Humanising AI for Easy Adoption

The integration of AI is still being met with apprehension, alongside excitement, in the world of marketing. With no doubt about how AI can support companies to get ahead of the curve and become market leaders, we are still scratching the surface in terms of its capabilities, and there is still justified caution in the air.

As discussed at our roundtable event, The Impact of AI on B2B Marketing, the integration of AI with real human skills shouldn't be underestimated and will lead to us getting the best out of new technology, including the most creative tasks. So, perhaps humanising AI as much as possible is a way to mitigate some of the perceived risks and general fears over the adoption of such advanced technology. “Think of it like an employee, rather than as technology,” said Barney O’Kelly, Marketing Director at AlixPartners. This human approach makes it easier to structure and format AI into the marketing function, seeing it as a welcome addition rather than a replacement, and this could have a dramatic impact on productivity and morale.

With this in mind, it’s important to consider how AI needs to be nurtured when tackling new audiences or the nuances of international markets. “You can teach people how to use tools, but you can’t teach emotion and how to interact,” said Ayla Lyon, Marketing Director at Veritone & Broadbean. Different markets relate and empathise differently, and this could be lost using AI, leading to ineffective messaging that is interpreted unexpectedly.

“AI could train itself into a corner,” added Margaret Franco, Chief Marketing Officer at Kinaxis, hence the need to have experts who can look at the outcomes and “understand the relevance AI output has to the consumer”. There is also the issue of algorithm bias, where the algorithms AI uses aren’t diverse enough to reflect the goals of a business. Here lies additional responsibility for the human owner to ensure adequate data and context are provided to prevent this from happening and damaging the company's reputation.

The people-focus should be shielded and maintained as "despite the desire to do more with AI, people still buy people,” commented Tamasin Manwaring, Global Director, Business Development & Strategy at Hogan Lovells. There is also a risk of “diminishing your expertise and credibility” if all your content is written by AI, added Barney O’Kelly, AlixPartners. By taking a nuanced approach, leveraging local expertise, and using human skills to test and iterate AI messaging, a healthy middle ground can be found where AI’s full value is discovered.

The ideal combination and balance of human skills and AI technology is completely relative to each business and their sector. Bonnie Pelosi from Microsoft raised the potential issue of AI turning your team into “one of everything, but losing a certain area of specialisation,” which could affect your point of difference and how people relate to your brand.

It’s also important to remember that the marketing industry has been leveraging AI for some time. Chris Blaik, GVP EMEA Marketing, added, “we’ve been harnessing AI for years, from customisation to realtime targeting, so this is just a continuation.” From Amazon, Siri, Gmail, Spotify, and Facebook, to name a few that will be well-known to the end-user, AI is already cemented in a lot of our daily lives. “AI products are called ‘AI’ in their early days, but as soon as they become useful, they’re no longer referred to as ‘AI’,” added David Keene, Chief Marketing Officer at Wipro.

The emergence of conversational AI, such as ChatGPT, has brought the term ‘AI’ to the forefront, especially due to its accessibility to consumers and businesses alike. The ease of use, along with AI’s rising popularity, has seen senior company executives more keen than ever to utilise these new technologies. Whereas in the past, it was perhaps for the preservation of the enthusiasts and technologists. Leaders of marketing functions may need to educate senior executives on best practices for implementing AI, ensuring that they don’t lose sight of long-term strategies and visions just to say they are using the latest MarTech.

This is an extract from The Impact of AI on B2B Marketing, a report by tml Partners. The report amalgamated the findings and insights from a roundtable discussion with B2B marketing leaders from companies such as Microsoft, Elsevier, Hogan Lovells, and Broadbean Technology, amongst others.