Cons of ChatGPT usage for ecommerce

It is important to remember, that as powerful and useful as these tools are, AI chatbots have some considerable limitations that might impact their effectiveness. In this article, we will review some of the cons of ChatGPT usage for ecommerce.

With the rising popularity of AI tools such as ChatGPT, the eCommerce world is buzzing. ChatGPT is an AI-powered language model developed by OpenAI that was trained on a massive amount of text data from the internet to generate human-like responses to natural language text inputs. Such tools can tremendously help sellers create high quality content for their online stores.

It is important to remember, however, that powerful and useful as they are, these AI chatbots have some serious limitations that might impact their effectiveness. In this article, we will review some of these cons. 

1. SEO Drawbacks

SEO is one of the main things that help listings appear at the top of the search result page. Marketplace SEO, just as traditional SEO, relies heavily on the use of keywords for ranking listings. While ChatGPT may be helpful in suggesting a list of relevant keywords, it cannot by itself effectively insert them into texts, such as listing title, product description, etc.

For this task to be done properly, a human must go through the texts, and add relevant keywords in logical places. The addition of long tailed keywords is always recommended - and it is another task ChatGPT cannot do.  

2. Low Quality Texts

Although ChatGPT can produce very human-like texts, they usually lack the quality that only the human mind can produce. Even when including all the important information, the texts ChatGPT produces lack the overall marketing attitude, and usually require touch-ups. 

This is true with regards to products that already have descriptions out there online, but especially true with regards to unique products. If, for instance, you are the sole manufacturer of a very unique niche  product, ChatGPT might not be helpful in creating a product description, since it may know little about it and know even less about its unique features. Moreover, while ChatGPT is trained on a massive amount of data it is not trained on the most recent data. So if your product is less than one year old or very unique, it might be much better to come up with the relevant content by yourself.

3. Not Personalized

Today’s shoppers much prefer personalization of the content. Gone are the days of general oversimplifications. One of the most important keys to success for sellers is getting to know their target market, what it prefers, what it cannot live without, etc. The better sellers know what shoppers want, the better they can target them with information and copy that is relevant to them. ChatGPT, on the other hand, cannot make these distinctions between specific crowds of shoppers. The texts it produces are much more generalized and lack the personal touch of an insider.    

4. Not Original

ChatGPT uses the internet as an information resource. Its replies are based on the knowledge acquired from the web. ChatGPT can put together originally articulated texts, but at the end of the day - it cannot create any really original material. Everything it produces has already been previously published online in some form. 

Besides originality, the other major flaw of relying on the internet is that we all know that the internet is not always correct. For this reason, ChatGPT is sometimes prone to errors and mistakes, and that is why a human should go over all the products - before publishing. 

Conclusion

AI chatbots like ChatGPT may be very helpful in creating content for your online store. But it is important to remember their limitations and treat them more as writing assistance. The bots’ lack of creativity, originality and proneness to errors require that humans review the final copy and make the necessary correction and SEO adjustment that the bot simply cannot do. 

Sellers that mostly sell common products that have plenty of description examples online, can rely heavily on ChatGPT to help them write copy. However, if you sell unique products that have little to no information online, then ChatGPT will not be much less useful. The cons of ChatGPT usage for ecommerce will become apparent and the seller would do best to avoid it.