Generative AI: What Is It and Should You Use It?

Hollywood told us it was coming.?

On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT landed with a thump that reverberated across the marketing landscape. And while people (like me) hopped in there to play around, marketers (also me) went in to see if the future had finally arrived.?

It has. AI has gone mainstream.?

Just 140 days after ChatGPT sent us all kind of scrambling to figure out whether we should be adopting and mastering, or adapting and bracing for generative AI, Google introduced the world to the Search Generative Experience. More on that later.

TLDR Takeaway

We have become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to help us navigate our personal lives. But Generative AI, for all the controversy it’s currently kicking up, presents a real opportunity for small businesses, 4 in 10 of which have historically not had the resources to invest in content marketing. Generative AI gives micro companies, freelancers, and solopreneurs the chance to grab eyeballs AND drum up engagement at a fraction of the cost (time and money) and generate awareness, interest, and sales as payment for what amounts to a micro-effort.

That’s good for business.

For the sake of keeping things simple - even though they’re not - let’s dig into both the opportunities and some of the challenges of marketing in an environment where anyone and everyone has access to generative AI - even if it’s just for kicks and giggles.?

This topic is wide and deep, I know. And no one is going to cover it comprehensively in 1000 words. So, my goal isn’t to think-tank this thing, but more to grab 5 minutes of your time in an effort to help you frame in your mind the practical uses of AI, specifically for one-person, two-person, and no-person marketing teams.?

No-person teams? Believe it or not, 43 percent of small B2B companies with fewer than 100 employees have NO ONE on the team whose full-time job is content marketing, according to the 2022 B2B Content Marketing Insights Report. That means…

Social media, blog posts, landing pages, email marketing? No one’s keeping an eye on that stuff ALL of the time. So, yep - no-person marketing teams.

But generative AI can help with that.

A Simple Definition of Generative AI (and the other futuristic buzzwords)?

Let’s walk this back for a sec, because there are a handful of fancy words floating around right now, and if you’re not “about that life” as they say, it can be tough to piece together a comprehensive picture of artificial intelligence.

Natural Language Processing A subset of AI that helps computers understand how to process and analyze tons of human language… since we don’t speak in 1s and 0s. (Read + Understand)

Intelligence The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills (Learn + Do)

Artificial Intelligence A computer system that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. (Learn+ Do)

Machine Learning A field of AI in which artificial intelligence uses data to adapt and predict without human interference. (Learn + Do + Adapt + Do Better)

Deep Learning A type of machine learning that uses an artificial neural network (robot brain) to mimic human learning and decision-making. (Learn + Think + Do Better and Better Every Time)

And the one that’s super buzzy right now…

Generative AI - A system that’s capable of generating media in response to prompts. Generative AI learns and recognizes patterns and structures collected while its being trained, then generates similar types of media when prompted. (Learn + Analyze + Predict + Generate)

AI Is Not New…

Not even a little bit. The autocorrect on your phone - seems predictive, like it knows what you’re going to do next? AI. That’s how long you’ve been living with AI.

Google’s autocomplete...?

And let’s be clear - search as we know it is wholly undergirded by AI.?

People Also Ask section…

We’ve come to increasingly rely on artificial intelligence, even in the way we browse on social media.?

The Use of AI is a Daily Thing for Many of Us

Let’s go back to 2020: remember how everybody was so impressed with TikTok’s algorithm? It was so good at displaying the next best video for individual users that it literally made browsing on Instagram seem unnecessarily tedious.?

Well, that’s what happens when you loop in the predictive powers of AI to analyze algorithms, spot patterns and focus on finding the next best thing to do (or picture to show, or word to type, or song to play, or whatever).

That’s why I can say, “Google, play ‘The Chain’ by Fleetwood Mac” and Google can pretty much guess that what I really want is to fill my workday with 70s and 80s jams that I only learned about in the last few years. For instance, Cheap Trick’s “Surrender”.?

Suffice it to say, Google uses the patterns it’s spotted in my normal, day-to-day online behaviors to predict what would be the next best thing to show ME. And I’ve noticed that for platforms on which the predictions are not as fine-tuned (looking at you, Prime Video), I lose interest easily and hop off the platform.?

In fact, now that I think about it, I’m a little put off by the fact that I’ve been on Prime Video for so many years and it’s still showing me weird stuff that I would NEVER watch.? Read the Room!

Here’s Why Everybody’s Talking About AI Now, Though

If we’ve been using AI this whole time, what’s all the fuss about? Well, the fuss is about the masses having access to AI-powered tools that have the ability to pull from a massive collection of data, gated content, and intellectual property to generate seemingly new text, titles, pictures, code, or whatever you want.?

There are all these implications around intellectual property rights, data privacy, ethical use, data accuracy, and accountability - all these variables that crop up when we rely on artificial intelligence.?

But even in the face of a “non-zero chance” of humanity having to eventually deal with a Terminator-styled annihilation (per Elon Musk), generative AI can change the game for those 1-person and no-person marketing teams I mentioned earlier.?

Because with NO previous experience creating anything using ChatGPT or Jasper or Rytr or some other AI tool, the potential to generate new-to-me content in a few seconds provides an opportunity for the solo marketer or the business owner who is the defacto marketer in their organization to not just generate marketing assets, but also to personalize and optimize them.

And access to these kinds of tools can help businesses grow significantly faster by being able to deploy an omnichannel marketing strategy.