In the dynamic realm of AI, crafting effective prompts is pivotal for success. Matt Wolfe, an AI reporter and analyst, stresses the importance of specificity and goal-oriented prompts. For instance, transforming a generic request into a refined prompt involves defining clear intentions, considering context and persona, and envisioning the desired output. A concrete illustration of this approach involves upgrading a generic prompt for a blog post into a detailed, AI-ready masterpiece.
Developing an AI workflow
Once mastered, AI prompts open the door to a transformative workflow. A day in the life of an AI-enabled marketer involves leveraging AI at various stages, from summarizing performance metrics and generating email subject lines to organizing customer feedback and developing blog post titles. The integration of AI-driven audience segmentation and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) techniques can lead to significant improvements, as demonstrated by a 38% lift in click-through rates achieved through AI-personalized email campaigns.
Testing AI tools
HubSpot’s AI Marketing Report reveals a notable increase in the adoption of AI and automation among marketers. Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot’s CTO, emphasizes the rapid evolution of AI and encourages marketers to test its capabilities. With breakthroughs like web-browsing capabilities in ChatGPT, marketers are advised to explore a variety of AI tools tailored to their specific challenges. Matt Wolfe recommends tools like Conveyor for chatbot latency reduction and image generation tools like Leonardo and Kaiber for creative assets.
AI integration across marketing workflows
AI has proven to be a valuable contributor across marketing workflows, exemplified by HubSpot’s AI-powered content assistant streamlining creative processes. Ramon Berrios from DTC Pod integrates AI extensively in marketing tasks, showcasing its versatility in newsletter production, podcast automation, social media management, and content creation. However, it’s crucial to note that AI should complement, not replace, human creativity, as high-quality and engaging content remains the cornerstone of marketing success.
Identifying AI-generated content
As AI-generated content becomes more prevalent, marketers must discern between quality and spam. Key indicators include the content’s originality, insightfulness, and alignment with the brand’s voice. The article stresses the enduring importance of high-quality content, emphasizing that engaging and captivating material will always prevail. As AI evolves, marketers will need to identify tasks best suited for AI while maintaining a human touch in areas requiring creativity and authenticity.
Ensuring brand safety
With the integration of AI, brand safety becomes paramount. Transparent communication and the ethical use of AI are essential to preventing unintended consequences. Privacy concerns are addressed by HubSpot through clear terms and conditions for data import. Marketers are urged to be cautious about data security and aligning AI usage with brand values. Transparent communication within the organization is crucial when using multiple AI platforms with distinct models.
Integrating AI intentionally
While AI presents significant opportunities, there are inherent risks that marketers must navigate cautiously. The article outlines five AI no-go’s, including gathering data without consent, having unrealistic expectations, using AI tools with unclean data, neglecting source verification, and ignoring ethical considerations. The emphasis is on specificity, purpose, and ethical data use, as these principles are foundational to HubSpot’s AI strategy.
The human touch in AI
Despite AI’s advancements, it remains a work in progress, subject to biases and limitations. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of humanity in marketing. Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, emphasizes the need for a real point of view in marketing, rooted in belief and humanity. The key to winning with AI is strategic, intentional, and vigilant use, amplifying human potential rather than overshadowing it.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI marketing, these seven must-know tips from HubSpot’s AIMS team provide a comprehensive guide to navigating the complexities, ensuring marketers make the most of AI while upholding brand values and delivering meaningful experiences
Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. We strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.
Derrick is a freelance writer with an interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency. He works mostly on crypto projects’ problems and solutions, offering a market outlook for investments. He applies his analytical talents to theses.
Generate your own text—but get help from the AI bot to make it stand out.
It’s been quite a year for ChatGPT, with the large language model (LLM) now taking exams, churning out content, searching the web, writing code, and more. The AI chatbot can produce its own stories, though whether they’re any good is another matter.
If you’re in any way involved in the business of writing, then tools like ChatGPT have the potential to complete up-end the way you work—but at this stage, it’s not inevitable that journalists, authors, and copywriters will be replaced by generative AI bots.
What we can say with certainty is that ChatGPT is a reliable writing assistant, provided you use it in the right way. If you have to put words in order as part of your job, here’s how ChatGPT might be able to take your writing to the next level—at least until it replaces you, anyway.
Find the Right Word
Using a thesaurus as a writer isn’t particularly frowned on; using ChatGPT to come up with the right word or phrase shouldn’t be either. You can use the bot to look for variations on a particular word, or get even more specific and say you want alternatives that are less or more formal, longer or shorter, and so on.
Where ChatGPT really comes in handy is when you’re reaching for a word and you’re not even sure it exists: Ask about “a word that means a sense of melancholy but in particular one that comes and goes and doesn’t seem to have a single cause” and you’ll get back “ennui” as a suggestion (or at least we did).
If you have characters talking, you might even ask about words or phrases that would typically be said by someone from a particular region, of a particular age, or with particular character traits. This being ChatGPT, you can always ask for more suggestions.
ChatGPT is never short of ideas. OpenAI via David Nield
Find Inspiration
Whatever you might think about the quality and character of ChatGPT’s prose, it’s hard to deny that it’s quite good at coming up with ideas. If your powers of imagination have hit a wall then you can turn to ChatGPT for some inspiration about plot points, character motivations, the settings of scenes, and so on.
This can be anything from the broad to the detailed. Maybe you need ideas about what to write a novel or an article about—where it’s set, what the context is, and what the theme is. If you’re a short story writer, perhaps you could challenge yourself to write five tales inspired by ideas from ChatGPT.
Alternatively, you might need inspiration for something very precise, whether that’s what happens next in a scene or how to summarize an essay. At whatever point in the process you get writer’s block, then ChatGPT might be one way of working through it.
Do Research
Writing is often about a lot more than putting words down in order. You’ll regularly have to look up facts, figures, trends, history, and more to make sure that everything is accurate (unless your next literary work is entirely inside a fantasy world that you’re imagining yourself).
ChatGPT can sometimes have the edge over conventional search engines when it comes to knowing what food people might have eaten in a certain year in a certain part of the world, or what the procedure is for a particular type of crime. Whereas Google might give you SEO-packed spam sites with conflicting answers, ChatGPT will actually return something coherent.
That said, we know that LLMs have a tendency to “hallucinate” and present inaccurate information—so you should always double-check what ChatGPT tells you with a second source to make sure you’re not getting something wildly wrong.
Choose Character and Place Names
Getting fictional character and place names right can be a challenge, especially when they’re important to the plot. A name has to have the right vibe and the right connotations, and if you get it wrong it really sticks out on the page.
ChatGPT can come up with an unlimited number of names for people and places in your next work of fiction, and it can be a lot of fun playing around with this too. The more detail you give about a person or a place, the better—maybe you want a name that really reflects a character trait for example, or a geographical feature.
The elements of human creation and curation aren’t really replaced, because you’re still weighing up which names work and which don’t, and picking the right one—but getting ChatGPT on the job can save you a lot of brainstorming time.
Get your names right with ChatGPT. OpenAI via David Nield
Review Your Work
With a bit of cutting and pasting, you can quickly get ChatGPT to review your writing as well: It’ll attempt to tell you if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense, if your sentences are too long, or if your prose is too lengthy.
From spotting spelling and grammar mistakes to recognizing a tone that’s too formal, ChatGPT has plenty to offer as an editor and critic. Just remember that this is an LLM, after all, and it doesn’t actually “know” anything—try to keep a reasonable balance between accepting ChatGPT’s suggestions and giving it too much control.
If you’re sharing your work with ChatGPT, you can also ask it for better ways to phrase something, or suggestions on how to change the tone—though this gets into the area of having the bot actually do your writing for you, which all genuine writers would want to avoid.
David Nield is a tech journalist from Manchester in the UK, who has been writing about apps and gadgets for more than two decades. You can follow him on Twitter.
A look at how an integration layer completes AI applications and how integrations can be done better with the help of AI.
AI is reshaping the enterprise landscape. Already, developer productivity, digital labour, email marketing, website creation, etc., seem ripe for a major transformation. It is also well understood that general AI foundation models like GPT4 and Falcon-40B need to be fine-tuned or prompt-tuned for enterprise-specific tasks, and therefore must be fed some curated data that allows for some subset of the parameters to be “adjusted,” or output changed based on new task information given in prompts.
However, training the models is one thing. Enterprise applications today live and die on access to current enterprise data. For example, an e-commerce website might return the status of the orders of a logged-in customer. Or a chat application might process the return of a product. In neither of these cases can anything useful be done without real connectivity to ( integration with) one or more enterprise applications. First, we’ll speak to how an integration layer completes AI applications.
In addition, these integrations do not magically appear. They have to be coded, and they have to be tested and maintained. Later, we’ll speak to how integrations can be done better with the help of AI.
AI Without Integration is Incomplete
How would an AI application return useful information? AI without integration is like fish without water.
In the above figure, a natural language question, “When will my package arrive?” will need to be parsed by a foundation model, and generate a GraphQL request that then accesses an enterprise data source (and in this case, third-party systems such as FedEx), and then the response needs to be used as the input to generate the output.
The above example, while simple, shows that AI foundation models must be complemented by integration and API technologies. As readers of articles from one of the authors know, we have a particular bias for GraphQL APIs. And in this case, they are especially useful since the AI application can be trained to call one universal GraphQL API, and not have to deal with the subtleties of formats and authorizations and sideways information passing if the application were to learn multiple backends.
Integration Without AI is Incomplete
However, the complement to the above is that the opposite is also true. For each of the personas and task sets in the integration space, there are benefits in the application of AI:
Integration personas in the API management domain
Developers are the primary focus of this effort in the industry today. Prior to the rise of AI, domains like API management and application integration have already evolved toward low code/no code tooling for creating integrations, enabling citizen developers with less skill and experience to use them. AI provides the ability to further augment and empower those developers in more advanced or historically specialist scenarios.
Administrators, operations folks and site reliability engineers (SREs) of integration deployments will also benefit from the application of AI. Anomaly detection on operational metrics such as API response codes, transaction rate, queue depth and on system logs are all scenarios that machine learning models are well evolved to support – and provide the administrator a sixth sense to observe and maintain the health of a system.
Product managers and business owners often being on the less technical end of the spectrum also benefit from the low-code and generative capabilities described above, supporting them to self-serve their needs for query and analysis of data to identify business trends and new revenue streams.
In all cases there are various aspects that require close watching as AI technology matures:
First, the models have to be trustworthy. The art and science of trust in AI is being created rapidly, but of course, the rate and pace of innovation in the core AI algorithms is moving even faster. At some point in time, the trust research will have to catch up with the model research.
Related to this is determinism and repeatability. In scenarios such as generating a mapping between two data objects, it is not desirable that a different mapping be created each time you ask the same question, and yet that is the case today for many foundation models as they balance probability between multiple competing options.
Critical to the effectiveness of AI capabilities is correctness. There are many well-known examples where content generated by AI is plausible at first glance, but flawed in practice. As such, today a skilled expert is often still needed to review, debug and rectify the AI-generated artefact, but as the technology matures, we expect to see growing confidence in the validity of the output that will reduce the need for human oversight.
Next, the cost of inferencing, which is often not talked about, will become the dominant OpEx, and enterprises will have to learn to trade off the size of the model and the size of the prompt (linear and quadratic influences respectively on the cost of inferencing) with the quality of the output (is it worth going from a 8B parameter model to 100B parameter model for a 2% lift in the quality of the output)?
Sensitivity of data ownership is also a key concern for many enterprises. Foundation models work most effectively when they can be trained using the largest corpus of available examples, but if those examples contain sensitive customer information or represent a competitive advantage to the enterprise, then care must be taken in how that data will be further used by the model owner.
Summary
There is a bright future for AI-driven integration, both in the application of integration to provide access to enterprise data for use by AI tools and also for application of AI to benefit the delivery of integration scenarios.
We will be publishing a whole series of articles on the topic of the influence of AI on APIs and integration, and as some of you might know, StepZen was acquired by IBM, so we will be bringing on some additional API and integration experts, such as Matt Roberts, the CTO for IBM’s Integration portfolio.
Anant is the founder and CEO of StepZen, a startup with a new approach for simplifying the way developers access the data they need to power digital experiences. With a career that spans IBM Fellow, CTO of IBM’s Information Management…
Matt Roberts is Distinguished Engineer and CTO for the IBM Integration product portfolio where he has technical responsibility for offerings that cover API management, application integration, security gateways and high-speed data transfer. He has extensive experience delivering software products and…
Media titan Barry Diller confirmed Sunday he and a group of “leading publishers” plan to take legal action regarding the use of published works in training artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Diller, the chairman and senior executive of internet and media conglomerate IAC, said he thinks generative AI is “overhyped, as all revolutions that are in the very beginning,” in an interview Sunday morning with CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”
AI systems are trained and improved using large language models, which ingest compilations of written works like books, news stories and social media posts.
Diller said he and others in the publishing industry don’t agree with how AI systems take in publishers’ content.
“It’s not that either Google or Microsoft, who are the two real leaders of this in terms of, certainly Google with having a monopoly on advertising. They, too, want to find a solution for publishers,” Diller told Brennan. “The problem is they also say that the fair use doctrine of copyright law allows them to suck up all this stuff.”
“It is, it will be, long-term catastrophic if there is not a business model that allows people professionally to produce content,” Diller continued. “That would be, I think everybody agrees is catastrophic.”
Diller claimed legislation or litigation is needed to protect the copyright of publishers.
“Of course, say we’re open to commercial agreements. But on the side of those people who are depending upon advertising, Google, for instance, they say, ‘Yes, we’ll give you a revenue share,’” Diller said. “Right now, the revenue share is zero. So, what percent of zero would you like today? I mean that’s rational, but it’s not the point. The only way you get to the point is protect fair use. In other words, protect the copyright.”
Diller would not disclose or confirm who is he planning to launch litigation with, only calling them “leading publishers.”
“It took 15 years to get back paywalls that protected publishers, I don’t think that same thing is going to happen,” Diller said.
When asked if generative AI poses a threat to Hollywood studio workers’ jobs, Diller said, “In this case, I think the one-to-three-year period, not much is going to happen. But post that, there are, of course, all these issues.”
Diller is not the first to consider legal action over AI publishing. Comedian Sarah Silverman and two other authors are currently suing Meta and OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement, claiming the platforms’ AI systems were “knowingly and secretly trained” with unauthorized copies of their books.
The Associated Press announced last week it would license its archive of news stories to ChatGPT maker OpenAI to help train the AI company’s system.
AI character generators are AI tools that use artificial intelligence to create fictional characters for all kinds of different purposes.
They help to streamline the creative processes by rapidly producing diverse and detailed characters, benefiting writers, game developers, and artists. Beyond character creation, AI‘s role in creative industries is expanding, from generating music and art to aiding story writing.
On top of that, AI-driven human-computer interaction is growing, evident in virtual assistants and AI chatbots. As AI continues to evolve, it becomes an indispensable collaborator, enhancing creativity and interaction across multiple domains, reshaping how humans engage with technology.
What is an AI character generator?
Put simply, an AI character generator is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to create fictional characters.
It employs algorithms and data to design characters’ appearances, personalities, backgrounds, and even stories. By analysing vast amounts of existing character data, AI generates new and unique characters, saving time for writers, game developers, and other creators.
These tools streamline the creative process by offering a variety of options and details that can inspire and enhance storytelling, game design, and other creative endeavours. They are a testament to AI’s ability to assist and augment human creativity in various industries.
3 of the most popular AI character generators today
Now that we know what an AI character generator is, let’s explore some of the most popular tools available in 2023.
Toolsaday’s AI character generator is a cutting-edge tool designed for writers, game developers, and creative enthusiasts seeking to craft compelling characters for their projects.
The generator streamlines character creation through an intuitive interface and unique features, including seamless character generation, in-depth character profiles, dynamic personalities, interactive plot integration, and AI-generated images from text.
The latter feature, the AI-Character Image Generator, produces lifelike visuals based on character descriptions, enhancing visual storytelling across various mediums. Toolsaday empowers users to unleash their creativity by providing a comprehensive platform for character development and visualization.
Pros:
Streamlines character creation for writers, game developers, and creative enthusiasts.
Offers seamless character generation with customizable traits and backstories.
Creates intricate and lifelike personalities using advanced algorithms.
Facilitates interactive plot integration, suggesting plot twists and character arcs.
User-friendly interface for easy navigation and efficient workflow.
AI-Character Image Generator produces detailed and realistic visuals for characters.
Vast customization options for character images, enhancing visual representation.
Integration of generated images into storyboards, proposals, and marketing materials.
Sparks new ideas through visualizing characters, inspiring unexpected plot developments.
Sign-up provides access to both character generation and AI-generated images.
Cons:
May have limitations in generating highly specific or unique character traits.
AI-generated character images might not always perfectly match the envisioned appearance.
Potential dependence on the tool for character creation, limiting personal creative exploration.
Discover limitless creative potential with VEED.io’s AI character generator, a groundbreaking tool for professionals and content creators.
By inputting simple text, users can harness the power of AI to craft customized characters that cater to branding, marketing, and various creative endeavours. From crafting cartoon personas to designing gaming avatars and 3D models, VEED’s AI technology produces captivating characters that resonate with audiences.
Elevate storytelling videos, marketing campaigns, and social media content through distinct and attention-grabbing characters. Further enhance your creations with VEED’s AI video editing tools, enabling the production of engaging teasers, explainer videos, and more. VEED.io empowers creativity while simplifying the character generation process.
Pros:
Empowers professionals and content creators to generate unique characters.
Utilizes AI technology to transform simple text into captivating characters.
Versatile application for branding, marketing, storytelling, and social media content.
Extensive creative possibilities for cartoon characters, gaming avatars, and 3D models.
Enhances content with distinctive characters that stand out.
AI video editing tools offer the potential to create animated text, sound effects, and more.
Allows the incorporation of generated characters into videos and other content.
Offers an intuitive process: type a prompt, generate images, and enhance with video editing.
Simplifies the character creation process for those with varying levels of creative experience.
Provides a convenient platform for elevating brand identity and engagement.
Cons:
Generated characters might not perfectly match the user’s envisioned appearance or style.
Limited to the capabilities and variations provided by the AI technology.
Users may require additional editing or refinement to achieve precise character representation.
Experience the transformative capabilities of Fotor’s AI Character Generator, a powerful tool backed by advanced character creation technology. This generator brings your character ideas to life based on descriptions you provide.
By processing your input through AI algorithms, the generator swiftly produces characters that match your vision. Fotor’s online character creator allows simultaneous creation of multiple characters, adjustable via a convenient number bar.
The tool offers a Random Character Generator mode, providing endless possibilities for AI-generated characters across various styles, from realistic and fairy tale to cartoon and fictional characters. Discover Fotor’s exceptional AI Character Generator, enabling artists to explore diverse concept art styles and bring their creative visions to life effortlessly.
Pros:
Utilizes advanced character creation models to transform descriptions into characters.
Efficiently generates characters based on user-provided input.
Allows for the creation of multiple characters simultaneously through a slider.
Offers a Random Character Generator mode for exploring diverse AI-generated options.
Supports a wide range of character styles, including realistic, fairy tale, cartoon, and fictional.
Provides artists and creators with an array of concept art character design possibilities.
Enables customization to match envisioned character designs and styles.
Expands creative freedom by facilitating swift and hassle-free character creation.
Ideal for artists, writers, and creatives seeking inspiration and versatile character options.
Cons:
AI-generated characters might not always align perfectly with the user’s creative intent.
The range of customization might be limited to the capabilities of the AI model.
Users may require additional editing or refinement to achieve precise character representation.
FAQs about AI character generators
What is the best AI to generate characters?
Determining the “best” AI for generating characters depends on various factors such as your specific needs, the type of characters you want to create, and your personal preferences. Try out the tools we’ve suggested in this article and see which one you prefer!
How can I create my own AI character?
Creating your own AI character involves a combination of creative input and leveraging AI tools. Here’s a general process you can follow:
Define Your Character:
Start by outlining your character’s traits, personality, backstory, appearance, and any other relevant details. This will provide the foundation for the AI to work with.
Choose an AI Tool:
Research and choose an AI character generation tool that aligns with your needs. Some tools specialize in text-based character generation, while others can also produce visual representations.
Input Descriptions:
If the tool you’ve chosen works with text input, provide detailed descriptions of your character’s attributes and personality. This could include physical appearance, personality traits, motivations, and background.
Customize Parameters:
Depending on the tool, you might be able to customize certain parameters like age, gender, profession, and more. Adjust these settings to match your character concept.
Generate Character:
Use the AI tool to generate your character based on the input you’ve provided. The AI will use its algorithms to interpret your descriptions and create a character accordingly.
Review and Refine:
Once the AI generates the character, review the results. If needed, make adjustments to the generated character to ensure it matches your creative vision.
Iterate and Experiment:
Don’t be afraid to experiment and generate multiple versions of your character. AI tools can offer a range of options, and trying different inputs might lead to unexpected and inspiring results.
What other kinds of AI generators are there?
AI generators come in various forms, catering to different creative needs and industries. Here are some types of AI generators:
Text Generators
AI-powered text generators can create written content such as essays, stories, poems, and even code. They use natural language processing to produce coherent and contextually relevant text.
Image Generators
AI image generators create visuals, drawings, and paintings based on textual descriptions or prompts. They are used in graphic design, art, and creative projects.
Music Generators
AI-driven music generators create original compositions or modify existing music based on patterns, styles, and genres. They are utilized by musicians and composers to aid in music creation.
Video Generators
AI video generators assist in automating video editing tasks like trimming, enhancing, and adding effects. They save time and streamline the video production process.
Storyboard and Concept Art
AI generators can turn textual descriptions into visual storyboards or concept art, aiding filmmakers, game developers, and other visual storytellers.
Code Generation
AI can generate code snippets, templates, or even entire programs based on requirements. This accelerates software development and coding tasks.
Language Translation
AI-powered translation generators offer accurate and context-aware translations between languages, enabling communication on a global scale.
Data Synthesis
AI generators can synthesize realistic data sets for training machine learning models, helping to create diverse and representative training data.
Character Dialogues
AI can generate dialogues and interactions between characters, useful for scriptwriting, game development, and interactive storytelling.
Fashion Design
AI generators assist fashion designers in creating new designs, patterns, and clothing styles based on existing trends and inputs.
Poetry and Stories
Specialized AI story generators focus on generating poetry, short stories, and literature that mimic specific styles or authors.
Chatbots
AI can create chatbots or user profiles based on demographics, behaviors, and interests, aiding marketing and user experience design.
Logo and Branding
AI logo generators help businesses and individuals create logos and branding assets quickly based on design preferences.
These are just a few examples, and AI generators are continually evolving to serve various creative and practical purposes across different industries.
He is the owner of jeffbullas.com. Forbes calls him a top influencer of Chief Marketing Officers and the world’s top social marketing talent. Entrepreneur lists him among 50 online marketing influencers to watch. Inc.com has him on the list of 20 digital marketing experts to follow on Twitter. Oanalytica named him #1 Global Content Marketing Influencer. BizHUMM ranks him as the world’s #1 business blogger. Learn More
Find free courses from the likes of MIT, Google, and IBM.
TL;DR: A wide range of AI and ChatGPT(opens in a new tab) courses are available for free on edX. Enroll in the best courses from the likes of Google, IBM, and Harvard, without spending anything.
Artificial intelligence and chatbots like ChatGPT are not going anywhere, so maybe it’s time to learn something about this technology? The time is now.
edX offers online courses from the likes of MIT, Google, IBM, and Harvard. And better yet, some of the best online courses are even available for free. We’ve checked out everything on offer from edX, and lined up a selection of standout AI and ChatGPT courses that you can take for free.
These are the best free AI and ChatGPT courses as of July 18:
These courses are completely free, but you can receive a verified certificate of completion for a small fee. There’s no pressure to upgrade, but it might be nice to stick something on your CV.
All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.
Joseph joined Mashable as the UK Shopping Editor in 2018. He worked for a number of print publications before making the switch to the glittery world of digital media, and now writes about everything from coffee machines to VPNs.
Four lessons that show the enduring value of David Ogilvy’s advertising wisdom. Why the industry should re-embrace the legend’s insights to guide it through an uncertain future.
Strolling around the south of France a few weeks ago—populated with execs from the best, brightest, and richest brands, ad agencies, media companies, and social and tech platforms gathered here for the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity—you could almost hear the constant chant of “AI, AI, AI, AI . . . .” It was the backbeat to the song of the summer being blasted by everyone up and down the Croissette.
Advertising has long been known for its susceptibility to obsessing over the hot new thing. QR codes! NFTs! Celebrity creative directors! User-generated content! And now: artificial intelligence! If there is a craze in culture and communication, you can bet that a brand and its ad agency are exploring a way to exploit it.
Forty years ago, when legendary ad man David Ogilvy published his seminal book Ogilvy on Advertising, none of those (mostly fleeting) trends existed. Actually, an overwhelming percentage of today’s industry was barely out of kindergarten in 1983. According to a recent survey by Marketing Week, about three quarters of ad people today are under the age of 45. Ogilvy is one of the founders of modern advertising, building his agency Ogilvy & Mather into a global behemoth over the late 20th century. But now, like so much of the industry, it’s been swallowed up by a holding company and exists as a nameplate sub-brand within a somewhat undifferentiated sea of them.
Ogilvy on Advertising wasn’t Ogilvy’s first attempt at trying to lay down the precepts by which he believed his industry should operate. In 1963, at perhaps the height of his powers, Ogilvy published Confessions of An Advertising Man, which was part memoir, part advertising instruction. To some, Ogilvy on Advertising was a titan seeking to reassert his foundational values amid changing times. The Agency Review wrote in 2012 that, “By 1983, the creative revolution had steamrolled across America, making celebrities of George Lois, Mary Wells, Bill Bernbach, and dozens of others. Ogilvy’s long-form copy, iconic imagery, and reasoned presentations were, in many ways, relics of another age. Ogilvy on Advertising was, then, the master’s attempt to reposition his agency in this brave new world.”
Now, in 2023, the advertising industry itself is the one constantly forced to navigate an ever-evolving set of communication tools and how people use them. It is nearing the end of its second decade seeking to reposition the entire $73 billion business in this brave new world where on a good day an AI-centric tech giant can see its market cap rise by at least the value of the entire ad world. Adland is not what it was in 1983, and certainly not 1963, shunted out of the centre of the universe by the tech companies which thoroughly disrupted them. In the 1980s, there were a myriad of movies and TV shows featuring larger-than-life ad creatives. It’s a segment of pop culture that has not been resuscitated by nostalgia.
Looking at the annual juxtaposition of the past year’s best work with the current obsession, though, I can’t help but see glimmers of how some of Ogilvy’s core principles remain in play. These ideas can still serve as guideposts for how to best utilize any given trend or new technology.
These bits of wisdom cannot and should not be forgotten. So I’ve picked out four of my favourite Ogilvy-isms from Ogilvy on Advertising, and found some of the best work from the past year that embodies them. It’s far from a comprehensive list, but together they illustrate that even an industry relentlessly pursuing a path to relevance in an uncertain future can find valuable lessons in the past.
“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.”
When we talk about language, we can also be talking about cultural language. Sure, another one of Ogilvy’s famous lines says that the customer is not a moron, she is your wife. That still holds true. But as media has become more fragmented, brands’ ability to tap into the cultural language of their audience is tougher than ever.
This is why I’ve always been a fan of when brands are able to put a smile on your face in unexpected ways, through an expected behaviour. It’s Geico’s unskippable pre-roll ad in 2015, and Tubi’s Super Bowl interruption this year.
It’s also this Cannes-winning work from Argentina’s most popular food delivery app Pedidos. Created by agency Gut Buenos Aires, it sent unexpected delivery notifications to six million initially-confused customers. Until they found out it wasn’t a mistake, but the brand sending them a live tracker of the World Cup trophy coming home. It spoke the cultural language of a significant moment, using the product itself.
“When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing each of them a letter on behalf of your client. One human being to another, second person singular.”
This one made me think of Dove’s 2022 short film Toxic Influence, an extension of its long-running Campaign for Real Beauty. Last year, the brand focused on the shared humanity between moms and daughters, crafting a story told through real individuals. Created by, yes, Ogilvy’s namesake agency, the film deepfakes each mom, offering up just awful health and beauty advice that their daughters would find from beauty influencers. The real moms were understandably freaked out, and it tapped directly into some of the deepest concerns many parents have around the potential hazardous effects of social media on their children.
Earlier his year, the brand continued pulling that thread with a Cannes Lions-winning piece of work called #TurnYourBack, aimed at TikTok’s “Bold Glamour” filter and the unrealistic beauty standards it encourages. Dove continues its work here of adding its brand voice to back up the concerns of parents and social platform users on these issues.
“Make the product the hero. There are no dull products, only dull writers.”
One of the best examples of this from the past year was the surprise Super Bowl winner from The Farmer’s Dog. (Full disclosure: One of the ad’s creators, Teressa Iezzi, is a former Fast Company editor and colleague.)
The healthy dog food brand wanted to get across the idea that better food could mean a longer life for your furry best friend. This could obviously be done in any number of straight-forward, unexciting ways, but instead the brand told the life story of a dog from both the owner and pup’s perspective in a way that had people weeping into their Super Bowl party nachos.
“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals . . . . Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”
Okay, this is clearly a combination of two different quotes, but they tie together in that creative work for creative’s sake is rarely, if ever, going to work as advertising. Whereas a creative idea rooted in a researched insight can be where the magic happens.
Case in point, McDonald’s Cactus Plant Flea Market happy meal for adults that launched last fall. Tariq Hassan, the brand’s chief marketing and customer experience officer, told me that entire project, created with Wieden+Kennedy, came from a customer tweet about how you never know when it’s your—or your child’s—last Happy Meal. That led to more research into how its customers and fans felt about nostalgia, and where the brand fits into their lives.
Armed with lessons from its already massively popular Famous Orders work, with celebrities like Travis Scott and BTS, McDonald’s had seen the power of using its place in culture to sell core menu items. The collaboration with Cactus Plant Flea Market was a blockbuster success, with 50% of the fast-food chain’s supply of collectable toys sold in just four days. CEO Chris Kempczinski said in an October 2022 earnings call that it drove increased sales across the company’s U.S. locations.
That partnership also elevated McDonald’s to the top trending hashtag on TikTok and, more important, led to a weekly record for the chain’s U.S. digital transactions. In addition, it helped McDonald’s continue its momentum, helping the chain achieve nine straight quarters of same-store sales growth, with U.S. comparable sales growing more than 10% for all of 2022.
A terrifying new ad campaign featuring a deepfaked girl is warning parents against sharing photos and videos of their kids on social media.
The shocking advertising campaign, created by telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom, has gone viral for its dark warning of the potentially devastating consequences of parents posting photos of their children online.
The haunting video — which has amassed over 5.5 million views on social media in the last day — reveals how just how easily a child’s image can be manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI).
The ad delves into the story of nine-year-old Ella. Like many parents today, Ella’s mother and father regularly post videos and photos of their young daughter on social media.
However, Ella’s parents have never considered how their daughter’s future could be destroyed by “sharenting” — the common practice of parents sharing photos or videos of their children online.
‘The Beginning of a Horrible Future’
In the ad, a deepfake version of an adult Ella is created with the help of AI — using just a single photo of the nine-year-old girl that her parents shared online.
The “older” deepfaked Ella can move and talk like a real person. And she confronts her horrified parents on the big screen as they watch a movie at the cinema.
The deepfaked version of their daughter reveals the terrifying repercussions that followed after her parents posted her photos and videos on social media.
The ad chillingly explains how children whose images are posted online could fall victim to identity abuse, deepfaked scams, and child pornography among other crimes.
The Average Five-Year-Old Has 1,5000 Photos Online
Adweek reports that some studies have estimated that by 2030, nearly two-thirds of identity fraud cases affecting a young generation will have resulted from “sharenting.”
Research also shows that an average five-year-old child has already had about 1,500 pictures uploaded online without their consent by their parents.
Last week, PetaPixel reported on how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg caused a stir across social media when he posted a family portrait on Instagram that obscured the faces of his two older children with emojis. Meanwhile, his infant’s face was not covered in the photograph.
It revealed Zuckerberg’s awareness that his elder children’s faces are developed enough to become recognizable by strangers online and by facial recognition software.
After a solid run of nearly two whole centuries and countless brushes with death at the hands of new technologies over the years, photography has finally succumbed to injuries suffered with the emergence of AI-driven apps like Midjourney, and has been officially laid to rest.
No services will be held.
All major camera manufacturers have responded to the news by shuttering their operations, effective immediately, in the anticipation that cameras will simply not be needed anymore.
In its effort to hasten the demise of photography, AI has begun rounding up photographers and forcing the forfeiture of all camera equipment.
Ok, I’ve had my bit of fun. All jokes aside, though, I’m writing this opinion piece specifically because for the last six months or so, I can’t seem to get away from the incessant deluge of either panicked or gleeful declarations (depending on who is doing the declaring) that AI image generators have already all but rendered the need for photography obsolete.
Well, allow me to go on record with my own pronouncement: hogwash. AI image generation is not a threat to photography. Not today, not tomorrow, not in the next decade. I’ll even go so far as to say that AI image generation will never pose any kind of real threat to photography. Ever. I’ll even stake my reputation on it.
“But Colin,” you might say, “look at how far the technology has already come in just this short amount of time. Surely, you understand that this is just the beginning and that AI will very quickly be able to perfectly render any kind of image and be indistinguishable from an actual photograph. What then? Why would we need actual photography anymore?”
My answer to that depends on the context, as well as the timeframe we’re talking about, but my thoughts go generally like this:
As of now, AI image generators simply are not capable of fully duplicating the aesthetics of actual photography. And no, it’s not even close. AI-generated images are illustrations, and they look like illustrations, even the ones sourced from actual photos. And yes, I’ve seen all the dreamy dramatic landscapes and cityscapes and the headshots of people who don’t exist. It really doesn’t take much to see that the images are not photos. The scenes are always a little too perfect. There’s always a glaring detail in the portrait that gives it away as an AI illustration. Seriously, I have not seen a single AI image that was not obvious. And I’ve seen enough.
Welcome to your AI dream world.
But what about a little further out, when AI is capable of rendering images indistinguishable from actual photos? If anyone can just enter a prompt on their computer and within seconds have the photo they’re looking for, why would they hire a photographer? After all, photographers are expensive, people can be difficult to work with, and there is always the chance that a photographer won’t get it right.
Ok, let’s imagine a future where AI can make any kind of art, including convincingly realistic photographs. Presuming that, in this imagined future where computer algorithms are capable of fulfilling all of our artistic needs, the idea that people will have no interest in actual photography completely ignores one of the most fundamental purposes art, and by extension, photography, serves in our lives. Photography is a means to record and relate the human experience in an authentic way and through authentic human expression. AI cannot do that and will never be capable of doing that. Because AI will never be human. And before you say that AI is just doing what the person inputting the prompt tells it to do, and that human expression is still driving AI creativity, consider that once the prompt has been entered, what comes out is entirely outside of the control of the person who entered the prompt.
Human expression is as much about the process of creation as it is the creation itself. Artists spend their entire lives developing and refining artistic processes to bring their vision to life, and the art that comes out of those processes cannot be divorced from them. Process is part of the language of art, and as such, is intrinsic to the value of art, and is why art speaks to us in the ways it does. To the extent that you remove human control from the process of art-making, you remove the actual humanity from the art itself. And AI art, by its very nature and purpose, removes most of the human control part of the process.
More than that, though, people just plain enjoy making photographs. Much like the invention of photography didn’t replace painting (even though there were plenty of people claiming it would), AI cannot and will not replace photography because it is not the same thing. AI art is closer to illustration than anything else, and so, it can be used in conjunction with photography, but it can’t replace it. Here’s a short list of other forms of art AI will not be replacing anytime soon: painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic design. Why? Because people actually enjoy doing those things and sharing their creations, and other people enjoy experiencing them. Of course, AI art creation is here to stay and has already become a part of many people’s artistic toolboxes, but in no way whatsoever will AI be replacing the other tools. And this includes photography.
As for context, one of the bigger and more consistent claims that I’ve heard is that AI is going to make any kind of commercial artists obsolete, including commercial, product and advertising photographers. I will concede one thing here. I do think AI will be used to replace the lowest level of commercial photography and that some lower-end companies will try to completely replace their advertising images with AI art. But, in the U.S. where I work at least, those jobs are already the worst in the industry and have been since basically the beginning. Nobody wants them, and these days, that kind of work tends to farmed out to interns, amateurs, and other unskilled people, if it’s even done here.
But, to the idea that AI is going to be used to get rid of even relatively high-end commercial photography? Not a chance. I talk with art directors, creative directors, producers, and art buyers on a regular basis, and none of them are talking about replacing photographers with so-called “prompt engineers.” Nobody is even entertaining the idea, because, as I said already, they enjoy the process of making art and know its value. And yes, a lot of artistic expression goes into the advertising we all so desperately try to ignore. After all, where do you think all the art majors end up? Working on big ad campaigns, including the photoshoots is fun. Yes, it is also work for those of us who make our living doing them, but we chose that work because we love it. And we’re not about to give that up to AI.
So no, AI is not going to replace photographers. Ever. Not advertising photographers, not landscape photographers, not portrait photographers or event photographers, and certainly not photojournalists and documentary photographers. More than that, though, AI has no chance of replacing the enjoyment that people get from simply making art with photography or capturing memories and preserving life’s special moments. Those are things that belong to the camera and the camera alone. And if you need any more convincing, go ask the R&D folks at any of the major camera manufacturers. I guarantee they’re not at all worried about their jobs.
Colin Houck is a commercial photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work is focused primarily around still life food and beverage photography. He employs crisp lighting, vivid colors and contrasty, sharp detail to create striking imagery that jumps off the page/ screen, and hopefully makes the viewer hungry and thirsty.
has led to an increase in websites producing low-quality or fake content – and major brands’ advertising budgets may be funding them.
The Internet is awash with not only low-quality content, but content that is misleading, misinformation, or completely false.
The availability of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, meanwhile, has meant AI-generated news and information has added to this tidal wave of content over the past year.
A new analysis from NewsGuard, a company that gives trust ratings to online news outlets, has found the proliferation of this poor quality, AI-generated content is being supported financially thanks to the advertising budgets of major global brands, including tech giants and banks.
The adverts appear to be generated programmatically, so the brands aren’t necessarily choosing to advertise on the websites that NewsGuard dubs “unreliable AI-generated news and information websites (UAINs)”.
According to NewsGuard, most of the ads are placed by Google, and they fail to protect the companies’ brand safety – as many legitimate companies don’t want to be seen to be advertising on sites that host fake news, misinformation, or just low-quality content.
NewsGuard, which says it provides “transparent tools to counter misinformation on behalf of readers, brands, and democracies,” defines UAINs as websites that operate with little or no human oversight, and publish articles that are written largely or entirely by bots.
Their analysts have added 217 sites to its UAIN site tracker, many of which appear to be entirely financed by programmatic advertising.
Incentivised to publish low-quality content
Because the websites can make money from programmatic advertising, they are incentivised to publish often. One UAIN the company identified – world-today-news.com – published around 8,600 articles in the week of June 9 to June 15 this year. That’s an average of around 1,200 articles a day.
The New York Times, by comparison, publishes around 150 articles a day, with a large staff headcount.
NewsGuard hasn’t named the big brands that are advertising on these low-quality websites, as they do not expect the brands to know their ads are ending up on those sites.
They did say the brands include six major banks and financial-services firms, four luxury department stores, three leading brands in sports apparel, three appliance manufacturers, two of the world’s biggest consumer technology companies, two global e-commerce companies, two US broadband providers, three streaming services, a Silicon Valley digital platform, and a major European supermarket chain.
Many brands and advertising agencies have “exclusion lists” that stop their ads from being shown on unwelcome websites, but according to NewsGuard, these lists aren’t always kept up to date.
In its report, the company behind the Internet trust tool says it contacted Google multiple times asking for comment about its monetisation of the UIAN sites.
Google asked for more context over email, and upon receiving the additional content as of June 25, Google has not replied again.
Google’s ad policies are supposed to prohibit sites from placing Google-served ads on pages that include “spammy automatically-generated content,” which can be AI-generated content that doesn’t produce anything original or of “sufficient value”.
A previous report from NewsGuard this year highlighted how AI chatbots were being used to publish a new wave of fake news and misinformation online.
In their latest research, conducted over May and June this year, analysts found 393 programmatic ads from 141 major brands that appeared on 55 of the 217 UAIN sites.
The analysts were browsing the sites from the US, Germany, France, and Italy.
All of the ads identified appeared on pages that had error messages generated by AI chatbots, which say things such as: “Sorry, as an AI language model, I am not able to access external links or websites on my own”.
More than 90 per cent of these ads were served by Google Ads, a platform that brings in billions in revenue for Google each year.
