THE PROS & CONCERNS OF GENERATIVE AI IN MARKETING

Commercial Real Estate

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Industry Insights

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Commercial Real Estate

Industry Insights

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3 min read

While marketers rush to embrace the advantages of the advanced technology, they should also study the catches and liabilities.

Imagine if your marketing team had a tool to quickly devise 10 or more ad angles for a video shoot based on customer reviews or one that could read thousands of those reviews and speedily summarize the testimonials for optimized customer service response. Imagine no longer. Generative AI is here to help generate large volumes of content in seconds and reduce monotonous tasks and other busywork.

But before you go thinking that the technology will be your everyday failsafe “easy button,” be sure to know the bumps and risks along the robotic road. Generative AI brings with it content and even legal concerns set against the battlefield backdrop of human worth versus technological advancement.

“There has always been a tension between the art and the science of marketing and creativity, even when the technology was much more rudimentary than that of generative AI,” Jay Pattisall, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, told the Wall Street Journal. “Machines in whatever form simply just can’t replace or replicate human creativity. That was true then, and it is absolutely true now.”

Eyes to Optimize

Generative AI definitely can help creative professionals in marketing and advertising come up with ideas and work more quickly, saving valuable time. Audience segmentation, customer service chatbots, programmatic advertising, SEO and e-commerce are other key uses for which companies are leveraging the technology.

On the content creation front, Wesley ter Haar points out that generative AI helps marketers “visualize and test out different concepts at speed. You can also easily swap out different elements — like changing the background, changing characters — at any point in the production process without having to go back to the drawing board,” said the digital advertising and marketing services executive, adding that AI may also help brands battle “creative fatigue.” And weariness from tedious, rote tasks, such as analyzing those aforementioned customer reviews, can be greatly reduced as well.

When AI Turns Unnatural or Even Unlawful

“I’m not laughing with it — I’m laughing at it,” Mint Mobile’s CMO said about the AI ad featuring actor and part owner Ryan Reynolds. Yes, while many pros rightfully court the potential for the technology to boost advertising through automation, there is still a disconnect. Pattisall points out that while generative AI’s ability to write prose has turned many a head, it is still only generating output from data and not originating thought or expression.

It’s been said that our potential for innovation, problem-solving and growth is only as good as the data we collect. AI’s definitely got the data collection part down, but what if the information is incorrect, biased or copyrighted?

AI users should be watchful for this possibility and mindful of the inherent risk of sharing such data in a customer-facing way. Marketers should know the data sources that train their generative AI models. Such major concerns, along with the question of who owns an idea originating from a machine, led ter Haar to say, “I’m sure the lawsuits will be extremely interesting.”

“AI definitely piques our firm’s ‘limitless possibilities’ mentality and dovetails with our constant striving to leverage innovative tactics for our clients, but we also must realize that it’s an evolving technology that requires smart, grounded planning and due diligence,” said Tim Patton, CEO at infinitee. “For more than 31 years, we’ve been balancing that ‘art and science of marketing and creativity’ and can do so for your brand.”