How Humans And AI Will Work Together
2023 was undoubtedly the year where AI took centre stage. As a hot topic it was involved in nearly every aspect of modern life and marketing was no exception. Large Language Models (LLMs) were touted as the answer to instant SEO-friendly copy and to customer service, but Google took a hard line on AI taking writing jobs from humans, stating that sites found to employ ChatGPT for all their copy would be penalised in the rankings.
This was a fairly good predictor of the future trends for AI; there's a place for it, but it's not going to replace human thinking or writing entirely. One way in which AI has already impacted human communication comes from writing prompts and commands for AI.As a purely logic driven system that learns from itself (as well as the inputs of people), LLMs need clear instructions to produce quality work. This meant that users had to hone the clarity of their commands, and that definitely will have a positive effect on the quality and efficiency of interpersonal communication.
Training AI to be better at generating text and images will also be an aspect where humans have to lead the way. If we want to get realistic AI generated images we need to train the models to create authentic looking hands, and to understand facial expressions and body language better. The use of generative AI will help fill gaps with product images, reducing the workload of photographers by creating backgrounds or auto-tuning digital images.AI isn't great at being creative, nor at out-of-the-box thinking, however, so the concepts and high-end compositions will still be the preserve of art directors and photographers.
AI will be good as a workhorse for transcribing and analysing customer interactions via phone and webchat. The subjects of these interactions provide crucial insight across a business, from determining common product faults to assessing where service staff may need extra training on customer service. This sort of in-depth analysis takes humans a long time, while AI can run through gigabytes of data in seconds, leaving human analysts to do the real nuanced interpretation.
We can see that the surge of interest in AI will start to ebb and even take the form of a backlash in some ways as consumers crave the warmth of human interaction. While we might be happy for AI to determine the reason we're calling a customer support line, we still want a real person to listen to (and ideally solve) our problem. This is going to be a major trend, pushing AI back into a supporting role.
This desire for the human touch will spread further into marketing and content, with the human interest angle becoming more effective at driving relationships (and eventually sales) across many sectors. Storytelling, compelling narratives and authenticity will be a key angle for 2024 as a way of setting yourself apart from those who are relying on tech to make connections. Originality will stand out much more in a sea of sameness, so be sure to keep the AI in an entry-level position and leverage your humanity to get ahead this year.
