Aydın Tiryaki and ChatGPT AI (2026)

The End of the Journey from Tags to Meaning in Digital Writing

Introduction: The Quiet Closure of an Era

In the digital writing ecosystem, some concepts rise to unquestioned dominance for a time, only to gradually lose their relevance without much notice. Keywords are one of the most striking examples of this phenomenon. For decades, from academic articles to online blogs, keywords were seen as essential instruments for visibility and accessibility. Yet, in recent years—especially with the rapid development of artificial intelligence–based search and content analysis systems—the very function of keywords has come under serious reconsideration.

This article explores the historical role of keywords, why they once mattered so deeply, and why they are now rapidly losing their central importance. At the same time, it examines the new paradigm that is replacing them: one built on context, meaning, and AI-driven comprehension.

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1. The Origins of Keywords: A Need for Indexing

Keywords are not a product of the digital age; they originated in the analog academic world. In printed journals, physical libraries, and early indexing systems, keywords served to locate and classify texts within rigid catalog structures. Therefore:

• They were few in number
• They had strong conceptual representational value
• They addressed indexers rather than readers

Keywords functioned less as semantic summaries and more as catalog labels.

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2. The Internet Era: Translating for Machines

With the rise of the internet, keywords acquired a new and decisive function. Early search engines could not truly “understand” texts; they merely matched words. As a result, keywords became essential tools for:

• Explaining a page’s topic to machines
• Improving ranking in search results
• Increasing visibility

During this period, keyword optimization evolved into a technical craft largely independent of content quality. Texts increasingly began to be written for algorithms rather than for humans.

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3. The Turning Point: When Machines Learned to Read

Over the past few years, search engines and information systems have undergone a qualitative transformation. Large language models (LLMs) now analyze web pages by:

• Extracting context
• Mapping conceptual relationships
• Interpreting intent
• Evaluating arguments

Instead of counting words, machines now read. Consequently, the primary function of keywords—answering the question “What is this text about?”—is now naturally fulfilled by the text itself.

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4. Academia and the Lag of Institutional Habit

Many academic journals still require authors to provide keywords. Yet today this practice reflects institutional inertia rather than functional necessity. In reality:

• Articles are indexed via abstracts, introductions, and conceptual frameworks
• Keywords are rarely consulted
• Semantic analysis is performed on the full text

Keywords have thus become ceremonial artifacts—displayed, but no longer operational.

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5. The New Paradigm: From Tags to Meaning

What replaces keywords is not another technical shortcut, but a deeper structural shift:

• Clear titles
• Strong introductory paragraphs
• Explicit theses
• Coherent conceptual frameworks
• Question–answer alignment

Visibility in today’s digital environment no longer arises from tags, but from meaning.

Artificial intelligence no longer expects lists of keywords; it seeks coherent thought architectures.

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6. The New Division of Labor: Writer and AI

This transformation also reshapes authorship itself. In contemporary writing:

• Creativity, perspective, and thesis belong to the author
• Information gathering, summarization, and linguistic refinement can be delegated to AI

This does not diminish authorship. On the contrary, it enhances clarity, readability, and conceptual precision. Instead of spending time generating keyword lists, writers invest their cognitive effort in sharpening ideas.

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Conclusion: The End of One Era, the Beginning of Another

Keywords were once indispensable. But that necessity belonged to a time when machines were limited. Today, machines read, interpret, and contextualize. Therefore:

The age of keywords has effectively come to an end.

In its place stands something more demanding, yet far more meaningful:

• Producing ideas
• Building conceptual coherence
• Taking intellectual responsibility

Hence, we may now confidently say:

Goodbye keywords.
Hello artificial intelligence.
Hello meaning.

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A Note on Methods and Tools: All observations, ideas, and solution proposals in this study are the author’s own. AI was utilized as an information source for researching and compiling relevant topics strictly based on the author’s inquiries, requests, and directions; additionally, it provided writing assistance during the drafting process. (The research-based compilation and English writing process of this text were supported by AI as a specialized assistant.)