AI… is it a dirty word in marketing and communications, or a lifeline?
Is AI nothing more than a semantic fanatic, or is that a fanatic semantic, whose love of the written word provides cleverly rewritten prose. A dirty word, or a lifeline?
Let’s step back for a hot minute and check the definition of AI. An article on IBM’s website says of AI: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy.”* A little scary sounding, but as we’ve known for decades, computers only know what is input into them.
What the marketing world is abuzz about is the topic of Generative AI (Gen AI), “… generative AI (gen AI), a technology that can create original text, images, video and other content.”*
Now that is more in line with where the line between the line of marketing and communications blurs with the use of AI, or here, Gen AI. And, we should note, you could be forgiven for thinking we’ve been landed with a new Generation cohort (more on that another time).
Before we digress, let’s get back to the topic at hand.
Will AI, or Gen AI, replace the incredibly talented humans in our wonderful world of marketing and communications?
We can definitely see the benefits of Gen AI to an extent where it alleviates creative brain strain, that admittedly, hits all of us creatives. It can be incredibly taxing to have to be consistently creative, fresh and new… we guess that Gen AI can help us during those times when we need someone, or something to pick up the slack… so to speak.
When it comes to marketing automation, has AI become so clever that it can predict human behaviour in line with customer journeys, or are we as humans incredibly good as coaches and programmers that AI is simply a super-fast “calculator” that takes out the long guesswork?
Possibly a bit of both, but we can definitely see the benefits of AI working to support marketers in the area of marketing automation.
But, here is where we stand. We do feel that nothing can replace the power of the human mind. The process we as marketers, communications professionals and creatives work through to unravel, distil, gather insights, provoke thinking, solve problems, develop creative solutions and wrap all that up in a single neat bow, is without a doubt an intrinsically human characteristic.
So, while AI may enhance our roles, we don’t feel it will ever replace humans (we hope!).
The word salads that AI likes to produce, and dare we say, reproduce, doesn’t take into consideration brand identities that are developed with the customer in mind. How brands speak to their customers, with tone and language in mind, is removed with AI, and is replaced by the semantic fanatic, or fanatic semantic.
The output may sound impressive and clever, the layer of connecting with your customer in language they understand and engage with is lost with the removal of human input, interpretation and development.
If we continue to hold AI up to be the gold standard, then we feel we’ll be seeing a sea of sameness more and more. To quote Ubah Hussan of Real Housewives of New York City (RHONY) “you’re all pigeons!”.
What we do see is a world where marketing and communications professionals can harness the benefits of AI, or Gen AI, to assist them in supporting their skills, not replacing them, and certainly not in aiding and abetting lazy work practices.
There is wonder and magic in truly unique and creative marketing and communications produced by incredibly talented professionals - and there always will!
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