Marketers have a critical role to play in the evolution of emerging AI capabilities

You can’t open a browser or scroll through a feed without seeing mention of generative AI – this technology and other emerging AI capabilities are everywhere. And while everyone is eager to chat about the technological shift, I think there’s just as much value in discussing the accompanying cultural shift.

I recently hosted a roundtable discussion with marketing peers from companies across different industries, who were all at different stages of experimentation with generative AI. Despite our differences, everyone agreed that there’s a need for the marketing community to support each other as we learn and test at the bleeding edge of this new technological advancement.

In this deeply engaging conversation, five takeaways on the cultural shift emerged:

1.?????Get to good faster

Experiment, learn, implement. Marketers anxious that their jobs are at risk from gen AI are realizing that it can get them to “good” faster, and that people are still needed for copy editing, infusing voice, and bringing the brilliance of great execution. It enables them to handle more projects and be more productive. We need to shift the conversation to reflect that gen AI is not replacing our work but accelerating our work.

2.?????Vet the content

Ensure someone is checking the validity of the output. Content that reads beautifully and sounds legitimate may be misleading or downright false. Remember that AI is only as good as its data – if the input isn’t good, you shouldn’t expect the outputs to be good either. And our legal colleagues will guide that there's significant risk breaching IP and copyright laws with content sourced from the public domain.

3.?????Lead the discussion

Marketing should be at the forefront of experimentation and there’s opportunity to work alongside emerging technology teams to shape the approach on how these new models will help our organizations. Some participants were leading internal roundtables on the use of gen AI to help build awareness and educate on the fact that its impact won’t be black and white.

4.?????Set rules for use

The company philosophy around gen AI will be just as important as the AI itself. For our company with 60,000 employees worldwide, there will be many views, and that can be dangerous. Setting policies for use will be critical but given the pace that this technology is moving at, that will be challenging, and we need to be prepared to adjust accordingly. The rules today will not be the rules six months from now.

5.?????Explore sales pipeline impact

All participants are intrigued by the opportunity to strengthen the handshake between marketing and sales in generating pipeline and managing/nurturing leads in smarter, faster ways - something we’re already started doing at Avanade.

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Ultimately, we’re just at the start of the gen AI conversation and the more that marketers are using and providing feedback on the platform and setting the standards for its application, the more effective we’ll be in our roles. As we embark on this technological journey, marketing will be critical to bringing people along in the cultural journey.?