How much A.I. is too much for brands?
TLDR
Any written copy for your brand should end with a human touch.
People love/hate artificial intelligence (A.I.) SO much. Robots and technology have been an obsession among us humans since at least the dawn of The Twilight Zone.?
A.I. also scares the hell out of people. It could replace real people’s job roles (and already has, in some cases). Could it also…take over whole companies? Our lives? The world? ??
Okay, let’s not panic. Until robots become self-aware, we should be good.?
For now, the practical and important question to ask ourselves is if or how to use A.I. in our businesses. We’ll share our take on where brands can consider using A.I., applications to tread lightly with, and absolute no-gos.?
But first, in case you have no earthly idea what we’re talking about…
Hi, I’ve been living under a rock. What’s this A.I. business?
Artificial intelligence may feel like a new thing, but its early forms date back to the early 1950s. In 1952, a scientist developed a program that could play checkers. In 1955, a professor at Dartmouth coined the term “artificial intelligence.”
Today, A.I. programs like ChatGPT are an evolution of several decades' worth of computer technology. When we think of A.I. today, we think of programs that can create content, answer questions, generate images, and do all sorts of brilliant but scary things—seemingly out of thin air.
That’s the thing, though. What A.I. creates is not out of thin air. More on that in a minute.
Alright, back to business: ways your business may and may not want to use A.I.
Green Light: Where A.I. Can Help Brands
…In the Ways it Has Already Been Helping You
Even if you’re not chatting over drinks with chatbots these days, you probably already use A.I. more than you think. That includes fitness trackers, virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, and recommended music or shows on streaming apps. No? What about predictive text when you’re writing emails and texts? Or…spam filters? Hah! All of those use artificial intelligence.
Many of these A.I.-based tools have become commonplace—in and out of the workplace. So much that we don’t even think about it anymore.?
These applications of A.I. are almost like a smarter, less annoying version of Microsoft Office’s Clippy. Remember him? Good times.?
We say, keep on keepin’ on with those applications of A.I.
Brainstorming
A.I. can be helpful to get your ideas going. The sky’s the limit—you could ask it for ideas for pretty much anything. Know that the output is only as good as the input, however.?
So, if I ask ChatGPT for topics that would be good for a marketing blog, it gives me pretty general ideas that aren’t all that helpful. If I ask it to give me some snarky social post ideas for my blog about brands using A.I., I’m much more likely to have material that sparks inspiration.
Writing Short-form Blurbs Like Email Subject Lines
I think one of the ways A.I. shines best is in its ability to write short content. Like mentioned above, I could ask it to write social post copy ideas. I could also ask it to write me an email headline about a certain topic, in a certain tone, and set a limit of 3-6 words.?
Do I actually do this? No, I don’t. I have experimented with ChatGPT to see what it can do (see the blog I linked above for all my findings!). It comes up with workable ideas that could likely save time and creative energy for a lot of people. Personally, I feel I can come up with snazzy short copy ideas more quickly than workshopping ideas from ChatGPT.
One of the ways A.I. shines best is in its ability to write short content.
Fine-tuning Content Written by a Human
Here’s one I actually use. Writing assistant programs like Grammarly are fantastic for zhuzhing up your business writing once your first draft is complete. There are even fancy versions of it (that maybe I’ll splurge on sometime) that will not just proof your writing, but give suggestions for elevating it—like a robot copy editor.?
Like any A.I.-powered tool, it is only a tool, though. A real person, ideally one with some working grammar and brand voice knowledge, should have the final say.?
I break writing rules all the time. On purpose. Yeah, that was a sentence fragment I deliberately added in, because I have an English degree, dammit.
My point is, use these tools as friendly suggestions to ensure you’re not making unforgivable, sloppy mistakes. Infuse your own brand voice and trust your instincts.
Yellow Light: Proceed with Caution
Generative A.I. for Image Editing and Creation
This is where it gets a little muddy.
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Doing simple image edits with A.I., such as removing a background or random knucklehead from an image—a-okay. It makes a designer’s job easier for example, because otherwise they’d have to do those edits manually.
Using A.I. to manipulate a photo to be totally different and deceptive? We wouldn’t. For example, don't doctor your product images to look different from the real thing. That’s just false advertising, and it will lose the trust you’ve worked to build with your customers. As with any sort of image editing, use it with care.
Now, creating an image from scratch with generative A.I.—that’s even more iffy. First off, it’s not exactly from scratch. Images are generated from the data of billions of images across the internet. The program draws from these images, reinterprets them, and forms a new image that’s an amalgamation of things based on your input. So, the user can ask for something like, “pizza monster ravaging a quaint town,” and the A.I. does its best to create that image for you. We don’t know where exactly these images come from, but they likely include source material from human artists’ work.?
That enters an ethical gray area, in terms of using those images out in the world and not supporting real artists. Plus, the images you get back can be a crapshoot—pretty much never aligning with exactly what you envisioned. From both a quality and ethical perspective, you’re better off giving the work to an actual artist or graphic designer. We wouldn’t recommend using fully A.I.-generated images for commercial purposes. We’ll admit that generative A.I. is super entertaining to play with for personal use, though. Throw an A.I. image into a blog for educational purposes, but maybe avoid, say, selling merch with A.I. images.?
A.I.-powered Video
Similar to above, tread lightly with creating videos using artificial intelligence. It’s hard to say where the content comes from.
There are also programs out there where you can plug in text and they’ll have a realistic A.I.-generated person recite it for you. The idea is to put it on your website as a greeting.?
My thought? It looks creepy—in an uncanny valley way. Is that really going to connect with real people in your audience? It wouldn’t take much more effort to set up someone at the company with a ring light to record a personal greeting instead.
And don’t even get me started on deepfakes. Those are computer-generated, hyper-realistic videos that make it look like someone said or did something that never happened. I don’t know why you’d be needing to make one as a brand, but…don’t. They’re spooky and dangerous.
Drafting Medium-length Copy, Like Email Messages
A.I. can be helpful for drafting short and medium-length copy, such as email body text. There are tools out there that let you input the general message you’re trying to convey, your audience profile, tone of voice you’re going for, etc.—which will then generate an email message for you.
These tools can help you draft content. DRAFT. Always have a real person read through and fine-tune for brand voice, correctness, and what your audience cares about. Any written copy for your brand should end with a human touch.
In our experiments, A.I. tools work alright for mid-size copy. I’ve found they generally end up not quite capturing what we’re trying to say, nor how we’re trying to say it. We don’t use A.I. email-drafting tools at sōsh. Our in-house writer (hi there!) can write them in a more strategic, polished style from the get-go.?
Always have a real person read through and fine-tune for brand voice, correctness, and what your audience cares about.
Red Light: Do Not Pass GO, Do not Collect $200.
Long-form Content, Like Blogs
You know, you CAN ask A.I. programs to write you long-form content. But, in our opinion, you shouldn't. A few reasons, here:
Factually Dubious
While we don’t know exactly how A.I. does its thing, we do know a few things. When creating content, A.I. scans the internet far and wide to pull together its interpretation of the assignment you gave it. It may misinterpret what you ask for, and it also may misinterpret the information it finds.?
It works to create content that’s plausible based on what info it gathers, but it doesn’t fact-check. That means it sometimes gets things wrong.
May Contain Plagiarism
Since A.I. is pulling from different sources to create content, some of that may be verbatim from those sources. As a writer, that strikes fear into my heart. It’s like the text is filled with landmines. Potential plagiarism here, misinformation there. I’d have NO idea what’s salvageable and what could explode in my face. screams
Unlikely to Save You Time
So, to the above points, you’re at least going to need to fact-check content that A.I. writes. And, you should also do extensive copy editing to ensure you aren’t accidentally plagiarizing. That alone would probably take me at least the same amount the time it takes to simply write the blog myself.?
But there would probably also be structure issues, repetition, weird tone of voice, and so on. Ultimately, the blog would be totally rewritten, and A.I. would totally not have saved me time.
Business Strategies, Decisions, and Advice
If you ask an A.I.-powered bot a question, it scans its repertoire of knowledge and does its best to formulate an answer. That answer may or may not be factual, because the A.I. may interpret something wrong or have bad intel. As mentioned, tools like ChatGPT can be an okay starting point to get ideas going, but you’ll probably just chuckle and end up Googling what you’re looking for anyway.
When your business is looking to make a decision and needs advice/info on the matter, it’s best to ask non-robot experts or hunker down with some good old-fashioned research and analytics. ChatGPT doesn’t know your business and all the nuances that make it unique.?
One thing we know for sure? A.I. isn’t the answer when you’re forming or fine-tuning your marketing strategy. That’s what seasoned marketing pros like us are for. ;)?
Marketing plan feeling a little robotic?
All this talk about artificial intelligence has us thinking. With our real brains. And hey, that’s the best way to connect with other real brains. We’d love to talk shop with you and strategize a marketing plan to help you better connect with your audience. Chat with us! No chatbots, guaranteed
About Us
Founded in 1999, sōsh is a Milwaukee-based creative marketing and advertising agency specializing in data-driven strategies for small to large brands. Sōsh focuses on a wide range of disciplines such as creative services, social media, digital marketing, web design, advertising, and our trademark events. Sōsh creates meaningful connections between brands and their audience and does so through strategic communication, captivating creative, and thoughtful engagement. We are a collection of strategists - creatives dedicated to adding value to both our client’s brands and their consumers’ lives.