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The Potential Futures of Jasper AI
I found that Jasper AI has this interesting dual nature. On the one hand, in a utopian scenario, it's a game-changer for content creators, like bloggers and students, boosting efficiency and helping them make some good money. But then, in a dystopian twist, it can be twisted for some pretty shady stuff, like creating fake online personas and spreading false information.
Jarvis is an AI copywriting tool that uses a database of stored content from “reading” about 10% of the internet in order to accurately help a user write blogs, emails, social media posts etc. This tool specializes in creating SEO (Search Engine Optimized) content that ranks high in Google and generates website clicks.
Jarvis is used by a myriad of people that need help with almost any kind of content and copywriting. It is most popularly used for blogs, but I have seen people use it to sell website content packages for industries they are not a part of, writing scripts for YouTube videos, and even writing content in different languages. Most users of Jarvis are content creators, with a specialty in SEO content writing. With SEO being the most popular use-case, it became the driving force behind the direction I took my research.
Jarvis starts off by asking the user what kind of content they want to write, using their “templates” that range from Facebook headlines to full on blog posts. When the user selects their template, it then takes them over to the document editor that begins the real process of writing with Jarvis. This document editor gives you tips for writing your headline, intro paragraphs, body text and the rest of the required content you would need for your selected template.
One of the most important aspects for users to understand is how Jarvis “thinks” for them to write the best content possible as quickly as they can. According to Jarvis’ documentation, it has ready millions of blogs, reddit threads, websites, newspapers, and more.
“This gives Jarvis an unbelievable grasp of imitating human language and creating content most find exceptional”
Unfortunately, the “reading” done by Jarvis ended in 2019, meaning it doesn’t know anything about the events of 2020 and onward. This includes COVID-19, our current president, and the myriad of events that have changed our world in the last year. This is circumvented by giving the AI a detailed description of the current event for it to learn and write about it. An example is included below for writing about COVID:
This content description box will be what Jarvis uses for each paragraph of content, so it is recommended that the user updates this consistently to avoid the AI repeating the same verbiage or facts. Even with all this, it is good to fact-check the content writing as Jarvis may even make up things that simply aren’t true about the topic.
An app like Jarvis can lead to potential negative uses involving fake identities or extreme versions of online “catfishing”
Throughout my initial synthesis and discovery process, I thought about how a product like this can easily be used to deceive people. In our current world, it is hard to tell what is real and what is not. This ranges from what you see on social media to even what we see in the news at times. With less personal human interaction, it is much harder to tell when you are being deceived online.
This is an area where a product like Jarvis can potentially become a large problem. If this AI becomes smart enough, overtime it can get extremely good at mimicking human speech patterns, tones of voice, and social cues during online interactions. So, we are going to explore where this can lead to in the future.
My research on the ins and outs of Jarvis took me through Facebook groups, YouTube, Reddit, and some great contextual inquiries. Jarvis has quickly become a large part of the online content-creation community and is only gaining in popularity. Let’s start with my secondary research on what people think about Jarvis.
I began where I always do when I want to learn about something – YouTube. Here is where I found many tutorial videos on how people are using Jarvis to make money selling SEO content and potentially making up to $2500 per month. Other videos included reviews of the product which were unanimously positive, raving about how easy it is to pump out content. This was a good start.
I then moved on to Reddit. There is not an official subreddit for Jarvis that I found yet. The closest thing was a place called r/aicopy that encompasses many ai content-writing tools such as Grammarly and Fraser, common competitors, or companions to Jarvis. However, the posts I did read on Reddit about Jarvis did what Reddit does best – tempered my expectations. I found a couple posts made using Jarvis which were quickly called out in the comments, then I read a few posts about people’s experiences which were much more lukewarm. The final, most important thing I learned is that Jarvis pays affiliates 30% commission for each person they get to sign up for Jarvis. This is 30% every month they are subscribed for life, which quickly explained why everyone on YouTube was in love with the product.
Finally, I ended up on their private Facebook Group, which is currently sitting at 45k members. Here I found many posts, use-cases, and reviews of Jarvis. The most useful part of the group were the various public polls of the group that gave me a good outlook of how people use outlook. Here are some key findings:
Most people use Jarvis for Personal business/Projects
Most People Are in the Social Media Marketing business
And lastly, most people are Business Owners
For contextual inquiry, I asked the marketing manager at my company to give Jarvis a test run and give her thoughts on how well it can work for our current writing process. She gave some incredible feedback that gave good insight into where Jarvis currently stands as a professional content-writing tool:
“This was a little confusing at first and I wasn’t sure if I was filling it out correctly. Was I supposed to be specific and give word counts, headlines, and themes? “
“While some of the headlines don’t make sense or aren’t as clear (like using language not common in the industry, like “invisible treatment,”) I appreciated the various options. They helped generate a lot of ideas. “
“I wasn’t too impressed with this feature. The first example is mine and the following are AI generated intro paragraphs. The intro paragraphs they gave read more like a brief intro in a Wiki article or encyclopedia without actually drawing the reader in.
It would be neat if the AI could analyze your intro paragraph to then recommend something that better fits the tone or writing style you’re going for. “
“This made sense because it requires you to bridge the gap between the AI content with your own voice. However, it didn’t really work as expected. I noticed you could go and add words to other paragraphs and then the “compose” button would reactivate. It also reactivated if you simply copied and pastes a previous paragraph. I would have appreciated this feature more if it limited you to only adding words between the AI. “
“At first, the transitions into new paragraphs were a little wonky. There wasn’t any link between one paragraph and the next. However, I discovered that adding a headline would better indicate to the AI what the next paragraph would be. I found myself relying on the AI mostly for intro paragraphs after headlines.
(See below)”
“Though sometimes it was a little odd that Jarvis simply cut off a sentence mid-thought. It was hard as a writer to even know where the AI was going with this sentence?”
“While Jarvis didn’t really shorten my writing time (average about 1.5-2hrs for a blog post), what was previously time spent writing was instead spent editing and fact-checking. As a result, it did take out the more heavy-lifting and strenuous parts of blog post writing and it would be recommended as long as it isn’t the sole tool you’re using.”
Her use of Jarvis clearly shows that Jarvis is not ready to be used as a replacement for a good content writer. It is helpful in the ways it gives some decent recommendations, but it cannot write full copy without carefully looking at what it produces. The facts that Jarvis sometimes makes up proves to be a hindrance as well. This resulted in her needing to use multiple AI tools to help Jarvis produce good results.
After the research process, I went into thinking about how a product like Jarvis would look in the future. This speculative design process took me down the route of creating personas, storyboards, and a prototype of what Jarvis can turn into in a Utopian and Dystopian future.
The first person to be introduced is Mehdi. I imagine Mehdi to be someone that is similar to me and many other students/young professionals. He is deeply passionate about his goals and wants to learn as much as he can but is under a constant stress from having to find ways to afford rent while still having time to dedicate to his classes. This leads Mehdi to creating a blog about topics he’s interested in, so he can generate revenue while also learning.
A tool like Jarvis would be beneficial for his use-case, as it will enable him to spend less time writing each night while simultaneously increasing his revenue from page views.
The benefits of creating a user journey were that it allowed me to gain a good grasp of how a company like Jarvis would expect Mehdi to discover their product and what would come out of that experience.
Key Goals and Needs -
· Create as much content as possible
· Make engaging for him and his users
· Make revenue off the content
What they Struggle with the Most -
· Getting exposure
· Producing content in time
· Burnout
What Tasks they have -
· Research topics
· Writing about each topic
· Adding relevant SEO content so page ranks on Google
Discovery Process (how he starts his journey)-
Mehdi writes content that shares information and wants to make money while staying engaged. He struggles with finding the time to do his school work and still be able to write, so naturally he falls under the content writing section for Jarvis.
Registration (why he would trust Jarvis)-
If Jarvis is able to help Mehdi write content, produce SEO, and decrease the time it takes to do them it would build his trust in their offerings. These are two of Jarvis more advertised benefits, with the only drawback being that Mehdi would still need to edit the produced content.
Onboarding (how Jarvis can help Mehdi feel successful)-
The onboarding experience would be the most important part of the process to ensure Mehdi has a positive experience. It would need to explain ways to create content, thoroughly explain the workflow/UI, show him the best keywords for similar SEO content, and show him how to best find relevant research for his topics. Currently, Jarvis can't help write content and is great for SEO writing, but the content it makes can sound uneducated or off topic requiring Mehdi to be careful about the keywords he inputs.
Sharing (Why Mehdi would invite others to use Jarvis)-
Mehdi would most likely share his experiences with people in similar positions as him. Meaning blog writing, SEO marketing, and the side income would be his main selling points. This can be accomplished by sharing Jarvis relevant blogs and inviting users to the Jarvis community (probably with that affiliate link).
What he is now able to do -
· Write more about things he enjoys
· Get his work done in a timely manner
· Supplement his income
The future brings us to Savannah. Savannah is the only SEO content writer at her company that needs to find a way to increase her workflow for a growing clientele while continuing to create quality content. She would love to prove the benefits of good SEO content to her company in order to make the push to grow her team, which leads her to Jargon. Jargon is a future content writing tool made specifically for businesses and large corporations.
My future vision for Jarvis was influenced a lot by my current marketing manager and seeing how Jarvis simply is not cut out for larger businesses. A utopian outcome for Jarvis is that it continues to grow and become more sophisticated, allowing for more job growth while helping businesses overcome limitations.
Taking the user journey and current limitations of Jarvis into account. I sketched. A prototype of how Jargon can work in a future landscape.
The first change is that Jarvis can now work on your mobile device, which is currently not possible with Jarvis. This allows for a much more accessible experience that does not limit their userbase.
Next, Jargon allows the user to input their website’s URL so it can learn all about the company's values, tone of voice, and all relevant information about their industry.
Once the scan is complete, the user can edit any incorrect information to ensure the data Jargon outputs is accurate. This helps reduce the amount of time needed for future edits by the user.
Jargon retains the template feature of Jarvis, allowing users to pick what type of content they are going to write. But what differs is that Jargon allows the user to produce content for specific elements of the page such as forms or calls to action. When the user is ready to publish, they can then push to page directly to their website without having to manually add the content.
Jargon is aimed to be a direct improvement to the current shortcomings of Jarvis and greatly increase workplace productivity. I see these changes being made in a near future and allowing companies large and small to produce much more effective content.
In the current day, I can easily see Jarvis being used by blogs that only care about generating headlines and clicks. It’s fast content generation that only requires a few sentences to describe the topic allows for this.
Benjamin F. is someone I envision to be a man that only cares for the profits of his news company. He utilizes Jarvis to quickly push out content about the current election cycle, knowing that many people only share headlines without reading articles. He only desires the bottom-line and higher profit margins as long as he does not have to put in much effort.
During my time researching and getting in touch with people from the Jarvis community, I received a few interesting messages from obviously fake accounts. When I read them, I realized the messages were made with Jarvis, displaying the repeating words and jumbled facts mentioned in the Jarvis documentation. These messages were trying to get me to sign up for a service by the person who created the accounts, but it was such a bad attempt it was easy to see through. This got me to think – what if one day it’s not so easy?
This brings me to Angela. Angela is a young foreign woman that needs to provide for her family in any way possible and relies on affiliate links to generate income. She then discovers a product called Secret EYEdentity that allows her to create fake social media profiles that attend user groups like the Jarvis community. These fake profiles accurately replicate the writing style and background of a person within the selected industry, using relevant information.
What you will notice about Angela’s persona is that she is a young foreign woman that has a positive motivation for her negative actions in our eyes. My research process brought me across many foreign users of Jarvis, and it made me realize that this product has different use-cases for people outside of America.
Secret EYEdentity follows the same path as Jargon but plays as a more interactive and “fun” experience. The user can choose what type of profession they want their online profile to represent, what they performance indicators they are looking for, and what social platform to “attack”.
What you will notice is that, for a product that scams people, secret EYEdentity has a fun app design. This is to attract users like Angela who do not want to feel guilty for the work they are doing. This appeals to her need to make money while letting her have a clearer conscience about how she can get the money to make her kid’s dreams come true.
After my research and speculative design process, I concluded that, in its current state, Jarvis does not pose a problem in any way. This can only change if there is not careful use and consideration of this kind of technology. Laws and times do change, with the digital world seemingly moving faster than both, things can easily go in ways we did not see possible. So, this section will take me back through my research and speculative design process while considering the ethics and psychology that effects both outcomes.
Jarvis turning into a product like Jargon is a very likely outcome. This is right down its alley as a tool that is used for generating SEO and reduces time spent writing content. Right now, Jarvis has too many small problems that prevents it from reliably being used as scale. I believe that even Jarvis’ creators know this as it would otherwise be directly marketed to businesses instead of content creators.
On the other hand, Jarvis taking on the more dystopian path and becoming a product like secret EYEdentity would be more of an unintended outcome. Scams and fraud are incredibly prevalent in today’s society, ranging from fake websites, to texts, calls, and even fake personas like the one that tried to contact me. These are all using products we’ve come to love such as Facebook (ha), but obviously may not have been the initial use intended by the creator. So how can a product like this come to be?
During my research process, you’ll see that many users of Jarvis are already business owners. Its current use-case is for social media marketing/advertising for personal projects. Jarvis’ userbase clearly see its potential for generating revenue, so it just needs to be able to translate that to companies.
The main changes Jarvis needs for the business world is to simply make the AI “smarter” and more “independent”. Currently, the process of using Jarvis alongside two other ai writing tools is too cumbersome and goes against what Jarvis’ advertised capabilities.
This, however, is not a concern for smaller individuals or companies that are only looking to make quick money from as many people as possible in a short amount of time. Individuals like these are looking for an easily replicable method to get these short-term revenue gains, so using Jarvis only makes sense. Many people running these scams are from foreign countries, where the same laws, ethics, and regulations don’t apply as they do here in America.
My speculative design process took me through what a product like Jarvis would look like in the utopian world with an app named Jargon. Jargon will have to successfully consider the special needs of a business compared to an individual and deliver on those expectations.
A business’ main need for Jargon would be to create high search-ranking web pages with a much faster turnaround rate than an individual writer. It would also need to drive significant growth to the company’s website traffic and ad clickthrough rates. Unlike an individual, a business cannot always take risks on a product like Jargon just for it to fail. That will mean loss of profits, time lost from training workers to use the product, and a loss of reputation as well if the produced content is subpar.
On the flipside, companies understand that it is difficult to hire a good copywriter. SEO content is very hard to write as there are so many rules and nuances that go into getting your page to properly rank on Google. This can often be an expensive endeavor for a company to get there, and then even more money to maintain a good standing with their rankings. A tool like Jargon can enable them to hire more copywriters to produce content or just train currently employees to use the product. This can take off a lot of the initial costs of getting this set up.
If the company can use Jargon to write the base content for their website pages and see increased revenue, contacts, and traffic it is an easy sell.
For Secret EYEdentity, it would need to successfully create revenue for an individual in a way that does not directly trace back to them. Not only that, but the design of the app allows it to be marketed as a product that is not intended to mislead people. The ninja mascot, fun design, and more lighthearted verbiage will allow it to be looked at as more of a joke app that was misused. Many companies operate on that thin line and it is how they make their money, such as Amazon with their labor practices.
Secret EYEdentity will rely much more on the ai content created and the copy must be extremely proficient in order to actively fool people. Posing as another human being is not easy, so for a robot to accomplish that task is a much taller order than to just be writing content for a blog. AI technology will need to be advanced enough to have a full conversation with a real human being long enough to gain their trust and make them buy your service. This is not easy for an actual person, let alone an AI. Where the changes occur however, is in the fact that many of these scams aren’t looking to convince everyone just those few people vulnerable enough to fall for it.
The main ethical problem with a product like Jargon is that it will mean most of the content you read online would not have been written by a real person. How can a user understand if a company really adheres to its values if not even the words on their site are written by a human? This can also lead to a problem of the company not even truly understanding the message they are putting out, as they are relying on an AI to write for them.
A future world where a program is deciding what is the best way to speak to another human can easily be seen as a concern. Humans are inherently social creatures, yet each day we are moving towards a world where that is less important. Beyond that, this would also pose the question of how a program like Jargon would affect copyrighting laws. Can text created by a robot be copyrighted since it was not an original idea made by a human?
Presently, copyright’s laws have concluded that readings by robot does not count as infringement. It is for humans only, being considered fair use when done by a computer. This means that Jargon can take content from another website written by Jargon or a similar product and put it on a company’s website with no consequences. This also means that other companies can do the same with your content. This leads to the obvious problem of your business’ words no longer being your own, along with your values, stories, etc.
Going deeper into the psychological aspect, human readership is viewed as “an engagement with an author’s expression”. There is an intimate relationship between a human and the words they create, that is then interpreted by another human when they read it. Even though it is not a direct interaction, this still holds weight and value as a social interaction between people.
It is often found that emotional marketing sways buyers, as humans, we are often moved by our feelings. So this poses my next question, can using a product like Jargon to evoke those feelings be a form of manipulation?
This section is relevant for both Jargon and Secret EYEdentity, as they are two sides to the same coin. Meaning that no matter which outcome we end up with, there will still be a negative drawback we may end up dealing with.
In my honest opinion after all the research and speculation, I still believe that a utopian outcome is more likely for a product like Jarvis. It is possible for it to go in a more negative direction, but the ethical concerns are too apparent for that to be done at scale. It is a more obvious path to follow in the business direction, while the dystopian outcome will most likely be done by a spin-off of the product. However, creating something that sophisticated will take resources and technology that we are simply not going to see any time soon. AI are very smart, but they still have not overall crossed that uncanny valley that convinces humans they are real.
Sources:
https://learn.jarvis.ai/bootcamp/training-data
https://www.facebook.com/groups/181065463755479/hashtags
https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright-for-literate-robots/
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-Vince Wimberly Jr.
Owner of Life Advance Fitness
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