Peering into the Future: A Vision of Marketing and AI

Well, it's that time of year when digital marketing prognosticators gaze into their crystal balls and make predictions about what the future might bring.

So forgive me, if I jump into the fray and make a few pronouncements of my own.

I mean, I've been doing so much research and reading on artificial intelligence that the whole concept of predictions—which is what AI is all about—is pretty much front and center in my brain these days.

Of course, I have my own secret helper: a prediction machine.

What I'm referring to is my trusty Magic 8-Ball. And I'm sure many of you are familiar with the iconic toy. You shake it, ask a question, slowly turn it over and a wise answer appears.

Except the 8-Ball is a bit like AI 1.0. Predictions without data. A game of chance.

So I decided to supplement the 8-Ball's sagacity with my take on some recent AI breakthroughs and what they could mean to marketing and PR.

The Confluence of Four Trends

I observed four recent developments that seem to be converging and that could lead to a big shift in the way we do our jobs. They are:

1. Human sounding voice AI. In 2018, Google introduced its Duplex conversational AI, which is able to book reservations at hair salons and restaurants. With its pauses, use of slang and umms and ahhs, Duplex sounds remarkably like...well, like us. And while interactions with the conversational AI aren't perfect and humans often take over, it's getting better. And as the model evolves, it could bring us a few steps closer to the type of human/AI encounters we watched in the movie Her.
2. Natural language generation. That's when an AI agent finds patterns in the way we use words and can create stories, posts, social media updates and even songs that sound believable and make pretty good sense—sometimes. We've heard a lot about NLG since the release of Open AI's GPT-3 model, which was trained on about two trillion words and can mimic human writing pretty convincingly. But while imitation may be the highest form of flattery, we shouldn't confuse it with intelligence. Still, it's easy to see the potential to use NLG as a tool to speed up the writing process and offer up customizable messages at scale.
3. Synthethic photos and avatars. Images of fake people—that is, people who never existed—are getting more lifelike. And it's harder than ever to tell they're not real. There are even stock photo startups that offer synthetic human images companies can use on their websites. At the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung introduced Neon, its human-looking avatars. Soon, you could be directing your product questions to synthetic customer reps who sound human and can carry on a decent conversation. And they'll likely be more agreeable than some of the human reps we know.
4. Sentiment and emotional analysis. Because narrow AI is all about data, signals and predictions, it doesn't understand what it creates, nor does it have emotion. But with companies like Affectiva, that use AI to analyse sentiment, or Alexa adding sentiment like excitement or disappointment to its responses, machines will soon appear to have empathy. They won't really, but like a digital impressionist they'll combine NLG, synthetic images and voice and appear to get us our needs. And that could be the beginning of a whole new relationship.

What Does This Mean for Marketing and PR?

This technology isn't coming. It's here. Some of it has already been commercialized and more will be available in the next year or so. So how will it change our jobs?

Well, for one thing, we'll likely have to start working with AI agents as new members of our creative teams. They could help us brainstorm ideas. Imagine how many versions of a headline an AI could churn out. And also how much more garbage we'd have to wade through. The good news? Humans would take on a more strategic and creative role.

And as we build these AI into a new type of customer service or engagement agent, they'll evolve way beyond the annoying pop-up web chatbot into a character with personality that could become like a customer's quasi-friend. But it's up to us to imagine and develop the conversational flow and imbue the script the brand voice and style.

How will that affect your company's relationship with your customers? How will it change the way you communicate with them? And what are the ethics, privacy and data protection and exploitation issues involved?

There's a lot to think about as we head into 2021.

If you're interested in reading about some of the ways human AI agent relationships could alter communications and trust, you may want to check out the blog post summary of my Master's thesis: My BFF is a Chatbot.

Meet the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Chatbots

And speaking of chatbots, that's what we cover in this week's Digital Marketing Trends video. Really a battle of the bots.

In one corner, we have Meena, Google's chatbot facing off against have Blender, the chatbot from Facebook. Both are heavyweights in the conversational AI class. Who will be victorious? Or will an upstart emerge to steal the crown?

You'll just have to watch to find out...

Connect with Martin

And with that, I predict you're coming to the end of the penultimate newsletter of 2020. (OK, I guess that's more of a certainty.)

As always, thank you for reading and subscribing! I appreciate you being here.

And please share your own stories about what you think the future will bring. Me, I'm cautiously optimistic. You can post your thoughts in the comments below.

Be sure to reach out if you have questions about any of the videos in Digital Marketing Trends, or my other LinkedIn Learning courses.

And if you want to find me, follow or connect on LinkedIn or Twitter. (And if you are connecting on LinkedIn, please add a short note so I know how you found me.) Or visit my website and send a message or a question.

Check out the #LiLDigTrends hashtag for quick updates between videos.

See you one more time before the end of the year.