Responsible marketing through responsible AI

Google recently concluded its annual I/O event - I've been watching I/O for some years now and this year's was distinctively different, though it was also expected. Let me tell you what I mean - AI has been a buzzword for about two decades now and has had tangible impact on almost every aspect of modern day living. Think about the Google Maps you use to find the right route to your destination or the stories LinkedIn curates for us in our personal feeds or the helpful suggestions that Siri will pop-up from time to time, all use AI to be more useful and relevant to us. But this year, 2023, will IMO mark the year when AI transitioned from being "yeah its helpful in some cases, and I know where to use it" to "wow, it can do that? what else can I do with it?".

ChatGPT is probably the poster boy for this "new" kind of AI but it's just one of the many AIs out there - There is the one Khan Academy is collaborating on, there is DALL.E for generating images, Microsoft has one for designing and Google's own Bard too. Unsurprisingly, AI took centre stage at Google I/O this year, almost 90 minutes of the 120 minute long showcase involved AI in some form and it's amazing what it can do - I highly recommend that you watch the excerpts from the showcase if you do not have a full 2 hours to spare.

AI is not coming, its already here.

But I digress, like many others I wonder about the impact AI is going to have on our lives 20-30 years from now, but I also think about what impact it's going to have in the short term, especially in the field of marketing, being the marketing strategy professional I am.

Generative AI, that is, an artificial intelligence system capable of generating text, images, or other media in response to prompts - is being viewed as AI that will "replace" marketing professionals especially those involved in the "creatives" such as graphic design, web design, audio composition, copy writing etc. Some think its a little time before AI "replaces", first it will start as an intern does: supplementing the work of a more experienced marketing professional. I think this is a fair statement, I too use generative AI tools in my work to create first drafts that help me overcome the initial inertia, I then refine and improve these drafts to get to the final product. I even used AI to make the cover image of this article, and it took me less than 30 seconds to do that.

Within the domain of marketing, AI makes possible the following two things:

• Generate content rapidly at scale: It's going to start with images but soon AI will be able to generate for the marketer audio, video, copy, websites and more. So, are the days of expensive photo and video shoots, or time consuming brainstorming sessions may be numbered? No, not yet. But its enticing to see what photorealistic generative AI like Stable Diffusion or Discord Midjourney can do already.

• Create genuinely personalized marketing campaigns: Not the kind of segmented marketing we see today even if it has a component of AI to it. This is going to be revolutionary where the segment size truly is of 1. Combined with data that all of us are consciously or unconsciously providing it, AI can use big data to know us deep. Not like, "I know Aviral has a weakness for coffee", but more like "I know exactly what marketing message will make Aviral think about the struggles he's been through to rise in his life and how I can connect that message with the fact that he deserves a break and so he deserves buying this expansive artisanal coffee". Yeah, there is GDPR, CPRA etc., but there are also responsible ways of collecting data, and consumers that OK with it if it means they get more relevant ads instead of generic ones. I foresee us trusting our "personal" AIs more and more with non-frivolous and deeply personal information, so a recommendation from it about a brand or product is going to resonate orders of magnitude higher.

AI bound to get more powerful as the size of data sets improves and iterative learning along with feedback from millions of users across the world finally lead to a product that can not only create your first draft, but also the second and the third too. Either way, I am not here to forecast which marketing jobs will decline and which ones will rise as time goes on, not today at least anyway. Instead, I want to share my thoughts on how I feel modern day marketers should use generative AI systems in a responsible manner.

As more and more marketers make AI a regular part of their workflows, it is easy to get carried away and focus only on campaign ROAS, taking it to ever higher levels. But we need to act as change agents here, using AI to genuinely help our customers make the right decisions.

The keyword here is "responsible" - since AI is a tool, an a tool (like a hammer) can be use responsibly or irresponsibly, so can it. Even Google spoke about this in I/O, and many of us are aware of the potentially divisive and harmful effects generative AI can have if used perversely.

In my view, AI for marketing can be used responsibly by keeping in mind the following "guardrails":

1. Be privacy first: It's a little scary to find out if a brand knows a lot about you, and even scarier to know that they have AI that can push your buttons in just the right manner. But to know that a brand puts your data at risk? That's terrifying. I would never come close to a brand like this, and tell whoever would listen to do the same. Hence, the first order of business for the modern day marketer is to ensure that whatever AI system they use, it is private and secure.
2. Genuinely try to help: I firmly believe it is possible to drive growth while also ensuring that you, as a brand, are able to help the right people find the right product for themselves, even if it might not be yours. This is how you win customers for life. AI just supercharges this for you, as it would now be increasingly possible to identify the right customer for you (the needle in the haystack), but also to know who is not right - Reach out to the former, get out of the way of the latter.
3. Use AI to inspire, not replace your creativity: AI can help you identify hidden patterns in data, use it for that. AI can give you 3 alternative approaches to segmenting customers data, use it for that. AI can give you the starting draft of a blog, use it for that. But do not use AI to replace your creativity. I just don't say this because the AI isn't just there yet - I say this because creativity is a uniquely human attribute and it allows for a heart to heart connection with a brand.

In a sense these guardrails do not really change "before" and "after" AI, what does change, however, is our responsibility to follow them even more truthfully.