AI, Kya Bolti Tu?, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

LinkedIn has been taken over by ChatGPT, DALL-E, Nightcafe and a whole bunch of other platforms that either give you extremely well written content, or generate bloody good-looking art – all for a tiny price.

AI, Kya Bolti Tu?, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

LinkedIn has also been taken over by mostly, two kinds of advertising people.

AI, Kya Bolti Tu?, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

Ones who are vehemently against this rising AI tide, as vehemently they would be against something like a non-alcoholic Goafest (shocking).

AI, Kya Bolti Tu?, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

And ones who are throwing themselves into this bright new world, like doggies jumping into a swimming pool filled with colourful bobbing balls.

AI, Kya Bolti Tu?, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of nail biting, some understandable jealousy and a certain bit of uncertainty about what this means for all of us – the thinkers, the creators, the writers and the artists.

AI, Kya Bolti Tu?, Marketing & Advertising News, ET BrandEquity

And this entire thing reminds of a little story, from years ago, when I was still a cub in advertising.

I remember, the Creative Director hired someone new – a young woman. Insanely talented, both her feet planted firmly in pop culture, knew the references of the youth, knew about the digital landscape, the works.

Now I was supposed to report to her. And she was supposed to report to her boss, and her boss was supposed to report into the Creative Director.

Her boss was in his late thirties, I think. Good writer, slightly old school, owned a typewriter that he seldom wrote on. And it was so interesting to watch from a distance, how quickly he took a dislike to his new teammate. Why? Because she came up with brilliant, new radical ideas that the client would love, but he could never think of.

Over time I think, better sense prevailed. And his insecurity died down. He started pushing for her ideas, and because of that, shared the praise that came to the team. Smart man.

If you’ve just read this completely made up tale (I know, I’m horrible), you’ll know that this young woman in my story isn’t a stranger. You’ve met her. You’ve worked with her, had coffee with her, and been a part of her life.

And that’s why I think, to be scared or insecure of her is just silly.
Simply because she’s been around us for a long, long time.

She’s Grammarly. A neat little patch of software that makes you a better grammatical writer. (Or tries to, at any rate).

She’s the Spotify engine that throws new tracks your way based on what your listening preferences are.

She’s the health app on Apple that nudges you to take more steps, when you’re being particularly sloth-y.

She’s on your social media apps, throwing you stuff that you’re most likely to engage with.

She’s Google Maps, and shows you the best route to take, and which routes are traffucked. (I chose to ignore Grammarly here).

In short, she’s there to make life easier for all of us. She’s there to enable us to do stuff. Not cancel us out.

But, sure, there’s cause for some amount of worry.

Writers, if the only thing you’re bringing to the table are words, the future is bleak. Not because ChatGPT can now do your job. But because anyone can.

But if you’re a writer that can strategise smartly, develop a tone of voice that nobody’s heard before, and then write them into scripts, ads, performance marketing campaigns, brochures, emailers, push notifications, and a thousand other touchpoints, you have tiddly squat to worry about.

The same goes for designers and art directors.

If you’ve survived so long by just putting some vectors together, forget about DALL-E, your job was rendered useless in June 2012, when Canva launched.

Buuuut, if as a designer, you can pull out references, study the brand philosophy and DNA, and create a brand look that’s unique, fresh and extendable, you can put your feet up on the table and relax.

Personally, I think the creative industry will be just fine.

Because if we’ve gotten through things like ‘the client loves it, but wants the entire thing changed’, and ‘Sorry, this is last minute, but we need another campaign by tomorrow’ and ‘even though you’ve written the film, your boss is going for the shoot’, this AI business is a tiny blip.

This article, as it turns out, wasn’t written by AI.
It was written by Bodhi, Founder & Intern at The Voice Company.

Open AI launched InstructGPT as an AI driven language model which was capable of following user intentions better than GPT-3, -2 and -1 versions, while being more truthful and less toxic. However, on the evolutionary spectrum, ChatGPT is far more refined in understanding customer/user intentions than the e​arlier versions and its ability to create, sustain and recall dialogues with consumers/users is phenomenal.

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