While marketers rush to embrace the advantages of the advanced technology, they should also study the catches and liabilities.
Imagine if your marketing team had a tool to quickly devise 10 or more ad angles for a video shoot based on customer reviews or one that could read thousands of those reviews and speedily summarize the testimonials for optimized customer service response. Imagine no longer. Generative AI is here to help generate large volumes of content in seconds and reduce monotonous tasks and other busywork.
But before you go thinking that the technology will be your everyday failsafe āeasy button,ā be sure to know the bumps and risks along the robotic road. Generative AI brings with it content and even legal concerns set against the battlefield backdrop of human worth versus technological advancement.
āThere has always been a tension between the art and the science of marketing and creativity, even when the technology was much more rudimentary than that of generative AI,ā Jay Pattisall, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, told the Wall Street Journal. āMachines in whatever form simply just canāt replace or replicate human creativity. That was true then, and it is absolutely true now.ā
Eyes to Optimize
Generative AI definitely can help creative professionals in marketing and advertising come up with ideas and work more quickly, saving valuable time. Audience segmentation, customer service chatbots, programmatic advertising, SEO and e-commerce are other key uses for which companies are leveraging the technology.
On the content creation front, Wesley ter Haar points out that generative AI helps marketers āvisualize and test out different concepts at speed. You can also easily swap out different elements ā like changing the background, changing characters ā at any point in the production process without having to go back to the drawing board,ā said the digital advertising and marketing services executive, adding that AI may also help brands battle ācreative fatigue.ā And weariness from tedious, rote tasks, such as analyzing those aforementioned customer reviews, can be greatly reduced as well.
When AI Turns Unnatural or Even Unlawful
āIām not laughing with it ā Iām laughing at it,ā Mint Mobileās CMO said about the AI ad featuring actor and part owner Ryan Reynolds. Yes, while many pros rightfully court the potential for the technology to boost advertising through automation, there is still a disconnect. Pattisall points out that while generative AIās ability to write prose has turned many a head, it is still only generating output from data and not originating thought or expression.
Itās been said that our potential for innovation, problem-solving and growth is only as good as the data we collect. AIās definitely got the data collection part down, but what if the information is incorrect, biased or copyrighted?
AI users should be watchful for this possibility and mindful of the inherent risk of sharing such data in a customer-facing way. Marketers should know the data sources that train their generative AI models. Such major concerns, along with the question of who owns an idea originating from a machine, led ter Haar to say, āIām sure the lawsuits will be extremely interesting.ā
āAI definitely piques our firmās ālimitless possibilitiesā mentality and dovetails with our constant striving to leverage innovative tactics for our clients, but we also must realize that itās an evolving technology that requires smart, grounded planning and due diligence,ā said Tim Patton, CEO at infinitee. āFor more than 31 years, weāve been balancing that āart and science of marketing and creativityā and can do so for your brand.ā