A newsletter about AI and Marketing by Tom & Charlie

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AI Marketing School Newsletter #18

NewsflAIsh: The rise of AI-generated content mishaps

AI is rapidly permeating the news landscape.

For example, tech blog VentureBeat is using Bing Chat to help with editing and writing articles.

And, they don't attribute an article with “sentences and fragments” from a chatbot “as long as it’s truthful” and independently verified. 

The key here is the word “truthful”.

News-rating group NewsGuard has recently found 49 news websites generated entirely by AI chatbots.

However, it discovered many instances of chatbots generating falsehoods. Back in April, CelebritiesDeaths.com published an article titled, “Biden dead. Harris acting President, address 9 a.m.”

And each of those sites also contained at least one article featuring an error message commonly found in AI-generated text. Yikes.

What marketers need to know

• Can you publish content written by AI without giving it credit? Sure. Do your readers care? Probably not.

• However, a human MUST edit the piece.

• Putting it into Grammarly isn’t enough. Grammarly (and other such tools) can’t understand context, identify falsehoods, or omit phrases like “my cutoff date in September 2021.”

Marketers, you’ll soon be able to format charts instantly

Ethan Mollick has shared how using ChatGPT with code interpreter (an experimental ChatGPT model that can use Python, handle uploads and downloads) allows users to turn raw data into stunning visualisations.

He uploaded an XLS file and asked three questions:

1. "Can you do visualizations & descriptive analyses to help me understand the data?"

2. "Can you try regressions and look for patterns?"

3. "Can you run regression diagnostics?"

It then produced a bar chart, scatter plot, and histogram. Mollick also asked his Twitter audience to suggest more advanced visualisations, and each time, it came up trumps.

What marketers need to know

• Chat GPT and Code Interpreter is only available to a limited number of users right now, so you’ll still have to use your current data visualisation methods for now.

• However, it’s worth reviewing the code interpreter plugin’s capabilities/how it works ahead of time.

• This will allow you to instantly get to work when it properly goes live. Wave goodbye to pesky data formatting in Powerpoint, Words, Slides, etc.

AI Marketing School AlumnAI

Every week, we chat with a marketing pro to learn about how AI can up our marketing game.

This week, we’re speaking to Emily Capps, a Content Designer & Senior Copywriter who began her career at Ogilvy and now freelances creating compelling and quirky content for diverse clients.

If you’d like to be next week’s featured alumnus, introduce yourself here: [email protected]

Q: Thoughts on AI in marketing?

A: I spent the last decade feeling terrified about AI. But now I've shifted gears to embrace it with a sense of “guarded optimism”. Loving using ChatGPT and Descript for editing.

Q: Why the fear?

A: I didn’t grow up rich, so I feared losing my livelihood. I remember the “offshore” crisis and what it did to families. Of course, corporations/shareholders are driven to “efficiencies” no matter the impact on people. But, I can’t live in fear, so now I’m really leaning into my curiosity.

Q: Why the optimism?

A: Mainly because I love learning. I’m having so much fun playing around with AI and running experiments that are having really cool results.

Q: What kind of AI experiments are you cooking up?

A: Last month, one client and I geeked out on AI, so we ran an AI-collab copy test for her website. Today, I just finished using Mixo and kicked the results over to my client for thoughts.

Q: What did you learn?

A: For the copy collaboration, I was mainly surprised how far off the Chat GPT text was from the Tone/Voice doc I created to avoid plagiarism from the tool & for greater guidance. For Mixo, I’m just staggered at how fast it produces something passable and is ready for edits. PS: “Passable" isn’t good enough to launch.

Tools to Try

Microsoft Designer

Designer is a new alternative to Canva, offering a solution for marketers needing quick and dirty design capabilities. Create animated visuals, complete with backgrounds and text transitions, powered by AI. It can even generate written captions and hashtags relevant for social media posts.

Try it out quickly as it won’t be free forever!

PromptStorm

Recommended by Zapier's CMO, Kieran Flanagan, on the Marketing Against the Grain podcast, this Chrome Extension provides loads of skillfully engineered prompts to help marketers use GPT3&4 to its full potential.

Select the ‘Marketing’ category and choose from a range of readymade prompts. Easy peasy.

Creative Inspiration

Vogue Italia recently featured a DALL-E background on the cover of its latest edition.

Recommended Reading/Watching 📚 🎥

1. The Inside Story of ChatGPT’s Astonishing Potential | Greg Brockman | TED

OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman explores the underlying design principles of ChatGPT and demos some mind-blowing, unreleased plug-ins for the chatbot that sent shockwaves across the world.

2. 9 in 10 companies that are currently hiring want workers with ChatGPT experience

ResumeBuilder.com surveyed 1,187 business leaders and found that 91% want workers with ChatGPT experience. 66% of business leaders say hiring workers with ChatGPT experience will give the company a competitive edge.

3. FTC Won't Tolerate Generative AI Deception in Marketing, Customer Service

The FTC has issued a stark warning to marketers, encouraging them to avoid manipulation, ensure transparency, and assess risks when using generative AI for marketing/customer experience purposes.

Thanks so much for reading. With the abundance of content on the internet, your attention means a lot. If you have any suggestions or feedback on how we can improve the newsletter, please shoot us a reply. We'd love to hear from you!

Until next time. Happy marketing.

Tom and Charlie