How AI is shaking up an industry

#Week15 was another short one, thanks to the Easter weekend, which for Innesco (like most firms) means trying to fit five days’ worth of work into four. It is during weeks like these that any new tools – particularly those that can take the more humdrum tasks off of our plates – are most needed.

Which brings us to the recent advances being made in artificial intelligence, notably with OpenAI’s ChatGPT / GPT-4 models and Bard, Google’s contribution to the sphere. Despite teething issues with both – some notable errors, some concerning, ahem, ‘problematic’ statements – the power and potential of the technology is clear. What’s more, the rate of progress is accelerating.

The latest developments are something we’ve been following closely and giving considerable thought, to identify the possibilities it is creating and the shifts in comms activity it will bring. And also, if we’re completely honest, to see just how likely it is to put us out of a job.

The changes will be profound. From a media perspective, we can expect a lot of articles to be written by AI – trend forecaster WGSN reckons as much as 90% of online content could be AI-generated by 2026 – and the same for social media posts. For PR and marketing collateral production, the tools will undoubtedly play increasingly important roles, speeding things up and reducing costs at the simpler end of the spectrum.

But the models have limitations too. Based as they are on analysis of what is already in the public domain, they are proving to be adept at writing in a realistic, humanistic way, but crucially offer very little by way of new insight. In short, they too often offer information but not knowledge.

Nor are they particularly strong at matching content to strategic communications objectives – a lack of nuance and understanding makes the tools far less effective at drawing out granular detail to target a specific audience. There is also an obvious risk of a feedback loop, as inputs are increasingly taken from previous AI-generated articles. Without human judgement, the future could look very ‘samey’ indeed.

For comms professionals, this means a shift in the role. With AI models capable of delivering content quickly and effectively, the marketeer is now focused on curation rather than creation. The human part of the process is determining what meets a need and what doesn’t – that means a deep understanding of an audience, an appreciation of the bigger picture and the insight to push for new content rather than re-hashed versions of what has been done before.

So what does this mean in practice? We subscribe to the same view as WPP chief executive Mark Read, who has described the technology as fundamental to the future of communications, but as an aid to creativity rather than a replacement. As AI models increase access to strong content, it is those organisations that can have the strategic overview – and tailor the outputs to match – that will come to the fore. The need to understand an audience – and speak to it effectively – remains paramount.