My thoughts on AI

I’ve not commented on it yet, but I have been playing with AI for the past 8 months or so.

I discovered DALL·E (image generation tool) last summer and have lost many, many, many hours to it. Some hours have been very worthwhile (all my presentation images are now DALL·E generated), whilst others have been a total time sink.

I also jumped on the Chat-CPT bandwagon pretty early on and I’ve used it to help generate ideas, write poems, and create fantasy stories. It has been an incredible resource.

I have a philosophy of working smarter, not harder, so I am very keen to figure out how I can actively use it to help me and the brands that I work with.

One of the things that I frequently talk to clients about is the need to reframe the way that they approach the creation of content and start viewing themselves as media provider. Think in volume, find lots of ways to continuously reach, and (this is the biggie) add value to your customers.

This is not about pushing out mass quantities of crap hoping that something will stick, this approach is about generating lots of interesting/entertaining/ inspiring content that serves a purpose and demonstrates to the customer the value that you bring.

I thought with this in mind as the end goal- I would share my observations with these tools and the other ones that I have used to date (as they exist so far):

1. The human command

Any idea starts with a brief, this might be subconscious and rudimentary, but you go into the process with an understanding d of what you want or want to find out.

In my experimentation with the platforms, the best outputs have been when I have had a clear sense of what I wanted and the parameters for success- what does good look like? Again, these might not have been properly articulated (or conscious) but to meet my specific requirements, I needed to know when I had found it?

You could spend hours and hours, typing in random requests, hoping to stumble upon some magic. If you are looking for general inspiration and stimulus, go right ahead, but if you are looking for it to deliver something specific, mindless generation is the definition of a time sink.

To get the best use out of the platform you need to be crystal clear on what it is that you are looking for and what success looks like.

This means that you need a solid foundation/strategy from which to start the search. Something that gives you a clear sense of what and why success looks as it does and the parameters for judging it.

2. The tone.

A Tone of Voice is the outward manifestation of a brand's mission and values.

It signals to consumers who you are, what you stand for and what they can expect from you.

A tone of voice should be as instantly recognisable as a brand colour or logo. It is your stamp, your personality.

At this stage of the platform, the copy generated is pretty robotic, devowed of the beautiful nuances that make copy interesting. Of course you can play ad ask it to take on specific personifications - eg pirate, but as a whole article is pretty indistinguishable from one to the other. So whilst the subject matter is readable, as a brand your content needs to hook people in, engage them, allow them to feel the essence of the brand in what you are writing.

Over time it is likely that there will be the ability to imprint our brands unique brand personality or for it to learn from examples of how we write, but for now, remember you are not just trying to feed SEO machines but engage with real people and win their hearts and minds. This is not going to be done if you sound like a robot.

 
3. IP

The biggest grey area that I have with any of these platforms is IP ownership. Particularly that any usage by a brand will be deemed a form of commercial use.

“The model for ChatGPT “is trained on a corpus of created works and it is still unclear what the legal precedent may be for reuse of this content if it was derived from the intellectual property of others,” according to Bern Elliot, analyst at Gartner”

To this, I have absolutely no answers but would say tread very carefully.

Personally, I am planning to use the platforms for inspiration, stimulating different perspectives, to help clarify my thinking, but I am very wary of just taking and sharing anything generated, especially in any public-facing capacities.

I would love to know what you think and how you have been using it so far? Also is it just me but I am struggling to remember Chat-CPT as a brand name?