A Rant About AI, Chatbots, Vitamins, Supplements, And Wellness

Time for a rant about something that is driving me insane: the use of AI articles and chatbots for information and research about supplements (and other things). Unless you have been living under a rock, which a lot of us wish we did right now (myself included), you know that AI is becoming a massive part of our lives. From internet searches to making code for software, writing blog articles, chatbots, and social media posts, it’s everywhere.

AI Articles About Supplements

It is estimated that upwards of 57% of all web based text content (articles, blogs, etc) on the internet has been AI created or translated. This percentage is increasing each year, and will eventually prove the dead internet theory entirely correct. A large majority of this AI-generated information is highly inaccurate and riddled with errors.

Now that AI has created the majority of the information on the internet, new AI models are being trained on the existing AI-generated slop, which is only going to make the problem worse, like a snake eating its own tail. Unfortunately, more and more companies are firing staff writers and replacing them with AI because it is far less expensive. The information provided will not even come close to the quality of writing those writers produced. All of this is going to make the internet get much, much worse, even faster. 

Most AI articles do not provide references to check the information, and when they do, the references often have nothing to do with what is written or contradict it. 

The AI chatbots that far too many people rely on are using all this bad information. You mustn't use these bots to research important information. The problems created by doing this are so vast that I cannot cover them in this article, and more often than not, the information you are getting is mostly or entirely inaccurate. In addition, reliance on these chatbots is wrecking people's ability to think critically and do proper research. Please, I am begging you: if you have medical questions, talk to your doctor or healthcare practitioner, not ChatGPT.

 While AI is affecting every field of knowledge and research, I’m going to focus on supplements because that’s my area of expertise. There are two main ways people are using AI to get information on supplements. The first is chatbots, and the second is Google searches with the AI summary at the top. 

AI Answers About Supplements Are Often Wrong

When we ask these chatbots questions about supplements, the answers are just awful. For example, when we ask them for a brand of supplements that is whole food, they spit out a bunch of brands that use synthetic and isolated vitamins and are not whole food, but they market themselves as whole food. The AI is not smart enough to distinguish between accurate facts and marketing. In addition, it rates paid advertisements that look like articles, in well-known publications, as good sources of reference to show a brand is trustworthy. Paid ads should not be used to determine whether a brand or product is good or not, but the AI cannot tell that many of these articles are paid ads. 

Most AI Wellness Blogs Are Inaccurate

Every day, we get offers from companies that offer a service where an AI writes our blog articles and content for us at dirt-cheap rates. This would allow us to create new blogs every day without conducting research or paying anyone. It would certainly improve profits. 

Curious about the quality of the information those blogs would provide, we tried a few to see what kinds of content they would generate. The results were nothing short of horrifying. What’s even scarier is just how many huge websites geared towards supplements and wellness are publishing these crap articles without checking them. There are now countless health websites that publish 100% or near-100 % AI-written slop articles. 

Please check websites before getting information from them to make sure they don’t use AI-written articles. You should also not just accept that whatever the AI bot spits out at the top of lots of Google or Bing searches is accurate. Verify that information with another source you trust. 

We do not use AI to write articles on our website, and we never will. We also do not use an AI chatbot on our website. When you message our website or email us, you are working with a real person, and you always will. You deserve accurate, well-referenced information, not articles generated to get clicks or improve search engine rankings.

I’m not trying to say that AI has no uses; it certainly has some, but, like any tool, it needs to be used correctly. If you have a tool set, you don’t use the hammer for everything; you use other tools when appropriate. AI is the same way, but unfortunately, far too many people are now using it as their only tool. 

I am begging all of you to please stop relying on AI for research, and for the love of God, stop sending us AI summaries. We don’t need our society to get dumbed down anymore. The movie Idiocracy (if you haven't seen it, definitely check it out) was supposed to be a comedy, not a documentary. Also, can companies please stop shoving AI into everything? I hate it so much. It’s the worst, and it never works right. I feel like such a boomer right now, oh boy.

Me comtemplating my life choices.