2023 was the pivotal year for generative AI. To reflect on this, we conducted a virtual roundtable with members of The Drum Network to better understand the profound impact of this technology on the world of marketing.
Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Dall-E 2, and Midjourney enable marketers to virtually create text, images, and other forms of content with just one click, saving enormous amounts of time and money while presenting them with new creative possibilities. At the same time, technology’s tendency to “hallucinate” (or provide false information veiled as truth), coupled with the fact that it can propagate harmful human biases, poses real risks for marketers and professionals. humanity as a whole. Forward-thinking marketers have therefore spent much of the last year thinking about and discussing the double-edged nature of generative AI and how it can be leveraged most effectively and efficiently. the safest.
With all of these ideas in mind, The Drum recently connected with a group of forward-thinking marketers – all members of The drum network – for a virtual panel discussion, which focused on some of the most important lessons they learned after a year of experimenting with generative AI, and where the technology could lead the technology industry marketing in the future.
Here are some key themes that emerged throughout the hour-long conversation:
Marketers as guides to generative AI
Anyone who has tried to learn about generative AI – or AI more broadly – knows that it’s not an easy topic to understand. Even the engineers who build generative AI don’t understand exactly how the models work the way they do (which is why these models are often described as a “black box”).
However, marketers are now often expected to be proficient enough in generative AI to be able to help their clients adopt the technology. “Over the last 12 months, generative AI has been on everyone’s minds… Our customers don’t know what to do, don’t know how to implement it, so it’s up to us to guide them,” says Dora Moldovan , co-founder and CEO of Braidr and Luminr.
Along the same lines, Luke Budka, director of AI at Definition, says marketers have become a major resource that brands now depend on for training in generative AI. “Customers are now coming to us and asking, ‘What are we doing about the AI generation?’ “, he said. “We’re leading the conversation on this, and it’s given us an opportunity to create new services.” For the first time, we are building software; we never did it before, but now we do it because companies tell us about it first.
An emerging dichotomy
Despite its relatively recent appearance on the cultural mainstream, AI – and in particular generative AI – is already widely considered by many marketers to be an absolutely essential tool within their industry. By extension, there appears to be a growing consensus that marketers who adopt AI today will have a significant future advantage over those who do not. As futurist Daniel Burrus (who was not part of the virtual panel) recently stated in an interview with The Drum, AI will not replace humans, but rather “humans will be replaced by humans using ‘AI’.
Patrick Furse, director of digital strategy at Bray Leino, argued that the rise of generative AI creates a dichotomy within the marketing world: “What it creates,” he said, “is the ‘haves.’ and the “have-nots”, or the “I tried” and the “didn’t try”; this created a fairly distinct boundary between these two worlds.
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The implicit injunction, then, is that marketers who delay their efforts to learn about AI risk being left behind.
Don’t just fit in, stand out
The rush of brands to adopt AI over the past year – and thereby demonstrate to the public that they are on top of this transformative technology trend – has also arguably produced, in some cases, an unfortunate emphasis on speed rather than quality.
According to Zara Kerwood, senior director of creative technology at George P. Johnson (UK and Nordics), the point of leveraging AI in a marketing campaign should not be about showing off the flashy side. the eye of the technology itself, but rather to improve the customer experience. . “Early on, we were hearing (from brands), ‘Can I run a campaign on AI? » Can I have an AI experience? And we were like, “Wait a minute, you’re not sure what the topic is – (AI) should be the technology in the background.” »
The challenge brands and marketers now face, according to Kerwood, is “creating that point of difference”; that is, leveraging AI in a unique and yet non-gimmicky way. Without this capability, Kerwood fears his industry is heading toward a wave of monotonous, unimaginative uses of generative AI.
“We really need to check this out,” she said.
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