Not another generative AI 'hot take'...

Do you know what? I rarely do the traditional thing of planning out my content. I know, I know, experienced marketeer who has an idea but doesn't map out all of the requirement content 'tick boxes' when he writes his stuff - what a rank amateur, eh?

But I do all of that for work and also in my social life (Arsenal, if you didn't know, or even care), so when I get an idea and a train of thought that I just want to pop down, why not just let the prose flow, I say.

Anyhoo, why am I here, why are you hear, have I actually got something interesting that is worth talking about? That's obviously for you to decide but I should probably get to the point of this nonsensical rambling:

I want to say some things about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what it has done to my world.

Specifically - generative AI

Yeah I get it, you're probably bored of hearing about everyone's 'hot takes'. I am too. But I also have some thoughts about how I and my team have been using it and so I thought I'd share my thoughts through this here medium. If it is helpful then great, if not...well...at least I've got a record of what I thought when my life has been turned upside down and what marketing was in 'the old days' no longer exists and I spend my life conversing with digital beings that I can never meet in my life (like Joaquim Phoenix, only without the obsessive love stuff).

So anyway, back to what generative AI has meant to me in my world.

Speeding content generation up a treat

The good news for me when I first started to experiment was that it really enabled me to get more 'thinking time'. I love to create content. Like, REALLY love to do it. I create content every single day of my life. I blog, I pod, I do videos (not as much though, as nobody needs to see this rapidly ageing middle-aged marketer on their desktop/mobile too often), I drop thoughts on to social media, etc. It has always been a passion of mine, but when you have a busy job and are in a senior position in that job, your ability to think and create content does become a little more restricted (meetings, reporting, etc, etc).

Generative AI for me changed a lot of that for me. With the help of the likes of Google Bard or ChatGPT (other AIs are available - no plugs here people) I found my ability to start creating thought processes and ideas became freed up. In a work context it has meant that if I read something and have more than just a passing emotion to it in terms of what is being said, I can use generative AI to drop a train of thought down and then Robert's-your-father's-brother I have myself a blog. Already in the last couple of week's of writing this blog today I have managed to grab a couple of peers at my business I work in and get them to record their thoughts on a topic in the space of 20 minutes. That recording transcription gets fed in to a generative AI programme and we have ourselves the making of a company point of view.

Simples.

Or is it?

The generative AI talk is cheap

So I've got my piece of content, based on a conversation that has been recorded and transcribed on a particular topic, that has then been fed in to the generative AI programme. It spits out a blog header, some sub topics, then some words and we're off to the internet to release as a piece of content that has our opinion and voice, right?

Nope. And this is where I think for content writers, copywriters and marketeers I think we still have a vital role to play. Because despite the points that came across that were decent enough, I found myself thinking "so what? What's the extra bit of sauce that can be put on the discussion that took place?".

That's where we come in. That's where the human voice is vital because I can take a piece of content that has been created based on an algorithm searching the internet to find patterns in human language, but my experience so far is that it only gets you so far - my AI super friend has taken me to the water but I have to be the one to take the metaphorical sip of that content 'so what?' that will mean another person reading the piece will find it engaging, interesting and something slightly different to what they have read already on whatever topic it is.

Adapt or die, man

Again, this is probably not really any kind of 'fresh take' that you haven't heard before, but it is my experience and thought process - us content producers just need to appreciate the productivity gains from AI and the parts of your content producing job that are being made easier, instead focusing our time on the 'so what?' part of what we produce. Spend more time forming your opinion, let the invisible being on your computer do the 'heavy lifting', then start to broaden your horizons. Take the time to learn new things, take in more information, understand and interpret data and then add your own little sparkle to what you produce. Don't rely completely on AI to do your job, just the bits of your job that used to take you half a day to start. A blank page doesn't have to be daunting any more.

Pobody's Nerfect. And that's ok, as long as you can still sprinkle your stardust.