Maker or Marker: How Do You Use Generative AI?

It’s probably because I’ve been spending time grading my students' digital marketing projects.

So lately, marking's been on my mind.

And as I was reading through the submissions and writing my comments, it occurred to me how similar that process is to the way we interact with generative AI.

With AI, you're constantly assessing the content, checking facts and offering suggestions.

That sounds a lot like marking to me.

Which made me wonder: as we use more AI tools, are we shifting focus from creating to grading? Making to marking?

How will that affect our ability to come up with original ideas or insights?

From Knowledge to Summarization

We've also heard promises of the AI age of knowledge and abundance we're about to enter. And that would be amazing.

It's happening fast.

With tech companies' new semi-autonomous 'deep research' tools, you're able to feed in a research request and the AI agent uncovers sources, reads papers and articles, spots patterns, analyses the results and prepares a neatly wrapped package.

All you have to do is review and check (i.e. grade) it.

That's good, because it shortens the time between data collection and strategy.

Yet, on the flip side, you may stop paying attention to or reflecting on the original source.

And instead, you'll deal with a comprehensive summary, the equivalent to an AI version of CliffsNotes.

Will that lead to less human research? Or will research outputs be tweaked so they catch the attention of AI?

And if all your info comes from AI summaries, how will that alter your analytic abilities and critical thinking?

Where Does Creativity Fit In?

Not too long ago, I wrote about balancing the duality of generative AI.

Because every time you use an AI tool, you have tradeoffs. Between, for example, speed and reflection, originality and cliche, understanding and guessing, and authentic vs. synthetic.

And it's up to you to decide which parts of any process you want to keep for yourself and which parts to turn over to a machine.

Of course, there is no one size fits all answer, and each of you has to figure that out for yourself.

I want to add another duality to my list: maker or marker.

Marker

Do you just want to get certain tasks completed and move on? Are you OK with good enough and done (what many jobs require)? If so, that means you can outsource a job to an AI and just check its work.

Maker

Is the challenge you're facing one you're passionate about? Does it spark your curiosity? Is it a burning idea you just have to figure out yourself? If so, this is where humans should lead the process and be assisted by a machine—or in some cases, not.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong in being a marker.

In many situations, it might be the optimal way to go.

But if you default to marker status all the time, pretty soon, you'll stop being an active doer and instead become an output-approval stamper.

You delegate your brain-related tasks to the machine and rely on automated thinking.

That means no blank screen creative writing, designing or producing content of any kind.

I'm not ready to do that. Are you?

Advertising Meets AI Automation

There's no denying turning your company's content marketing production and distribution over to AI is on the rise.

Major platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok and even Reddit are letting AI loose on your brand assets to customize and optimize your digital ads.

Automating social media ads could save you a lot of time. The promise is they're more personalized and better targeted at people you might not otherwise reach.

Will performance improve? What checks and balances can you put in place to ensure your AI ads don't hallucinate? And how can you ensure you're reaching your customers and stay a key part of the creative process?

AI ad optimization is what I talk about in this week's Digital Marketing Trends video. Check it out and let me know what you think.

AI Masterclass

Before I go, I want to tell you about a new Institute for Public Relations AI Masterclass that kicks off on March 10, 2025.

The four virtual sessions focus on how to use generative AI more strategically at work.

From understanding the opportunities and challenges to discovering practical applications, you'll learn how AI can streamline your content marketing, audience engagement, trend forecasting, and decision-making.?

The presenters include Samantha Stark , Aaron Kwittken , Alan Shoebridge and me.

Interested in attending? Here's more info from IPR.

Follow Me on LinkedIn

Now it's time for you make your mark on issue #117.

Thank you to all of you who follow me and subscribe, read, comment and share this newsletter!

This newsletter comes out every two weeks. But between issues, I share shorter daily posts with my take on digital marketing and the latest on generative AI. It's another way to stay on top of the trends.

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Let me know if you have questions about any of the videos in Digital Marketing Trends or any of my other LinkedIn Learning courses.

You can also visit my website and send a message or a question.

When it comes to using generative AI, do you want to be more of a maker or a marker? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks. See you then!

Note: All the content in this post was written by a human—me and not Martin-bot. And I am a member of the IPR Digital Media Research Center. The visual was created by ChatGPT.