In less than two years, we’ve watched ChatGPT go from novelty to necessity for millions of people across the world. In early 2025, ChatGPT had 500 million weekly active users. As of August 2025, that number has soared to 700 million weekly users! While there are so many benefits and uses for ChatGPT and other AI platforms, there’s a definitive negative impact on ChatGPT in digital marketing as it raises questions around strategy, creativity and originality. Let’s discuss how this may affect your brand.
There’s notable tension brewing between productivity and creativity with the use of ChatGPT for digital marketing. Yes, it is brilliant at brainstorming and generating ideas. Yes, it is also time efficient, assistive and helpful in freeing your time up for other tasks.
BUT!
It is also generating repetitive, generic and bland content, which risks losing your brand’s voice and personality. We all know AI has no feelings and no original thoughts. Ideas are “generated from pre-learned patterns”, says ChatGPT itself! So that means ChatGPT is not inventing new ideas from scratch, it’s remixing strategies already completed. So how does this affect your digital marketing?
For starters, the bland, generic, low value content makes it harder for your brand to stand out. Its shallow storytelling and lack of emotional depth makes it easy for your audience to spot AI generated content. You may also find that ChatGPT typically agrees with everything you say. While it is a sounding board to run ideas by, you should notice it will never go against what you say unless asked. We can’t assume our ideas and prompts are always going to be top notch, right?
Onto the more technical bits! ChatGPT and similar platforms are still developing and as marketers we’re still learning and understanding the effects but we can already see that copying and pasting content directly from ChatGPT is negatively affecting SEO. Also, can we believe everything ChatGPT says? And is ChatGPT up to date or are we receiving outdated facts and statistics? There’s also questions about content ownership and copyright, but again, we’re still learning.
How can you spot ChatGPT and AI in marketing?
As a social media manager, I can spot a ChatGPT caption a mile away. Here are some of the tell-tale signs someone has used ChatGPT.
Well we’ve established how ChatGPT is helpful in some ways and is not the enemy, but it definitely still needs human oversight. AI can write the words, but humans tell the brand story.
The next few years in digital marketing are bound to be interesting with the increase in AI integration into marketing platforms. We’re already seeing tools like Meta’s Advantage + campaigns, this will become more frequent across every marketing platform.
ChatGPT should be part of the creative process, but it shouldn’t be your strategy. Bold ideas, brand strategy and storytelling come from people, that’s how we move brands forward at Ripple.
If you’re unsure how AI fits into your marketing or you’re worried your brand is leaning too heavily on it, let’s talk. Ripple can help you create the right balance between strategy and creativity, so your marketing stands out and connects with your audience.
Written by Lauren Redfern