How Digital Marketers Are Harnessing Generative AI
How can marketers effectively and ethically leverage AI? Just like many of you, our team asked several questions to these AI engines. And we analyzed how AI-generated content is going to change the game. And after the experiment, we came up with 3 key questions that today’s business leaders must ask themselves.
I started working at a marketing company at a time when businesses and big brands relied primarily on print and TV advertising. These were the days of taglines, TRPs and target markets. Together with newly-minted digital services teams, they were trying to figure out how to monetize emails, social media websites and blogs. Seventeen years later, the conversation in the marketing industry world-over has shifted to how Generative AI will change the game. How can marketers effectively and ethically leverage AI?
A few weeks ago, the 70th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2023 conference discussed the future implications of artificial intelligence and its role in the development of humanity. In a session by Accenture Song, its CEO, David Droga, emphasized how humans will require thought provoking ideas to meet the expectations of AI-led work.
Customer engagement and content creation is a must in today’s digital age, and the emergence of AI can help business leaders speed up their tasks in the marketing space. As AI tools continue to develop at a staggering pace, there's no doubt that marketers will continue to utilize the potential of AI to complete tasks.
In a Business Insider article, Twilio CEO, Joyce Kim predicts that "In a year from now, I really think every company, every marketing team, every sales team, this generative and predictive AI is going to be a core part of every tool that they use. I just cannot see technology in the next year not incorporating this capability”.
AI Answers Many Questions, And it Raises New Ones
AI is speeding everything up, but many executives, business owners and founders still remain confused on how to utilize AI’s potential. Founders are discovering insights from data, creating content, and getting support in decision making through AI tools.
With the number of growing opportunities, the digital marketing field is witnessing a major change in work habits. Owners are becoming more overwhelmed by not knowing how to access the digital marketing field and are witnessing a major change in work habits and the right tools.
“AI offers many benefits for small businesses when used correctly and it’s being used in social media and content management already. However, given time, I believe users will see there’s a lack of creativity and human insight when using AI.” says Sam McFarlane, founder of Sam Says, Stand Out Social.
What’s Next - Our Analysis at Impactika Consulting
In the past two months, the team has evaluated and tried several tools to analyze how and where GenAI can truly add value to marketing teams. The big advantage that AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard and others have is the speed of output. The speed is unmatched by the human brain. Generative AI tools can analyze vast amounts of publicly-available information in a matter of seconds.
We used Bard to validate basic research findings. In fact, we are one of the testers for AI tools provided by Google Workspace Labs.
Otter.ai to synthesize meeting notes.
ChatGPT to generate drafts as a starting point
Stable Diffusion, an open source generative AI tool for photos
Read.ai to summarize meeting transcriptions and capture action items without being distracted by taking notes
PDF.ai to analyze the PDF content
Our team asked several questions to these AI engines. And we analyzed how they are going to change the game. And after the experiment, we came up with 3 key questions that today’s businesses must ask themselves.
AI has the potential of replacing several painstaking tasks - how will that cost you your team?
In earlier days of work, creative people would witness working with one another on projects entailing entirely human effort. If used at work, Generative AI will continue to free up time and extra space within a company’s day to day operations. Can these benefits also snatch away the employee engagement? Will the team shrink to a size where collaboration won’t be required?
AI will be marketers’ new creative-partner - what will be the human advantage?
Business leaders and employees should not spend time being worried about being replaced by technology. For creative industry folks, it will be crucial to think about how they can strike a balance between what works for them as a solution or business provider and something that will be extra engaging than just a regurgitated offering by the AI tool.
Can AI tools be your thought-buddies or overwhelm you at work and beyond?
How do you build trust with AI generated content?
How can marketers use AI in an ethical way? The important task is to verify facts and logic as sometimes AI models hallucinate. The second big threat is that we need to be mindful about privacy and digital rights. How do we attribute sources at each and every step correctly?
The third threat is external and a real possibility. If utilized by bad actors in the system, Generative language models can be utilized at scale by propagandists to power large-scale disinformation campaigns.