Fun with AI at TSG

Every quarter at TSG, we orchestrate a company-wide activity of some sort. In addition to all the expected benefits of cross-functional team building, we inevitably have fun and usually learn something valuable. Most recently, the TSG team decided to see how they could use what they know about AI to solve everyday challenges. So, we broke out into cross-functional teams, and each team applied AI to shared interests and predefined objectives. The results were intriguing and sometimes pretty funny.?

Testing and learning

?Each group was given free rein to identify a project and choose its AI resources. These included Beautiful.AI, ChatGPT, ChefGPT, Microsoft Copilot, DALL-E, Danelfin, DishGen, Google Gemini, and ScrappyChef. Ultimately, they used them to research and plan travel, plan affordable meals and build grocery lists, research and build presentations, create poetry and art, and even compete with AI in the stock market.

?The upside:?

·?????? Using AI for meal planning can save time and money: It delivered allergy-friendly recipes and grocery lists on a budget; recipes based on ingredients in your fridge saved a trip to the store.

·?????? Making AI your travel agent can uncover options from the popular to the obscure, which you can then filter and fine tune.

·?????? Unlike some humans, some AI-powered tools are very good at taking criticism and trying harder. We critiqued poetry and art, and it didn’t even pretend to cry.

·?????? AI can help with investing. In our test, humans beat AI in the stock market, but only by a thin margin. If time is money, and you have a learning curve, AI can help you.

?The downside:?

·?????? AI may not be great at differentiation; one tool didn’t know a rose from a violet.

·?????? It can “forget” corrections during multiple iterations.

·?????? It sometimes misses important data, e.g., suggesting we go to Shakespeare in the Park—a summer program—in October.

·?????? When converting recipes into a grocery list, it left off the eggs.

·?????? AI is good, but not great, at mimicking human emotion. (This may be an upside.)

·?????? Some words it chooses are correct but awkward. (Humans do this, too.)

·?????? Creating a presentation, it grabbed the logo of a similarly named firm and “guessed” at a list of clients.?

We had a blast

?Creative people are inherently inquisitive, which made this exercise a lot of fun. Putting AI to the test, assessing the results, and sharing what we learned was a natural fit for this team of thinkers. We’ve already employed bots, chatbots, and automation in our strategies, but because AI is still evolving, we will be exploring its power for a long time to come. To sum up recent findings:?

·?????? If used correctly, AI can save time, improve outcomes, and extend competitive advantages.

·?????? It is good at gathering/compiling information for research projects and content creation—with significant limitations.

·?????? It is a useful tool for ideation and kickstarting a project.

·?????? It is easy to use, but to get the best results, you need to think carefully about your prompt in terms of both content and format. Specificity, inclusivity, and clarity are key.

·?????? Its conversational nature makes revising and versioning queries easy.

·?????? It can learn, and it never complains (although it may cop an attitude now and then).

?In practice, we saw both its elegance and its flaws, depending on the product. Across the board, we felt the power of its potential. To quote one team member, “We’re not out of a job…yet.” Like any other advancement, we think a combination of proven marketing fundamentals and some new/honed skills will be required to master AI. If bots can learn, so can we.

?#thinktsg #StrategyFirst #marketingwithAI