How New AI Tools Like ChatGPT Stand To Impact Marketers
By: Tod Loofbourrow, Chairman and CEO, ViralGains.
If you were present at the beginning of the “Internet Revolution,” you saw a nascent technology for connecting with creators all over the world emerge beneath your fingertips. You felt wonder at the possibilities and abandoned all reason to play with this new phenomenon. Today, the internet is a platform that powers much of our social, economic and intellectual lives, and the world stands transformed.
If you watched Steve Jobs stride across the stage and unveil the first iPhone, you probably felt a similar sense of possibility and wonder. You also probably felt a similar sense that your world would never be the same again—and it’s not.
Today, the third major technology platform shift of the digital age is upon us—the emergence of powerful generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Bard and Dall-E. Bill Gates declares, “The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the internet, and the mobile phone.”
Major platform shifts define technology markets and transform our society, but few have sparked the same mixture of wonder and fear as ChatGPT and its brethren. These machines seem eerily intelligent. As they proceed to pass written tests (LSAT, SAT, AP exams) like they have studied law or medicine and have been writing for decades, they fill us with both wonder and trepidation.
AI is already at work in everything from trading stocks to trading media. Now, it has come for more creative, less technical functions with generative AI tools. ChatGPT seems to be able to answer nearly any question asked of it and puts into play the way we search for information on the internet for the first time since Google emerged as the dominant search player over 20 years ago.
As these tools continue to improve at exponential rates, they’ve sparked fear of a wholesale job replacement in marketing, advertising, law, journalism and other fields. However, instead of fearing these advancements, what if we see these new AI capabilities as amplifiers of human capabilities rather than replacements?
Generative AI is extremely powerful in summarizing information, helping to organize thoughts, providing lists for brainstorming and providing frameworks for taking action. It’s not always right, but it’s always confident—sometimes confidently wrong. It’s a tool for you, not a replacement for you. Just as you would not perform an internet search and take the results from a link verbatim as your own work without applying your own expertise, the same goes for generative AI tools. The ultimate expertise is yours. These are tools.
How do you best use these tools? Start by playing. Sign up for ChatGPT and ask it something. Ask for a recipe idea using eggplant, a planning checklist for your next offsite or for it to write the first draft of a play. Ask it for creative ideas. Ask it to write a business plan for you. Sign up for Dall-E or try Lensa and start generating images—the former from prompts and the latter from pictures you feed it. Learn both the power and the limitations of these tools.
Start to learn the AI tools that can help you find new audiences for your products and services and can help you better understand the needs, preferences and buying criteria of those audiences. Use AI to bring scale to your market research and your advertising by inferring high-performing audiences of millions from interaction with thousands. The world is your oyster. It’s time to play.
AI tools in marketing are evolving quickly. Think of these tools as digital assistants. Generative AI tools can help you write an outline or draft a creative brief. Visual tools can help you quickly sketch illustrations, mock up a storyboard or brainstorm creative concepts. Other AI tools can help you better understand customers and use that understanding to determine who best to advertise and market to—and with what messages. AI tools can bring scale to your advertising and marketing efforts by generalizing what you learn from consumers with sophisticated targeting algorithms that don’t require third-party cookies.
Digital advertisers, marketers, consumers and regulators are currently seeking a delicate new balance between targeting, privacy and reach. Government legislation, browser and mobile phone changes, and consumer preferences have resulted in a lack of good third-party behavioral data and measurement capabilities—and the problem is getting worse, not better. AI tools can pave a new path forward for the marketing and advertising industry by helping teams be more precise, efficient and effective.
Ultimately, marketers that are flexible and creative in adapting these new tools can enhance their skill sets and multiply their productivity. Through my experience, I’ve seen programmers become four times more efficient through the use of generative AI tools for performing code documentation. I’ve seen professional writers produce twice as much work on a broader range of topics using generative AI assistants. I know hundreds of marketers using these tools to better understand and connect with customers.
Be curious instead of afraid. Start playing with these tools. See what they’re capable of and where they need work. See how you could start using them in your business. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you discover.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
