AI Product Review: Jasper — Content Creation Without the Hassle of Prompt Engineering

Prelude

Have you ever thought that Chat-GPT is great but hard to scale across an organization, prompt engineering is complex, and its results are impersonal?

Jasper is an end-to-end copilot that helps marketing teams achieve both speed & performance. As their website states: “Not only faster, but better.” Long story short, it’s a multimodal content creation tool for enterprises.

I used Jasper for some months in 2020, three years before the Chat-GPT era. Given the fact not only that they have survived the “AI Revolution” but they are still one of the most popular AI consumer products, it’s an indication that they doing something correctly. So let’s find that out!

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Intro

Jasper was founded in January 2020 by Dave Rogenmoser and Chris Hull. Both founders had founded together Proof, backed by YCombinator, batch W18. Although only until 2021 when they moved away from it, to start Jasper.

In September 2023, Dave became chairman, leaving the CEO crown to Timothy Young (Ex-President @Dropbox, Ex-VP @VMware) who has been involved in the company since its inception.

Jasper was one of the early pioneers recognizing the potential of generative AI for content creation. Their initial growth rate before the Chat-GPT era was record-setting for an early-stage SaaS, both in ARR and paying customer count. In October 2022, they raised through Series A $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation 🔥.

The rise of Chat GPT has of course affected Jasper AI’s market share. In 2022, Jasper had announced 100,000 paying customers, however by October 2023, only 70,000. Chat GPT offers a free plan and a $20 paid version. As a result, Jasper AI was forced to introduce a limited $20 option in response to losing market share to Chat GPT at the start of 2023. However, it’s not available anymore.

It seems that Jasper had a rough 2023. Current active users are not publicly available but VP Sarah McConnell seems to see a brighter future ahead.

Let’s dive into the product analysis, to make our analysis of the product, and predict whether it will last in the market.

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Problem Space

Writing good content isn’t easy. It demands considerable time, strong language skills, and the right inspiration. Generative AI has completely changed the game, simplifying the process in many ways. However, using AI tools such as ChatGPT-4 or Gemini can be tricky, and mastering prompt engineering involves a learning curve.

Moreover, the content it produces often sounds too generic, brand-agnostic, or fails to connect with human emotions. It frequently resorts to using grandiose terms like ‘revolutionizing,’ ‘unleashing,’ and ‘leveraging.’ Tailoring these AI models to match your company’s style and tone is not straightforward. Furthermore, sometimes these AI models can be somewhat lazy or disobedient, which can be quite frustrating.

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Solution Space

If you’re a large enterprise looking to explore Generative AI with a tool that offers low investment and a minimal learning curve, while still ensuring fast and high-quality content for your company, Jasper is your go-to solution. It’s the perfect choice for creating content that’s infused with company knowledge, hassle-free, and tailored for specific use cases, yet ensures enhanced privacy, security, and consistency. With Jasper, the need for prompt engineering is virtually eliminated, democratizing writing for everyone, including those who may not be fully fluent or accurate in a foreign language (like me 🤓).

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USPs & Strategic Positioning

• Data Privacy: Ensures data integrity and confidentiality, as no customer data is used for training models.
• Performance: Delivers fast responses optimising LLM querying.
• Model Interoperability: Seamlessly integrates various AI models, transparent to the user.
• Multimodality: Offers support for both text and image creation, enabling comprehensive creative expression. Note: Image creation is available post-payment.
• Security Standards: Adheres to GDPR, SOC2, and SSO standards to safeguard data.
• Content Customisation: Facilitates easy alignment of AI-generated content with your brand’s voice and style.
• Workflow Integration: Seamlessly enhances team collaboration and integrates into existing content creation workflows, significantly boosting productivity.

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Technology & Features

Jasper AI merges its proprietary AI engine with third-party models to address a wide array of needs. Depending on the specific use case, it intelligently routes requests to the most appropriate AI model. This innovative strategy employs both Jasper’s custom models and those developed by leading entities like OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic. This distinctive approach, in my perspective, uniquely positions Jasper in the market, as no other tool currently offers such a bespoke AI model selection process.

Key Features:

• Templates: Offering +50 templates and SEO tool integration, facilitating the creation of optimized content for enhanced online visibility — avoiding the need for prompt engineering. This feature is both cool and practical.
• Your Content: The content library is a more practical approach to AI than conversation tabs, used by Chat-GPT, which tend to get messy.
• Brand Voice: Allows users to centralize various brand tones, enabling the adjustment of writing styles and tones for consistent brand representation across all templates. This feature can be utilized company-wide, ensuring a unified voice in all content.
• Company Knowledge Hub: Enables users to upload company documents, ensuring that content aligns with the company’s know-how.
• Campaign: Integrates templates, brand voice, and company knowledge to efficiently create all marketing content pieces in one go. While the output’s quality may not be amazing, it significantly increases efficiency compared to manual processes. It’s ideal for drafting.
• Multimodality: Allows users to generate text and images, broadening its applicability for various content creation needs.
• Analytics and Collaboration: Offers performance analytics and project management tools designed to optimize content strategy and enhance teamwork.
• Support: Provides fast and comprehensive customer support, including email, chat, and phone options. Responses may initially come from templates, but helpful human assistance is available.

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UX & UI

Here is a Figma link to the screens.

• Performance: This is one of Jasper’s strongest arms, outperforming ChatGPT and Gemini significantly. I would say it’s twice as fast as Chat-GPT & Gemini.
• User Interface: Currently, it’s only available as a desktop version, which aligns with the primary mode of text generation tasks typically conducted on desktops.
• Branding & Interface Design: User interface design is top-notch, setting a high standard in the industry.
• Bugs: Some persistent issues exist, especially with text selection and generation. For example, improving pre-written text initially posed challenges. This aspect requires further refinement.
• Paywall: It’s annoying that many pro features are behind the paywall and you don’t get to test them when doing a trial. Competitors like Perplexity and Grammarly have faced similar criticisms but now offer limited pro usage daily even in their free versions to mitigate this issue.

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Jasper Use Cases

• Blog Post Writing: This feature may not be exceptionally standout, but it offers a solid entry point into AI for those new to prompt engineering. It’s excellent for creating SEO-friendly articles, leveraging the company’s centralized brand voice.
• Social Media: Fast and easy content creation such as SEO-optimized articles that boost traffic or timely social media posts. It’s a versatile tool for marketers and social media managers, which enables scalable content creation efforts with efficiency.
• Email Campaigns: Using AI-driven insights, Jasper is useful in crafting personalized email campaigns that engage and resonate with recipients, improving engagement rates.
• E-commerce Copy: Create product titles, product descriptions, product info & more. A cool feature is its integration with Zapier, allowing for automation and seamless updates to Shopify or WordPress shops.
• Campaign: Although it’s not perfect, it’s just so fast & easy to create many consistent assets simultaneously. It serves as an excellent foundation for further refinement and recreation of marketing materials.

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Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Fast Content Generation: Creating high-quality content quickly, ideal for “light” SEO-friendly content pieces, perfect for maintaining an active online presence.
• Advanced AI Tech: Its state-of-the-art AI technology enhances the writing process, distinguishing it from competitors like ChatGPT.
• Broad Applications: Capable of producing a wide array of content types through templates, making it a versatile asset for varied marketing initiatives.
• SEO Tools: In-built SEO optimization helps improve online visibility, giving an edge over traditional LLMs.
• User-Friendly: The platform’s intuitive interface ensures a smooth experience for all users, empowering them to focus on creativity.
• Excellent Support: Offers responsive and personalized customer support, ensuring users receive timely help when needed.
• Multi-Model Integration: Employing a distinctive ‘K-models / LLMS’ approach, Jasper.ai leverages multiple AI models concurrently to deliver the best output. This strategy enhances performance by selecting the most appropriate result from various models, making the tool more efficient and precise for users.

Cons & Main Issues:

• Learning Curve: Despite its intuitive design, there can be a learning curve for new users unfamiliar with AI-driven content creation tools. Understanding how to best utilize Jasper’s features for optimal results may require a bit of time and experimentation. Lower than a plain LLM, though.
• Cost: For small businesses or individual users, the cost can be a significant factor. Its cost may not align with every budget, despite the value it provides.
• Overreliance on Templates: It offers a wide range of templates, there’s a potential risk of overreliance which could lead to less unique and differentiated content if not customized sufficiently.
• AI Nuances: The AI-generated content, while impressive, may occasionally miss the nuances or tone intended by the user, necessitating manual revisions for precision and personal touch.
• Content Organization: It is not possible to tag or create folders.
• Disruptability: Given the direction & speed of AI developments, it has a high chance of being disrupted.

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Pricing and Plans

Jasper.ai offers a 7-day free trial, followed by two subscription tiers:

Billed Yearly:

• Pro: $59/month
• Creator: $39/month

Billed Monthly:

• Pro: $69/month
• Creator: $49/month

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User Feedback and Reviews

Positive Feedback

• Fast Content Generation: Jasper is praised for its ability to create content much faster than human copywriters, producing 100% original, plagiarism-free content. This makes it ideal for generating SEO content aimed at achieving higher SERP rankings and supports over 30 languages (Techopedia).
• User-Friendly Interface: Users find the Jasper interface simple and straightforward, akin to using Google Docs or Microsoft Word, making the transition to using Jasper easy for new users (Bitcatcha).
• Broad Applications: The platform is noted for its versatility in creating various types of content, including blog posts, long-form content, SEO-based content, social media posts, and email newsletters. Jasper offers over 50 different templates to assist in high-caliber writing across multiple industries (Techopedia).

Constructive Criticisms

• Technical Content Challenges: Jasper struggles with overly technical topics, producing generic or unusable content in some instances. This limitation necessitates significant user intervention to ensure accuracy and relevance (Bitcatcha).
• Content Repetition and Junk: Users have reported issues with the repetition of words and phrases. Additionally, generating large volumes of content quickly can result in unusable “junk” content, leading to wasted resources and the need for thorough editing (Techopedia) (Bitcatcha).
• Additional Costs: Some users have pointed out the extra costs associated with using Jasper’s plagiarism detection feature, powered by Copyscape, which is not included in the basic plan and charges by volume (Bitcatcha).

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Final Review: Jasper.AI

• Problem Solving: 4 stars. The combination of LLM search and search engines, along with the capability to view references, is highly satisfying. Mucho gusto! 👌
• Features & Capabilities: 3.5 stars. Considering Jasper.AI has been on the market for four years and faces competition with other LLMs regarding technology and pricing, higher expectations in this area are warranted.‍
• Performance: 5 stars. In terms of speed, Jasper.AI outpaces any other LLM, and its output quality matches that of an off-the-shelf LLM.‍
• UI/UX: 4 stars. While generally effective, there’s potential for improvement in the content creation dynamics.‍
• Disruptability: 3 stars. Viewing through a PEST analysis lens, given the rapid pace of technological advancements, it’s likely that Jasper.AI will face disruption within the next five years.

Final Review: 3.7 stars!

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Thanks for reading folks! Do you have questions or feedback? Feel free to shoot me an email or DM me on any of my social networks. Enjoy exploring!

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