AI seems to permeate all our discussions these days.
Will it help architects design buildings? Can it help contractors keep better records or construct projects? Will it help resolve disputes without the need for expensive lawyers?
The list of questions is endless. But nobody really seems to know the answer.
In the world of marketing, we’re seeing AI permeate everything. We have clients sending us marketing emails clearly drafted by a machine, people posting social media clearly drafted by a machine, a plethora of content and copy created and then even published without a second thought.
A recent survey by the Digital Marketing Institute noted that 51% of marketers use AI to ‘optimise’ content. 43% believe AI is “essential” to their social media strategy. Essential. That’s a very strong word for something most people didn’t know existed a few years ago.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to you, to find that I disagree.
Don’t get me wrong, I use AI all the time. We created a great little animated version of one of our clients a few weeks ago to promote a sporting charity event they were involved with. Using AI. I often turn to AI to help with inspiration for content and thought leadership articles.
However, I don’t trust it.
Why?
Well, as an example, we had an application for an internship a few months ago. In it, the applicant complimented us on our work on a conference I’d never heard of. They praised our efforts with the opening ceremony of Riyadh International Disputes Week. Which we never attended! They simple copied and pasted the content the AI gave them. Needless to say, they didn’t get the job.
Its vocabulary seems incredibly limited. It relies on cliches like “shaping”, “reshaping”, “seasoned professionals”, and a limited list of similar hyperbolic adjectives that it throws in with no real thought as to whether they’re relevant or not. A quick search on Google reveals this is a result of the way in which large language models operate and their heavy reliance on data models.
As the great Andy Owen noted, even Chat GPT will tell you it can’t write good copy.
One of my pet bugbears (of which there are many) is the fact that supposedly professional marketers are now regularly relying on AI to write their content and it has no idea what it’s doing. And nor do they! So you have a marketer who doesn’t really understand their product or audience using a computer which doesn’t really understand either, writing copy to sell.
AI Kills Your Brain
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, a recent survey by MIT has discovered that not only is Chat GPT inaccurate and unreliable, it kills your brain. In a study of three types of users, the one reliant on Chat GPT ended up becoming incapable of critical thinking which is crucial in any walk of life. If we lose the ability to think for ourselves why would anyone pay us?
On the one hand, I should be delighted that the blind are wilfully being led by the blind. However, it disappoints me so much to see the profession I’ve chosen devalue itself so quickly and foolishly. A copywriter just a few weeks ago noted that good copy is undervalued, to which I responded that many copywriters are bringing it upon themselves by being frankly, lazy. Reliance on software and tools to do the job and lack of lateral or critical thinking risks killing our profession which is undervalued as it is!
Use it properly or risk being unemployed
So whether you’re an architect, a builder, a lawyer or indeed, a marketer, please use AI in the right way:
- Use it as an aid once you’ve created something.
- Deploy it as an inspiration to help get things started.
- Use it creatively to help improve your profession.
But please don’t use it to replace the human skills and knowledge that many professionals have honed over many years. Because AI simply cannot achieve it (yet!). More importantly by relying upon it, we risk being victims of its success, with marketers being rendered superfluous, and weak, inaccurate content taking over the airwaves. Ultimately quality will win out, but only if we keep the quality going.
If this is an area that interests you, you might like our contribution to Ayo Abbas’s ‘Built Environment Marketing Show‘ in which Stuart discusses the good, the bad and the ugly of AI with Ayo and Kristian Downer.