Technology is changing significantly these days, and with the world so focused on using technologies in our day-to-day lives, scientists are unsurprisingly eager to make everyone’s lives increasingly easier.
Artifical intelligence, or AI, is a relatively new field, but one that is expanding at a rapid rate. AI involves creating “smart” computers or machines that can, in a sense, think and learn for themselves to perform complex tasks. But how is this relevant to the world of freelance?
Proofreading
Already, there is a variety of sites and tools out there that proofread your documents and correct errors without you having to go through the effort of proofreading yourself. A basic example of this is SpellCheck and GradeProof, which points out simple mistakes to you. However, there are now also free sites such as Hemingway App, which goes into detail about your piece, including how lengthy and complex the sentences are, whether the words are over-complicated and can be simplified, and how many adverbs you have used.
This new kind of “smart-proofreading” is a good example of how AI can help in freelance work – it certainly speeds up the process of nit-picking!
Already helping us in our researches
AI-powered systems can also help freelancers with their research. Any freelance content writer worth their salt will know about SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a vital part of content writing, because there is no point in writing articles and posting them on the web if nobody is going to see them.
Ten or so years ago, web and article writing commonly featured keyword stuffing as a way to boost traffic through the site, because search engines were not able to detect this. In the last few years, however, the game has changed drastically. Now, search engines such as Google are integrated with AI in order to search for high-quality content, rather than just turning up sites that feature keywords. Search engines can now understand the content, and therefore push pages that are well-written and relevant rather than ones containing multitudes of keywords.
In addition, a relatively new AI algorithm can summarize long documents, therefore saving you a considerable amount of time researching. Of course, for many topics, the research you conduct may have been brief skim-reading anyway, which is why AI tools such as this come in handy.
Some people even use this technology to sift through messy e-mail inboxes, helping them to better prioritize their tasks. Again, this is an extremely useful freelance tool.
Even Logos
AI has a lot of uses other than writing tools. For example, Logojoy is a company that uses artificial intelligence to produce high quality logos for any business. The logos are created instantly after the user answers a few quick, simple questions about their preferences, and thanks to the AI integration, Logo Joy creates unique, aesthetically-pleasing designs.
The Future of AI
There are currently scientists working on ironing out the kinks in AI writing tools, meaning that in the future there may be bots capable of performing content writing tasks. This is a pretty scary thought for those of us who make a living off content writing, but as of yet the technology is extremely underdeveloped. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that computers will ever be able to surpass the flow of human language use.
A fair handful of freelancers are not limited to just one field. Perhaps writing is not your only expertise and you like graphic design, or perhaps you are wanting to branch out of freelancing into running a business of your own.
The uses for artificial intelligence are endless already, and who knows what will happen in the future.
