marketing efforts in the short-, medium- and long-term.  

4.    Take away essential experience

People develop, improve and grow through experiences and projects that incorporate making mistakes, doing the grunge work, being challenged, achieving successes, being creative, seeing what works and what doesn’t, being part of a team, working under pressure and more. Working on a website project, for example, can be really rewarding and everyone learn a lot. By relying on AI too much do we – particularly younger entrants into the profession – miss out on vital opportunities to learn our craft, develop as professionals and get better at what we do? 

5.    Meet regulatory requirement to mark AI-generated content

If you are using AI-generated content, there will be a growing regulatory requirement to ensure it is marked as being AI-generated so users know the content’s origin.  This is still an evolving area, but certainly in the EU, the AI Act will require that fully AI-generated content will be marked as such from August 2026, although this may be delayed. UK businesses serving the EU will need to comply. There are similar regulations in China and California which are already in operation. 

6.    Environmental impact

One definite negative point about the use of AI is its impact on the environment. Generative AI is extremely data-hungry with demands on the use of data centres.  Estimates suggest that increased use of data centres could lead to an additional 0.4 to 1.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2025. 
Data centres also need huge amounts of water for cooling and are already disrupting local water supplies. The negative environmental impact of AI looks set to come more sharply into focus as the global climate crisis starts to bite.

AI and website management: Getting the balance right

AI is changing the way we create website and its content, and as with every profound change there are both positive and negative elements that we’ve explored in this article.  In a future post we’ll explore the kind of processes and approaches you can put in place to try to get the balance right.

If you’d like to discuss how to use AI for your website project, then get in touch!