3 tech trends impacting us in 2024

At Avion, our dedicated team has always been fascinated by advancing technology. We thrive on understanding complex ideas and simplifying them into clear, engaging copy.

When it comes to generative AI, here are three key trends impacting us this year: AI overviews, AI detection, and AI realisation.?

Originally I created a 90-second video for LinkedIn on this topic (below), but have now added more details for for those wanting to learn more (further down!).

Tech trend 1: AI overviews

I first came across a certain type of AI overview last year when I was doing some online shopping on Amazon. At the top of each page was a summary that consolidated all customer reviews in one handy paragraph. This prompted me to do a little digging.

As some of you may know, Google started rolling out generative AI overviews in search results in the US earlier this year. This has led to huge discussions about the future of SEO and content with questions like:

• What if my content appears at the top, but no one clicks on it?
• How do I compete with the other phrases that are showing up?
• Should I continue striving to get web traffic through Google?
• Do clicks even matter anymore?

What this means for content marketers

It’s good news. This shift from SEO to AIO gives challenger brands a better chance of showing up in organic search results. But only if their content is well researched, insightful, and addresses specific user queries.

The exciting opportunity for content marketers is to think about all the FAQs a potential customer might ask and tackle them as best you can. For example, at Avion, we examine research on long-tail keywords alongside UX insights to write the most effective copy possible.

We also need to broaden the definition of success beyond CTRs (click through rates) to include impressions. Content that shows up as an AI overview, featured snippet, or a zero-click search result still promotes brand visibility and recall.

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A sneaky prediction

Although everyone has been dabbling with newer tools like ChatGPT, I reckon it’ll only be another year or two before we go back to using Google. Why? Because Google will continue updating its platform to mirror the conversational experience, and humans are creatures of habit. Also, other generative AI tools will start monetising their products and this will turn users away. Perplexity has just announced it will introduce advertising by the end of this year.

Tech trend 2: AI detection

I had my first dispute about AI-generated content with a client earlier this year. They argued what we delivered was written by ChatGPT. But in fact, we’d only used it for research and ideation – not to create the final product.

I’ve since experimented with several AI detection tools and unfortunately there’s a lot of inconsistency out there. If you’re interested in checking them out, I’d recommend Originality AI , Scribbr , Copyleaks , and Writer . See one of my experiments below that tests the same 918 words, yet delivers a vast range of results.

Helping creatives reclaim our craft

While these platforms currently deliver false positives and can give writers a bad name, there is an upside. As they improve, copywriters and other creatives will feel more empowered to argue the originality of our work if anyone questions its authenticity. This is going to become extremely valuable as Google’s AIO-driven search experience prioritises original content.

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Is using ChatGPT really cheating anyway?

I believe this also opens up a bigger conversation for consideration: Why are we still not comfortable with AI-generated content? I can 100% testify that at Avion we’ve trialled writing articles from scratch versus generating articles using ChatGPT. The outcome? Using gen-AI took us approximately double the time due to the amount of refining we had to do. True story.

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Tech trend 3: AI realisation

At Avion, we launched external ChatGPT training more than 18 months ago. Initially, participants found it really useful. But over time, a chasm developed between those who were completely new to gen-AI compared to those who weren’t.

It became impractical for us to cater to these different levels of expertise while trying to keep up with changes at the same time. Also, we found that organisations wanted gen-AI training, but couldn’t define what they needed, or implement internal policies quickly enough to manage it.

Gen-AI benefits many different people in many different ways

One topic I’m particularly drawn to is “the rise of the builders”, a theme coined by Gartner in its Strategic Technology Trends 2024 report. It highlights how workers can now take tasks into their own hands, thanks to the explosion of low-code and no-code platforms that are available on the market. For example:

• no longer do teams have to wait for a website developer – they can use Wix
• no longer do teams have to wait on a designer – they can use Canva
• no longer do teams have to wait on a coder – they can use Claude.

What I’ve found since launching Avion’s ChatGPT prompt engineering workshop is that everyone has different uses for gen-AI. Training that tries to cover all bases isn’t as helpful as training that focuses on a very specific set of use cases that are relevant to one’s role.

My advice to senior leaders

Let your team experiment with AI tools in a way that works for them. Then ask them to identify rinse-and-repeatable tasks they can master and implement to drive efficiencies each day. For example:

• determining the reading time of a resource
• summarising meeting notes into actionable tasks
• synthesising external or internal research into a report
• uploading style guides to create HTML design.

For fun, we run monthly forums and ask Avion staff to do a live demo of something new they’ve done with AI recently. I recommend teams get together and do this often – it’s a great shared learning opportunity.?

If you have some learnings to share about content and AI, I'd love to hear from you! Please book a call with me via Calendly: https://calendly.com/natalie-khoo/45min

Cheers, Natalie