AI tools are taking over the internet, and understandably so – most are great at performing routine tasks like research and writing easy text . Many creators depend on artificial intelligence tools for their videos, articles and social media posts because they save time and are very easy to use.
As far as Food for Normal People is concerned, I write most of my posts personally and never publish posts without editing them. This is true especially when I’ve used AI tools to help me with research or formatting my articles. Here’s a list of how I use them for my website.
- Brainstorming: I like brainstorming ideas with ChatGPT because it can offer some good suggestions and new insights into topics I am thinking about.
- Research: Perplexity.ai is great for research, because it also gives me the sources of information that it has gathered from the internet. It’s also a very clever tool that uses up-to-date information. I used it for this article on millets, for example. However, I did not like the choice of sources Perplexity used for research, so I substituted them with my preferred websites. This means, I used the framework that the tool made for my article, but used my own text. As a journalist, I am trained to cross-check sources and make sure I vet them before publishing any factual information.
- Writing: Perplexity is also great for writing. In my article on millets, which I mentioned above, I used the tool to create a basic structure. Of course, having sources was great, but like I said, I replaced them with the ones that are authoritative sources on millets. For example, I used texts from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) instead of the websites Perplexity suggested. These were the top three Google results and belonged to online shops selling millets. I wanted to use authorized information, hence I replaced them with FAO’s links.
- Editing: Tools like DeepL have an online editor for checking spelling and grammar, and for suggesting better and more elegant formulations. Sometimes, I feel my writing could do with a bit of polishing, so I enter my texts into DeepL. However, I make sure that the suggested changes do not change the meaning of what I am trying to say.
- Creating images: I am a big fan of Adobe Express and sometimes, it’s difficult to get images that convey exactly what you say. I find Adobe’s text to image tool quite good – I am aware there are better ones in the market, but I find the entire process from creation to editing and customizing for website and social media is very smooth.
These are the five main tasks for which I use AI tools. I do create videos and you could say I use artificial intelligence for those as well, because most video editors have an in-built AI tool these days. Also, I am sure I could use AI to enhance my website in a million ways, but I am still discovering them and will keep you posted on any new developments in the area.