How AI Can Kickstart Your Help Articles
Stuck staring at a blank page? Learn how AI can kickstart your help article first drafts, saving time while keeping you in control.
You know the feeling. You sit down, ready to tackle that important task—like finally writing that help article everyone keeps asking for. You stare at the screen.
The cursor blinks. And then your brain whispers, "Ah! You know what? A coffee sounds really good right now." 🤫
Twenty minutes later, after maybe watering a plant, definitely checking your phone, and perhaps pondering the optimal arrangement of your desk snacks, you return.
Caffeine hitting your system, you’re ready to… suddenly feel completely overwhelmed. That blinking cursor looks positively judgmental now.
Is this really the best time to start writing? Or is it, perhaps, the perfect time to research the latest smart home doorbells? (Asking for a friend, obviously.)
That quest for perfection, or just the sheer inertia of starting, can be a real productivity killer. I know it well. That blinking cursor represents endless possibilities, which is paralyzing! Getting those first few words down feels like climbing a mountain sometimes.
And yeah, let's talk about AI.
It gets hyped as this magic bullet, but honestly? It can be its own kind of productivity killer if you expect it to hand you a perfectly polished masterpiece. Going down the rabbit hole of refining AI prompts can be just as distracting as researching doorbells.
But what if AI wasn't the finisher, but the starter? What if it could just… get something on the page for you?
That’s kind of why we built HelpDocs AI the way we did—less "write my whole article" and more "take these sleep-deprived squiggles and bullet points and turn them into a basic first draft I can actually work with."
So, let's explore how AI can help kickstart those help articles. Not by replacing you, but by maybe, just maybe, saving you from that initial blank page stare and letting you jump straight into making the content great.
How Can AI Actually Help Kickstart Things?
Alright, so we’ve established that staring at a blank page isn't exactly the fast track to getting that help article published. How does AI fit into this picture without just becoming another distraction?
River Sloane
Well, think of it less like a seasoned author and more like that enthusiastic (if slightly naive) assistant we mentioned. Its real talent, right now, lies in just getting something down on paper.
"Is it groundbreaking? Probably not. But it's a skeleton. It gives you something to flesh out, correct, and add crucial detail to, saving you from figuring out the flow from scratch."
One way it can help is by sketching out a basic structure.
You know those articles that follow a pretty standard format, like explaining steps in a process? You could tell an AI, "Outline the steps for resetting a user's password in our app," and it'll likely spit out a logical sequence: click here, enter this, confirm that.
Is it groundbreaking? Probably not. But it's a skeleton. It gives you something to flesh out, correct, and add crucial detail to, saving you from figuring out the flow from scratch.
Then there’s the actual drafting of simple stuff. Maybe you need a quick paragraph defining a common term or explaining a straightforward concept. Instead of agonizing over the perfect wording yourself, you could ask the AI to take a stab at it.
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For example, "Explain what two-factor authentication is in simple terms." You'll probably get something… okay. Maybe a bit dry, maybe slightly off, but it's text on the page. It's often easier to edit slightly robotic text into something human than it is to conjure perfect prose out of thin air.
Perhaps the biggest kickstart AI offers is just breaking through that initial inertia. Seriously, sometimes the hardest part is typing that first sentence.
Seeing any words related to your topic—even if they're generic or need heavy editing—can sometimes be enough to get your own thoughts flowing. It gives you something to react to, to disagree with, to improve upon.
It turns the daunting task of creating into the slightly less daunting task of fixing. And for many of us, fixing feels more manageable than starting from zero ✍️
Okay, But It's Not Perfect, Right? (Spoiler: Definitely Not)
So, AI can give you a nudge, a starting point, maybe even a rough sketch of that help article. Awesome. But if you hit "generate" and then immediately hit "publish"... well, please don't do that 😅
That first draft AI spits out needs you. A lot.
River Sloane
Think of it like getting one of those basic salad kits from the store—it's got the lettuce and maybe a couple of sad-looking carrots, but you still need to add the good stuff: the interesting toppings, a decent dressing, maybe some avocado or chickpeas, before it becomes something you'd actually want to eat 🥗
"It can't add that touch of empathy that says, "Hey, we get that this is annoying, let's get it sorted." That's your job."
First off, let's talk accuracy.
AI models are trained on tons of data, but that data isn't always current, and frankly, AI can just... make stuff up. It's called "hallucinating," which sounds kinda fun, but it's less amusing when it confidently tells your users to click a button that hasn't existed since 2021 😵
You absolutely have to fact-check every single detail, every step, every claim the AI makes against the reality of your product today. Trusting it blindly is a recipe for confused users and frustrated support tickets.
Then there's the whole vibe of the thing. AI often writes like, well, a robot. It can be bland, generic, and totally devoid of your company's personality.
It doesn't understand your users' potential frustration or confusion. It can't add that touch of empathy that says, "Hey, we get that this is annoying, let's get it sorted." That's your job. To inject your brand voice, the understanding, the humanity that makes support content actually feel supportive.
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SubscribeAI also tends to miss the subtle stuff—the why behind a step, the crucial warning about a common pitfall, or that specific edge case that trips up half your users.
It might tell someone how to do something, but rarely why it's important or what not to do. You need to layer in that vital context and nuance that comes from actually knowing your product and your users' experiences.
And finally, the most obvious part: AI hasn't actually used your product to perform the task it just described.
It can't tell you if the workflow feels clunky, if a button is hard to see, or if step three simply doesn't work like it thinks it does.
Someone—a real human being—needs to walk through those steps, click those buttons, and make absolutely sure the instructions are clear, correct, and lead to the right outcome. There's just no substitute for actually testing the process.
So yeah, that AI draft? It's just the starting block. The real race—making it accurate, helpful, and human—is all you 👑
Making AI Part of Your Workflow
So, the idea of getting a head start on drafts sounds pretty good, right? But how do you actually do it without things getting messy or people relying too much on the robots?
It’s all about integrating it thoughtfully, not just letting it run wild.
As research points out, while AI is great for efficiency, it has limitations around creativity and nuance, so human oversight remains key.
Think about how your team creates articles now.
Where does the biggest bottleneck happen? If it’s often that initial drafting phase, maybe that’s where AI slots in. A possible flow could involve a few steps:
- The AI generates that rough first pass based on some key points or a prompt
- Then, crucially, a subject matter expert (SME) tears it apart—checking for accuracy, adding missing details, correcting the inevitable weirdness
- After the facts are straight, maybe a writer or support specialist polishes it up, making sure the tone is right, it’s easy to understand, and it actually sounds like us
It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing, either.
Maybe you only use AI for the really straightforward, repetitive articles, or just to get an outline for more complex pieces. And it seems many teams are already experimenting this way, with recent stats showing marketers often use AI for things like content ideation (around 71%) and drafting content (around 47%).
"You don't need to be some kind of AI whisperer, but learning how to give clear, specific instructions often leads to a much more useful starting point."
The goal is to use it where it genuinely saves time on the tedious parts—that messy first draft stage where some argue AI excels due to its probabilistic nature—freeing up your team for the more complex, human-centric work.
One thing that definitely helps is getting decent at guiding the AI—what folks call "prompt crafting".
You don't need to be some kind of AI whisperer, but learning how to give clear, specific instructions often leads to a much more useful starting point.
Simply telling it "write about feature X" will get you generic fluff. Giving it key bullet points, specifying the audience, or asking it to adopt a certain (basic) structure usually yields a better first draft to work from.
Most importantly, keep expectations realistic. This isn't about automating content creation; it's about augmenting your team.
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Make sure everyone understands that AI drafts are starting points, not finished products. They still require significant human review, editing, and testing. It's a tool to help manage the workload, not a magic button for instant documentation.
Keeping that perspective helps avoid frustration when the AI inevitably produces something that needs a ton of work 😉
AI as a Tool, Not a Threat
So, there you have it.
Using AI to kickstart your help articles isn't about letting robots take over your knowledge base. It's really about finding ways to tackle that initial, sometimes tedious, part of the writing process—that dreaded blank page stare we talked about.
Think of it as a tool in your toolkit, like spell check or a thesaurus, but one that can sketch out a rough first draft. It can help you get started faster, especially on simpler topics, freeing up your valuable human brainpower for the parts that truly matter.
Because let's be real: the magic isn't in the first draft, AI-generated or not.
The real skill, the real value you bring, is in the refining. It’s in the fact-checking, the testing, the injecting of your brand's unique voice and empathy, and understanding the nuances that make an article genuinely helpful for your customers.
That’s something AI just can’t replicate (at least, not yet!).
Embracing these tools doesn't diminish your role; it potentially frees you up to focus on higher-impact work—making your support content clearer, more accurate, and more human. So why not experiment a little and see if AI can help take the edge off those first-draft blues 🤔