Google releases TextFX

Mike FriedmanSeptember 7, 2023

Google recently released a new free suite of AI-powered tools called TextFX.

It is described on the website as…

TextFX is an AI experiment that uses Google’s PaLM 2 large language model. These 10 tools are designed to expand the writing process by generating creative possibilities with text and language.

A few of these tools have some interesting potential use cases for content creation and SEO.

Let’s take a look.

Alliteration

This tool asks you to enter in a topic and then it will generate a list of topic-specific words that start with the letter you choose. You could go through the whole alphabet and generate a huge list.

Some of then words generated will be entities you should use. Some could be sub-topics you should include in the piece of content you are creating or topics for new pieces of content.

Here is the list it generated for me when I gave it project management as the topic and used the letter ‘a’.

Project management starting with A

Agile
accelerate
acceptance
achieve
action
action plan
acyclic
advocate
agenda
agile
agree
alignment
ambition
analysis
analyze
appendices
approach
approval
approve
arrange
articulate
ask
assess
assessment
assign
audit
authority
authorization
authorize
autonomy
awareness

Clearly not all of these are useful, but agile, action plan, agenda, advocate, analysis, analyze, assessment, and audit could certainly be seen as entities for any content about project management.

Scene

This is a fun one for writers to get the creative ideas flowing and help to create a more engaging piece of content by helping to paint a scene better.

You enter a scene (you only have 25 characters) and it helps to generate sensory details about that scene.

Sticking with the topic of project management, the scene I gave it was sprint retrospective mtg (I had to abbreviate meeting).

Some of the ideas it provided were:

Sticky notes covering every surface of the whiteboard
The sound of someone fidgeting with a pen
The feeling of frustration and exhaustion as the team realizes that they have not accomplished as much as they had hoped
The sound of markers scratching against whiteboards as people jot down notes
The smell of coffee and stale pizza
A team of developers sitting at long tables, looking exhausted
The sound of people talking over each other
The sound of people typing on their keyboards

You can see how using some of these ideas could help a writer paint a much more visual picture of the meeting.

Chain

Chain is another tool you will find on TextFX.

As the name suggests, Chain will build a chain of semantically related words from a topic you give it.

However, each word is semantically related to the word before it, but not necessarily the starting topic.

As it goes down the chain, the words will become less and less related to where you started.

For example, giving it sprint meeting, some of the outputs were:

sprint meeting, coffee, desk, office, work, job, career, path
sprint meeting, team, work, task, goal, achievement, trophy, cabinet
sprint meeting, team, work, job, profession, career, choice, decision
sprint meeting, work, productivity, increase, growth, development, potential, energy
sprint meeting, teamwork, collaboration, cooperation, team, group, circle, wreath

Again, this can be great for brainstorming some ideas or identifying entities.

Terms like team, work, task, goal, productivity, growth, collaboration, teamwork, and maybe even coffee, desk, and office could be potential entities in a content piece about sprint meetings.

Fuse

This tool will try to identify intersections between two things.

You can give it topics that are fairly close related. For example, when I give it sprint meeting and action plan, it gave me:

Both a sprint meeting and an action plan can help to focus and align efforts towards a common goal—a sprint meeting by bringing people together to discuss and prioritize tasks, and an action plan by providing a clear roadmap for how to achieve those tasks.
Both a sprint meeting and an action plan can be used to help teams stay focused on their goals and make progress toward them.
Both a sprint meeting and an action plan can be used to organize and prioritize tasks, and to ensure that goals are met in a timely and efficient manner.

Or you can give it topics that are not so closely related and it will do its best to find some common ground.

When given Princess Bride and SEO, it came up with:

Both the Princess Bride and SEO can be seen as forms of storytelling—the Princess Bride with its fantastical characters and plot, and SEO with its use of keywords and phrases to attract visitors to a website.
Both the Princess Bride and SEO can be seen as tools for getting to the top—the Princess Bride by using wit and cunning to outsmart her opponents, and SEO by using keywords and other techniques to rank higher in search engine results pages.
Both the Princess Bride and SEO can be seen as tools for finding what you’re looking for—the Princess Bride by providing a roadmap to the happily ever after, and SEO by helping users find the information they need online.
Both the Princess Bride and SEO can be used to make people happy and entertained.

Maybe a bit of a stretch, but that was no easy task either.

Simile

And lastly, there is Simile, which creates similes.

Give it a thing or a concept and it will try to provide you with a simile about it.

When given SEO, it spit out:

SEO is like getting a tan – you have to keep doing it to maintain your results. (That’s not bad)
SEO is like a puzzle, with all the pieces fitting together to create a cohesive and effective strategy. (Even better)
SEO is like a game of chess, where you have to be one step ahead of your competitors to stay on top.
SEO is like a magic wand that can make your website appear at the top of search engine results pages.

Or for beer: