Glenn is the founder and CEO of GaggleAMPa platform for employee advocacy and engagement.
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The growing role of AI in marketing was undeniable even before ChatGPT. But ever since the great language model chatbot went viral, it seems every other post in my LinkedIn feed is about the impact AI will have on businesses.
A possible use case is social media marketing. Businesses can use AI tools like ChatGPT to improve market research, jump-start content creation, and speed up processes. But before you completely hand over the reins to your company’s social accounts, let’s take a look at the reality of AI capabilities, what happens when generative AI becomes ubiquitous, and what we’re sacrificing in exchange for the benefits of AI.
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Is “good enough” good enough?
As you’ve probably heard, AI chatbots have gotten really good at content creation. Many marketers take the technology seriously (and/or fear for their jobs…). According to Study June 2022, only 4% of marketing and advertising teams do not use AI. Forty-four percent of companies expect AI to be widely adopted in their marketing teams by 2025, and 20% said AI is critical.
However, many experts agree that the technology is not yet at a stage where it can fully take over content creation. Much of the content that AI creates is generic – and is generic “good enough” content good enough for your brand? A talented marketing team is still essential for identifying what resonates with your audience and ensuring your content reflects your company’s unique tone of voice. Your team can choose to use AI for research and sketching. But if they completely outsource the writing and use AI to create “spammy” content that prioritizes SEO over your audience’s needs, Google would punish you.
I think the next stage of evolution for using AI chatbots in marketing will be to introduce audience information so the technology can parse that to determine the correlation between content and audience. Instead of using a prompt like “write me a blog post on this topic”, brands will also overlay audience information and tone of voice. But in the case of a free AI tool like ChatGPT, you would be giving away your data to a third party, and who knows how that data could be used in the future.
What will the evolution of AI-generated marketing content look like?
Immediately premium version of ChatGPT already in the works, OpenAI will likely solve privacy challenges by enabling companies to use and train proprietary versions of the technology. A bigger question, however, is what happens if every marketing team uses AI to write their social media posts. We may find the digital realm overrun with noise.
So in addition to considering how you can use AI to take your social strategy to the next level, I suggest considering what brand differentiation looks like in a world where AI-generated content is everywhere. What will rise above the noise? I think it will be high quality content that reflects human experience, taste, and the needs and interests of your audience.
At GaggleAMP, we explore ways to use AI to improve internal processes and create new customer offerings. We approach AI as a tool, not a replacement for human ingenuity. Sure, I see the merits of using ChatGPT to get the creative juices flowing so you’re not staring at a blank page; to assist in writing variations of a social media post; or as part of your market research process (as long as you double check what you learn, as ChatGPT is not always accurate and limited to data for 2021). But the tool alone does not bring any benefit, as every company has access to the tool. To consistently create content that sings – content that builds lasting relationships with your customers or clients – the human touch is crucial.
Be careful what you wish for.
Ready or not, AI has arrived. Fail to explore how your company can use it, and you may fall behind competitors who use AI to speed up processes, reduce costs, and boost creativity.
However, I am concerned about the trade-off we are making…what we lose in exchange for the AI gain.
How many friends’ phone numbers do you know by heart? How much did you know before you got a cell phone? We didn’t remember phone numbers because we don’t have to: the phone does that for you. My concern is that AI in marketing will replace the brain power we use to actually write. I think of writing as a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets, but when you stop, you shrivel up. Do we want to live in a world where people don’t write?
While AI currently relies on human-created data, I also wonder if there will be a tipping point where AI will create its own data. What are the consequences of an internet full of content created exclusively by AI? Can generative AI spot ‘fake news’ or will it inadvertently spread more misinformation by drawing on inaccurate sources?
Another consideration for businesses is the fast-growing industry that will struggle to identify content as AI-generated. Search engines, educational institutions, businesses, and even software development efforts will look for ways to know if the work was done by a person or an AI bot. A brave new world lies ahead. Penalties for using all AI have yet to be determined.
To be clear, I’m eager to see more ways to use AI to drive business benefits. However, I fear that AI chatbots make it too tempting to “set it and forget it” – to let the AI spit something out and call it a day. I suspect that as adoption of ChatGPT and other large language model chatbots grows, the companies that stand out on social media, and beyond, will be those that resist the temptation to move away from AI and continue to value human creativity and connection .
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