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AI Has Taken Over Qualitative Market Research. Here’s What That Means for Your Business.

June 12, 2023 No Comments

Discover how AI is transforming qualitative research — increasing efficiency and accuracy and driving faster insights.

Qualitative research has become an integral part of market research in the past few decades. Businesses have recognized the value of subjective experiences and perceptions of their consumers. In the early days of market research, quantitative methods dominated, with surveys and statistical analyses used to gather data about consumer behaviour. However, as the market became more competitive and consumer preferences more complex, qualitative methods gained popularity.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, widely regarded as the father of qualitative research, by 1945 demonstrated that psychology could offer a valuable framework for interpreting human behaviour. He revolutionized the field by introducing novel techniques such as unstructured interviewing and group discussions. The data from these methods enabled researchers to delve deeper into the subjective experiences of individuals. He emphasized the importance of answering the fundamental question of “why?” — which remains the guiding principle of qualitative research to this day. Through his pioneering work, Lazarsfeld paved the way for the evolution of qualitative research and its growing recognition as a powerful tool for exploring complex social phenomena and understanding the diverse perspectives of individuals.

Qualitative market research really took off in the 1950s and 1960s, when psychologists and sociologists began using focus groups to study consumer behaviour. These early studies focused on understanding the motivations behind consumer choices and the impact of advertising and branding on consumer attitudes. In the 1970s and 1980s, ethnographic methods were introduced, with researchers observing consumers in their natural environments to gain a deeper understanding of their behaviour.

Today, qualitative research in market research has evolved to include a wide range of methods, including in-depth interviews, online communities and social media analysis. The goal of qualitative market research is to provide a rich, nuanced understanding of consumer behaviour and preferences, allowing businesses to make informed decisions about product development, branding and marketing strategies. Qualitative research has become an essential tool for businesses seeking to stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Introducing AI into market research

AI has revolutionized market research by offering tools for data analysis and insight generation. As AI technology continues to evolve and grow, it is expected to become an even more integral part of market research. It’ll be imperative in helping businesses to stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly data-driven world.

AI can quickly process vast amounts of data, identify trends and patterns in consumer behaviour and analyse unstructured data such as social media posts, reviews and customer feedback.
With predictive analytics models in the picture, machine learning algorithms are used to forecast future trends and consumer behavior, guiding product development, marketing strategies and pricing decisions.
AI can also automate time-consuming tasks such as data cleaning and coding, freeing up researchers’ and marketers’ time. This allows teams to focus on more complex tasks, such as interpreting results and developing actionable insights.

Revolutionizing qualitative research with AI

AI, as we know it, is changing as you read this. It has penetrated into business workflow and operations, promising to make lives easier and more efficient. AI has empowered marketing to become hyper-personalized, targeting consumers at the right time and at the right place. Qualitative research, an integral backbone of marketing, is no exception. Researchers are able to generate insights that would have been impossible to obtain using traditional research methods.

Facial coding is one such AI-powered technology that can analyse micro-expressions and emotional responses. It can provide valuable insights into consumer behaviour and preferences.
Sentiment analysis, on the other hand, can help researchers identify the sentiment behind written or spoken responses, enabling them to understand the emotional impact of campaigns, products or services on consumers.
Confidence metrics, a by-product of sentiment analysis, is another technology that is sought after by brands these days. It measures the level of certainty or conviction expressed by respondents in their answers, allowing researchers to gain a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour.
Voice AI, meanwhile, can help researchers analyse the tonality, inflection and other vocal cues in spoken responses, providing additional insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours.

By using technology like facial coding, sentiment analysis and voice AI, researchers are able to tap into their leading to better product development, branding and marketing strategies.

AI-powered qualitative research platforms

There’s a platform for almost everything — from recruiting respondents to automating surveys to generating insights.

Digital transformation of qualitative research through AI has transformed the way researchers execute studies. It is time that brands take up an AI-led qualitative platform to streamline their research efforts.

The use of AI-powered technologies such as facial coding, sentiment analysis, tonality analysis and voice AI can enable businesses to make data-driven decisions about product development, branding and marketing strategies and stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace. As AI technology continues to evolve, it is likely that we will see even more advanced tools and methods being developed, further enhancing the power and potential of qualitative research. Adopt an AI-led qualitative platform today before it’s too late.

By Sriya Srinivasan

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor, Content Manager with a background in management, Sriya Srinivasan has been actively helping B2B startups scale their content engines. She is well-versed in transforming complex brand stories into simple and engaging content. She is also passionate about building content marketing and product initiatives.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Meta Outlines Its Evolving AI Ad Targeting Process, Which Is Improving Ad Performance

May 29, 2023 No Comments

By Andrew Hutchinson

Amid various changes to online data collection, which have restricted how much insight digital platforms can use in ad targeting, Meta has been developing new machine learning-based ad targeting models, which are able to deliver more relevant ads to each user without requiring the same level of personal usage insight.

This is particularly important for Meta, as it’s been hit especially hard by Apple’s iOS 14 update. Following the update, many users have cut Meta off from gathering usage data in its apps.

And while that has hurt Meta’s bottom line, more recently, Meta’s ad business has seen a recovery, while marketers are also reporting much-improved performance through tools like Advantage+, Meta’s automated ad targeting process.

So how is Meta delivering more relevant ads to users with less data to go on?

This week, Meta has provided an overview of its latest systematic update on this front, with a new ad delivery process called ‘Meta Lattice’, which uses multiple data points to better predict likely ad responses through AI and other predictive technology.

As explained by Meta:

“Meta Lattice is capable of improving the performance of our ads system holistically. We’ve supercharged its performance with a high-capacity architecture that allows our ads system to more broadly and deeply understand new concepts and relationships in data and benefits advertisers through joint optimization of a large number of goals.”

Okay, that’s a bit of a mouthful – but essentially, the Lattice system is able to infer more likely user responses, without requiring as much direct data insight from each person.

The process utilizes knowledge-sharing across Meta’s different surfaces (e.g. News Feed, Stories, Reels) to expand its mapping of potential user interest and activity. Previously, all of these elements were measured in isolation, but Meta’s more advanced predictive models are now able to take in a wider array of data points, in order to better understand likely individual behaviors.

It’s basically an expanded database of all of Meta’s ad response activity, which, when cross-matched with all of the other information it has on each user, enables the Lattice system to better predict likely ad interest through more advanced mapping. That makes better use of all of the data that Meta can access to show people more relevant ads.

“We’ve designed Meta Lattice to drive advertiser performance in the new digital advertising environment where we have access to less granular data. Additionally, Lattice is capable of generalizing learnings across domains and objectives, which is especially crucial when the model has limited data to train on. Fewer models also means we can proactively and efficiently update our models and adapt to the fast-evolving market landscape.”

In addition, the Lattice system is also able to better contextualize longer-term ad exposure, and its relative impact on response.

“The engagement between an ad and a person viewing the ad can span from seconds (e.g., click, like) to days (e.g., considering a purchase, adding to a cart, and later making the purchase from a website or an app). Through multi-distribution modeling with temporal awareness, Meta Lattice can capture not only a person’s real-time intent from fresh signals but also long-term interest from slow, sparse, and delayed signals.”

According to Meta, this approach has already improved ad exposure quality by 8%, and it’s getting better every day, leading to better results through its automated targeting tools.

Really, if you haven’t considered Meta’s Advantage+ ads, they’re worth a look, with, again, many performance marketers reporting strong results through the use of Meta’s advancing ad targeting tools.

And, as these AI-based systems evolve using a broader range of inputs, they’re likely to become more significant drivers of response, which could help you target the right audience for your offerings without needing to manually set the parameters of each campaign.

You can read more about Meta’s Lattice ad targeting system here.

By Andrew Hutchinson

Sourced from Social Media Today

In News

Google Unveils Plan to Demolish the Journalism Industry Using AI

May 16, 2023 No Comments

Sourced from Futurism

Remember back in 2018, when Google removed “don’t be evil” from its code of conduct?

It’s been living up to that removal lately. At its annual I/O in San Francisco this week, the search giant finally lifted the lid on its vision for AI-integrated search — and that vision, apparently, involves cutting digital publishers off at the knees.

Google’s new AI-powered search interface, dubbed “Search Generative Experience,” or SGE for short, involves a feature called “AI Snapshot.” Basically, it’s an enormous top-of-the-page summarization feature. Ask, for example, “why is sourdough bread still so popular?” — one of the examples that Google used in their presentation — and, before you get to the blue links that we’re all familiar with, Google will provide you with a large language model (LLM) -generated summary. Or, we guess, snapshot.

“Google’s normal search results load almost immediately,” The Verge’s David Pierce explains. “Above them, a rectangular orange section pulses and glows and shows the phrase ‘Generative AI is experimental.’ A few seconds later, the glowing is replaced by an AI-generated summary: a few paragraphs detailing how good sourdough tastes, the upsides of its prebiotic abilities, and more.”

“To the right,” he adds, “there are three links to sites with information that Reid says ‘corroborates’ what’s in the summary.”

As it goes without saying, this format of search, where Google uses AI tech to regurgitate the internet back to users, is wildly different from how the search-facilitated internet works today. Right now, if you Google that same query — “why is sourdough bread still so popular?” — you’d be met with a more familiar scene: a featured excerpt from whichever website won the SEO race (in this case, that website was British Baker), followed by that series of blue links.

At first glance, the change might seem relatively benign. Often, all folks surfing the web want is a quick-hit summary or snippet of something anyway.

But it’s not unfair to say that Google, which in April, according to data from SimilarWeb, hosted roughly 91 percent of all search traffic, is somewhat synonymous with, well, the internet. And the internet isn’t just some ethereal, predetermined thing, as natural water or air. The internet is a marketplace, and Google is its kingmaker.

As such, the demo raises an extremely important question for the future of the already-ravaged journalism industry: if Google’s AI is going to mulch up original work and provide a distilled version of it to users at scale, without ever connecting them to the original work, how will publishers continue to monetize their work?

“Google has unveiled its vision for how it will incorporate AI into search,” tweeted The Verge’s James Vincent. “The quick answer: it’s going to gobble up the open web and then summarize/rewrite/regurgitate it (pick the adjective that reflects your level of disquiet) in a shiny Google UI.”

Research has shown that information consumers hardly ever make it to even the second page of search results, let alone even the bottom of the page. And worse, it’s not like Google’s taking clicks away from its long-time information merchants by hiring an army of human content writers to churn out summarization. Google’s new search interface, which is built on a model that’s already been trained by way of boatloads upon boatloads of unpaid-for human output, will seemingly be swallowing even more human-made content and spitting it back out to information-seekers, all the while taking valuable clicks away from the publishers that are actually doing the work of reporting, curating, and holding powerful interests like Google to account.

As of now, it’s unclear whether or how Google plans to compensate those publishers.

In an emailed statement to Futurism, a Google spokesperson said that “we’re introducing this new generative AI experience as an experiment in Search Labs to help us iterate and improve, while incorporating feedback from users and other stakeholders.”

“As we experiment with new LLM-powered capabilities in Search, we’ll continue to prioritize approaches that will allow us to send valuable traffic to a wide range of creators and support a healthy, open web,” the spokesperson added.

Asked specifically whether the company has plans to compensate publishers for any AI-regurgitated content, Google had little in response.

“We don’t have plans to share on this, but we’ll continue to work with the broader ecosystem,” the spokesperson told Futurism.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

Sourced from Futurism

In News

Unlock the Potential of AI in Graphic Design – An Ultimate Guide for Graphic Designers

April 5, 2023 No Comments

By Dirk Petzold

Let’s explore the boundless possibilities of AI-powered graphic design for creative professionals.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way graphic design professionals work. By combining AI technology with creative skills, graphic designers can unlock new potential for their projects and produce amazing results. This article will explore the power of AI in graphic design and provide an ultimate guide for creative professionals looking to incorporate it into their workflow. We’ll discuss the benefits of using AI-powered tools, showcase examples of successful projects that have used this technology, provide tips on getting started with AI tools, outline challenges associated with incorporating artificial intelligence into digital graphics workflows and look ahead to future trends related to AI in graphics.

AI in graphic design and its potential for creative professionals

The potential of AI in terms of graphic design is a truly exciting concept to consider. With a combination of artificial intelligence and creative professionals, innovative designs can be created quickly and efficiently. This can provide a huge advantage when it comes to creating visuals for products, services, webpages, or ads; AI allows a designer to prototype and experiment with a multitude of different styles at a moment’s notice. By unlocking a more efficient workflow for designers, AI has the potential to nurture the creative process like never before – making graphic design more accessible and offering boundless possibilities for exploration and experimentation.

The benefits of using AI-powered tools for graphic designers

If a modern graphic designer is looking to take their creativity to a new level, AI-powered tools can help streamline the design process and maximize their potential. AI algorithms can be used to automate mundane tasks, allowing designers to focus on more important aspects such as concept development and refinement. This helps to make a project more efficient, reducing time wasted on mundane tasks that a computer can do from a few minutes to a matter of seconds. In addition, AI-powered dynamic design tools help designers create a custom look by automatically generating variations on a single theme with a few mouse clicks or voice instructions. This saves time and allows for rapid experimentation and quick iteration in finding the most stunning designs.

How to use AI tools to enhance creativity in design projects

AI tools are a fresh new way for graphic designers to add a spark of creativity and a unique quality to their design projects. By taking advantage of these technologies, designers can create a range of eye-catching visuals that captivate audiences like never before. AI tools can also be used to quickly generate multiple solutions, enhance existing graphics, and discover innovative ways to express complex ideas. As a result, merging the creative insight of a designer with the power of AI is rapidly becoming a go-to method for producing truly remarkable design projects.

Examples of graphic design tools that include AI technology

AI technology has been a game changer for graphic design software. Many of today’s popular software products include features that can generate artwork automatically and identify errors in a design.

Unleash the power of artificial intelligence with Luminar AI and transform your photos into true works of art! This intuitive image editor has revolutionized photo editing, making it easier than ever to achieve stunning results. With features designed to maximize convenience while delivering unbeatable precision, Luminar AI is the perfect tool for any level photographer.

Adobe Creative Cloud is at the forefront of AI technology, taking full advantage of it to optimize its software with a suite of tools designed for ease and accuracy. Leveraging AI, Adobe Creative Cloud helps creatives make accurate selections, automate routine tasks like retouching models in an image, or even recognize and save searchable keywords from a video clip. Creative professionals can explore a limitless range of possibilities with AI-powered apps within Creative Cloud – from quickly editing and organizing large volumes of photos to creating complex 3D artwork.

By incorporating Generative AI into Adobe Express, both experienced and inexperienced creators can reach their creative goals. Rather than having to scour for a template that already exists, users of Express will be able to generate one with ease by providing a simple prompt. With the help of Generative AI, they’ll then have the ability to add an object or create unique text effects based on what they’re envisioning – while still keeping full control over it all! The Adobe Express tools are also perfect for editing images, and applying colours and fonts; guaranteed to get you closer to your dream poster, flyer, or social media post without fail.

So far, Artificial Intelligence-driven generative systems have been mainly utilized in the realm of image creation. Nonetheless, I think that this technology also has the potential to benefit creatives who work across different disciplines such as 3D design, texture development, and logo making among others.

Innovative AI capabilities also mean users don’t have to worry about spending hours continuously tweaking and optimizing pieces of artwork, with feedback generated quickly and realistically. For those looking to experience just how powerful ai-powered graphic design can be, there is a range of different software options available that offer the best of both worlds – human creativity coupled with tech’s precision.

Tips on getting started with using AI-powered tools in graphic design

With AI-powered software becoming increasingly more accessible and advanced, now is a great time to get familiarized with utilizing ai in your graphic design projects. Different ai applications can simplify complex art tasks, speed up the workflow processes, and ensure a better quality end product. It might seem like a daunting task to learn the ins and outs of a new piece of software, but with a little dedication, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Seek out online tutorials that will guide you on how to use AI software, look for community groups that build awareness of the latest advancements in AI technology or even see if your colleagues already have an experience that they can share!

The challenges associated with incorporating artificial intelligence into graphic design workflows

AI technology has the potential to revolutionize the graphic design industry. AI promises automated assistance for tedious tasks, freeing up valuable time for creators to focus on more creative objectives. Yet, AI’s complexity and ever-evolving nature present unique challenges when it comes to its incorporation into graphic design workflows. AI requires a thoughtful marriage between human creativity and AI capabilities in order to maximize AI’s intended benefits. Thus, incorporating AI into graphic design can be a daunting endeavour that requires careful planning and consideration of resources in order to ensure success. However, this challenge is an exciting opportunity as it provides an avenue for design professionals to further hone their creative problem-solving skills while continuing to explore the possibilities AI holds for the future of graphic design.

Future trends related to AI in digital graphics

AI is revolutionizing digital graphics, and it’s only going to become increasingly influential as we look toward the future. AI can be used to create photorealistic 3D models in various fields, like architecture, engineering, and game design, with greater speed and accuracy than ever before. AI-driven AI solutions are also helping to enhance existing projects without being overly intrusive or disruptive. Furthermore, AI tools are providing a much more intuitive user experience for graphic designers: AI can automate optimization processes, meaning tasks that usually took hours of manual tweaking can now be handled in seconds. AI is not just making our lives easier; it’s pushing forward the potential of digital graphics in ways never before imagined!

Header image via Adobe Stock contributor @Jackie Niam. Do not hesitate to find inspiring projects from all over the world in the Graphic Design category on WE AND THE COLOR.

By Dirk Petzold

Sourced from WATC

In News

AI’s threat to Google is more about advertising income than being the number one search engine

March 21, 2023 No Comments

By Andy Tattersall

Google’s ad revenue accounts for 80% of its income. Its biggest challenge yet might come from Microsoft’s Bing, currently the third biggest search engine behind Google and Baidu, and its new AI chatbot

Google’s dominance as the most visited website has been undisputed since it rose to prominence as the leading search engine in the early 2000s. However, that position could now be facing its biggest ever threat, with the arrival of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots such as ChatGPT, which can answer people’s questions online.

Google is countering by developing its own AI products. But its chatbot, Bard, didn’t have the most auspicious start. This month, a Google advert showed that Bard had provided an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb space telescope.

Plus, being the most popular website in the world comes with much more than prestige, namely incredible wealth from advertising revenue. But recent, sudden shifts in the technology landscape have created uncertainty for the likes of Google.

The advertising revenue stream that aided its success may no longer be a given. If AI chatbots such as ChatGPT begin carrying adverts, it could cut into Google’s leading position in the world of search engine advertising.

People’s reliance on Google has often been without question, so much so that people may not click beyond page one of a Google search results page. But the emergence of new AI platforms has shown that search as we know it does not have to end with a set of ordered links to websites. Instead, as the chatbots are showing, it can take the form of a conversation.

Such AI has not been without controversy. Concerns have been raised that it could lead to issues regarding plagiarism or even worse, the loss of jobs and income for a multitude of professions, from lawyers to journalists.

The chief executive of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, has said the company is developing tools to help detect text that has been generated by an AI. In a video interview, he added: “We hear from teachers who are understandably very nervous about the impact of this on homework. We also hear a lot from teachers who are like, ‘Wow, this is an unbelievable personal tutor for each kid’.”

Linguist and activist Noam Chomsky called the use of AI tools like ChatGPT “a way of avoiding learning”. Google meant we no longer needed to recall knowledge, we could just search for it. Now, with AI, the problem will be whether we can be bothered to question the answers we get back.

This paradigm shift in how we access and interact with knowledge goes much further than these concerns about how we search, and raises questions over Google’s revenue model, which has been instrumental in keeping it at the top of the technology pile.

Gateway to the web

Once-popular search engines such as Ask Jeeves, Lycos and Excite became the internet’s “also rans” as Google became synonymous with the word “search”. The agreement in 2000 between a then more popular Yahoo! website to host Google as the default search engine, ensured the search engine’s international status.

Being the gateway to the rest of the web came with one huge benefit through the capture of new internet-based advertising revenue. With every Google search result came the obligatory sponsored content which helped the company grow to where it is today.

Google’s annual revenue has continued to grow year-on-year because two decades ago it mastered search better than its aforementioned competitors. Its ability to combine this service so succinctly with income generation from advertisements is largely why it has been able to hold competitors like Microsoft’s Bing at bay.

If you want your company or product to appear as part of a web search, then Google is the place to be.

The company has invested that advertising income to build a massive infrastructure to handle billions of search queries in addition to hosting lots of popular cloud-based tools such as Google Mail, Drive and the acquisition of platforms such as YouTube. The video-sharing platform turned out to be a particularly fruitful investment in terms of generating advertising revenue.

Google’s sheer scale means its dominance will continue. But once advertising income starts to leech to new AI platforms that return results with sponsored content, it may find itself scaling back.

Masters of AI

A key to Google’s continued success will be mastering artificial intelligence and incorporating it into its services. But there are no guarantees for a company that has failed on at least five occasions to master the art of social media. For now, there is no doubt that Google can handle the traffic, it is really a question of whether it can deliver the goods.

Whether new contenders such as ChatGPT are anywhere close to handling the number of queries that Google does is open to debate. The evidence is that they are not, as ChatGPT had various issues earlier in the year when it was unable to accept new users or run queries due to excess demand.

ChatGPT is the platform that has gained most of the media attention of late. However, it might be established rivals like Bing that ultimately provide Google’s biggest headache. Bing is the third biggest search engine globally behind Google and Baidu.

That position could change with the launch of its own AI search, which will no doubt capture more income for an established company. Unlike Google, Microsoft does not have the same reliance on advertising revenue thanks to its business model, which is diversified across software, hardware and cloud computing.

According to the consumer and market data service Statista, Google’s income from advertising revenue has fallen in recent years, but it still accounts for 80% of the company’s income. Many might consider Google to be a search engine but it is largely an advertising company that was built on the back of search.

Without this advertising revenue, it could not have achieved many of its previous successes such as acquiring YouTube in 2006, or helping develop the Android mobile platform. Google’s failure to launch multiple social media platforms highlighted the company’s frailties and left the door open for the likes of Facebook and its parent company Meta to eat into that massive revenue pie.

Facebook too, will have concerns that Bing and new start-ups will lure marketers away to what is likely to be a slew of new AI knowledge tools. However, if Google fails to master AI search in the way Lycos and Excite failed to build upon their early success, we might find ourselves Googling a lot less and chatting much more. – Rappler.com

This article originally appeared in The Conversation.

By Andy Tattersall

Information Specialist, University of Sheffield

Sourced from Rappler

In News

The Power Of Subject Matter Experts, The Limitations Of AI And The Future Of Digital Marketing

March 15, 2023 No Comments

By David Mahbub

As a marketer and tech enthusiast, in preparation for this article, I wanted to determine how well the popular ChatGPT program might be able to advise C-level executives and marketing teams on the importance of digital marketing.

First, I started with a simple order or request: “Write a 500-word article about the importance of digital marketing when scaling up your business.” In a matter of seconds, I got the article, went through it and started shaping out more specific attributes I considered valuable.

In round two, I added to the request: “The article should have at least three examples.”

Round three: “The audience is C-level decision makers.”

Round four: “Do not highlight x or y.”

After five rounds, I got something decent enough that I might share with readers.

The final article generated by the program was certainly fair and impressive in its insights, pointing out, for example, the rise of affordable marketing options through social media and email. The article also noted the valuable business insights derived from digital metrics such as web traffic and open email rates, among other KPIs teams could leverage. Finally, it summarized a couple of notable cases of companies whose success has been accredited to the strategic use of digital marketing.

I wanted to understand how this particular AI functionality might impact many digital levers in creating content. My key finding as I read these lines created by ChatGPT was that the content was accurate and interesting, but it still didn’t speak to the level of experience or authority of a true expert.

If I had written the article from scratch, I would have never published it the way it was written. So my main takeaway is that AI can be an excellent help for teams and brands to create content—but you need experts on the asking end. The quality of your product will always be strongly influenced by the quality of your creators and their expertise. And the second is that AI is not even close to transmitting the human essence of experience; it can generate good content, but not human content.

Here are three pieces of digital marketing advice my experiment with ChatGPT was not able to articulate.

1. Build a frictionless journey. Interconnect all touchpoints of your digital ecosystem. There is a big difference between multichannel and omnichannel. Do omnichannel strategies and be sure you understand the difference between them. Multichannel is about being present in many channels; omnichannel is putting them together and making sense.

2. Don’t think of digital as one world and physical as another; blend them as consumers do in their day to day.

3. Digital is much more than social and paid media. Ninety percent of my clients “believe” they are covered up because they have a team or set of agencies doing social and paid. Companies must evolve from this crazy idea into attribution and retention models where every source is aligned, measured and understood.

So, on the one hand, we may be able to “create” a 500+ word article in a matter of seconds—including the title—but with a lower level of quality for an in-depth topic based on my personal experience or any other human being.

My takeaway: AI will enable and impact content creation, making it very dynamic for brands and organizations, allowing us to pump in content. But when we talk about high-level knowledge and authoritative content, there is still much to learn from a human brain and experience. For now, at least, no AI seems poised to match a human rationale when it comes to expressing and sharing an opinion as a subject matter expert.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By David Mahbub

Marketing Model Creator. Expert in Strategic Brand Planning. MACH9 CEO Mexico. Speaker and board advisor. Read David Mahbub’s full executive profile here

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Five reasons why you shouldn’t rely on ChatGPT to write business copy

March 8, 2023 No Comments

By Anthony Caruana

ChatGPT is AI’s version of the Wright Brothers’ first flight. It has completely changed our perception of what technology can do. Suddenly, it’s possible to ask a computer complex, and often very esoteric questions, and receive a response that strongly resembles the work of another person. But it’s an imperfect tool and businesses should not rely on it to write website or blog copy, thought leadership articles or other content.

All artificial intelligence systems work the same way. They are ‘trained’ with a sample of data that they categorise using rules. ChatGPT has been trained with a massive set of data and about 175 billion parameters. It differs from other AI models because it also uses human feedback during its training so the risk of harmful, false, and biased outputs is reduced, although it’s not completely removed. This makes it more accurate than other AI models — but it’s not perfect.

Here are five reasons why it might be dangerous for your business to rely on ChatGPT as your new copywriter:

1. ChatGPT lacks style

While this all sounds great — and it is a massive step forward — we need to remember what ChatGPT can’t do. Because it’s been trained with a specific set of data, the answers it can give are a reflection of that data. So, you could ask ChatGPT to write a sonnet in the style of Shakespeare, but it can not create its own style. If you want your words to sound like they come from your business, are consistent with your brand messaging, tone and identity, you’ll need to write them yourself.

2. Contextual awareness

When you’re writing copy for your website, a blog article or for publication with the media, specific context matters. While ChatGPT has probably “read” more data than any one person could in a lifetime, it doesn’t understand the context of those words, where they have been used or where they may be used in the future. ChatGPT’s understanding of context is based on how frequently words occur close to each other rather than real situational awareness. ChatGPT is not cognisant of shifts in social expectations and may offend sections of the community, leading to your business being embroiled in a controversy that impacts your reputation negatively.

3. It makes mistakes

ChatGPT may seem all-knowing but it’s not infallible. The Stack Overflow website, which is used by coders to answer questions about programming, has banned answers from ChatGPT because they are often wrong. The big problem, according to the site moderators, is “that while the answers which ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good”. While ChatGPT may be useful for initial research, it is not 100% trustworthy. There have been many examples where ChatGPT makes up facts and cites fabricated research. ChatGPT’s “facts” have to be independently cross-referenced to ensure you are not releasing content that is found to be fake, wrong or misleading as this can make your business look incompetent or worse untrustworthy and a proponent of fake news that lead to legal issues.

4. Jack of all trades…

The saying “Jack of all trades, master of none” applies to ChatGPT. While ChatGPT has an approximate knowledge of many things, it is not a subject matter expert. The people in your business are the experts in specific fields. When writing content to support your business, you will lean into your understanding. This will often go beyond facts. Great writing is a reflection of experience as well as information. ChatGPT can give you facts, with varying degrees of accuracy, but it doesn’t have your experience.

5. Sources and a legal unknown

ChatGPT is based on another AI tool called GPT-3. This was trained with millions of books as well as data from internet databases and other sources. According to its creators, OpenAI, it has learned by reading about 300 billion words. When ChatGPT returns an answer you have no way of knowing what sources it used and, unless you do some follow up, whether its responses are actually original. This could lead to legal issues like those Dall-E, the image processing equivalent of ChatGPT, has faced.

ChatGPT can be a helpful tool. Like Wikipedia and other online resources, it can be a useful starting point for research or to get ideas. But it can’t replace the creativity, awareness and experience that human writers bring.

Anthony Caruana and Kathryn Van Kuyk are co-CEOs of Media-Wize.

Feature Image Credit: shutterstock.

By Anthony Caruana

Sourced from SmartCompany

In News

Entrepreneurs Aren’t Using AI To Its Full Potential: Here’s How To Think Bigger

March 7, 2023 No Comments

By Jodie Cook

AI has been in existence for a while but Chat GPT has advanced the uptake among business owners. The user-friendly interface, insightful and often surprising answers have been attracting entrepreneurs in to see what they can do. The number of Chat GPT-based products on Product Hunt has exploded and is only set to rise. The tools are being created in their hundreds and millions of entrepreneurs are using them.

How entrepreneurs are using AI

Most of the uptake of AI among entrepreneurs is in using the tools that already exist to save time doing things they already did. Much of this has been in the form of content. They are using AI copywriting and image generator tools and asking Chat GPT to generate headlines and captions and even entire sales pages, marketing email sequences and calls to action. They are writing blog posts for SEO with the help of a robot assistant who seems to have all the answers and can put together copy of any style in no time at all.

Some entrepreneurs are afraid of AI. They see it as their competition, and they are worried their margins and USPs are being squeezed by the technology. Akin to the 19^th century luddites of the industrial revolution who smashed up sewing machines, AI is their sworn enemy and they are spending energy highlighting its obvious flaws to prove how they are better. They’re writing policies to keep AI out of hiring, content creation and artistic licensing, forgetting that humans too have flaws and biases.

A separate bunch of entrepreneurs have turned into detectives. They are concerned with figuring out what is real and what has been generated by AI. A friend owns a content site monetized using affiliate links and she hires copywriters to generate over a hundred articles a week. Suspicious that some of her copywriters aren’t writing the articles by hand, she’s investing in AI plagiarism tools to catch them out. Academics are developing more strict methods to ensure students don’t submit essays written by AI copywriting tools.

Every single one of these groups is missing the potential and thinking too small about how to incorporate AI into their business.

How entrepreneurs should be using AI

In 2015 I watched Moley Robotics launch the prototype of its robot kitchen. A pair of animatronic hands was trained by a chef to cut vegetables, prepare ingredients, and stir pasta. It could make an entire family’s meal at the touch of a button, and it even loaded a dishwasher afterwards. I thought about who the winners in this scenario were, should it become widely adopted in the future. The winners: the owners of Moley Robotics, the chef whose hands were used to train the robot, and the people consuming the food who haven’t had to make it themselves or pay a human to have it cooked for them.

Who were the losers? All the other chefs, whose hands weren’t used to train the robot and whose customers were now being looked after by the robot chef. The gap between the winners and losers is huge here. So which side would you rather be on?

Entrepreneurs aren’t using AI to its full potential: here’s how to think bigger. getty

The future of AI is winner takes all. But this isn’t about writing headlines and submitting fake essays, it’s about actually building the tools that billions of people will use. Adopting a winner takes all mentality is futile if you look to make incremental changes within your existing business. The potential of AI can’t be squeezed into your human-made schedule and services. Think bigger, or become obsolete.

A favourite problem-solving tool of Elon Musk is thinking about the platonic ideal. This means, rather than bodge AI into what currently exists, think of what could be created from scratch. Imagine nothing existed. Pretend you didn’t have a business that operated in a fixed way, but a blank slate to reimagine how you deliver the same outcome for your customers using AI. Thinking about what already exists will only confine your thinking and limit your results.

What’s the potential of AI for business?

Instead of a commercial law firm thinking about how to use AI writing tools to tidy up contracts and remove typos, they should think about what they can build so their customer feels safe and protected legally when running their business. Instead of a personal assistant worrying that they are out of a job once their clients realise there’s an existing tool for everything they do, they can use their expertise to design the tools and create new ones that work better.

A personal stylist needn’t worry that Chat GPT can give their customers tailored style advice just as they could, they should be thinking about how they can appear on every professional’s wardrobe, as the person they ask what they should wear every single day. The technology makes it possible, but most entrepreneurs are fixated on the wrong things and failing to see the potential for themselves.

The potential of AI is that we exist in harmony alongside it, and we use it to advance our lives. In the future, human-only generated content will just be in a different category. In the sport of powerlifting there are drugs-tested and non-drugs tested federations. If you aren’t drugs tested, it’s assumed you’re using performance-enhancing drugs. This will be the case with AI: if you haven’t specifically stated you aren’t using the tools, it is assumed that you are. And why wouldn’t you? Embrace what exists to spend more time doing what only your human self can do.

What’s in the future?

In the future is Chat GPT 3.5 and 4, and a whole host of alternatives, plus every tool that is being dreamed up and developed into reality by visionary entrepreneurs. There’s a widening gap between those with their head in the sand and those grabbing AI with both hands. Your business could be unrecognisable in a few months if you harness the technology without the constraints you’ve been working within so far. Figuring out how to do this is no easy feat.

While there are benefits in using the tools that already exist, doing this alone might mean you tread water until you’re overtaken. Although an efficient strategy in the short term, it’s not going to matter if your entire industry is upturned by a few key players that thought several steps ahead. Level up your visionary thinking and make yourself one of them.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Jodie Cook

Entrepreneur psychology and how to run a business without it running you. Post-exit entrepreneur, author of Ten Year Career and Forbes’ 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe 2017.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

6 Free AI Text Generator Tools To Use At Work In 2023

February 16, 2023 No Comments

By Hayley Folk

Sometimes, you need to write, but you don’t have the time or energy to do it for yourself. But that’s okay. In 2023, we have AI writing generator tools to help you at work — no matter what you’re working on. With the rise of artificial intelligence being used in content creation, customer support and more, AI writing generator tools are becoming essential tools in helping stay competitive, efficient and thorough in your work.

Whether you’re looking to create a prompt for a project, write a business plan or simply answer an email, we’ve gathered the six best (and free!) AI text generator tools to use at work in 2023.

1. HiveMind

HiveMind

Looking to write a list of must-haves for a company party? What about a new article for your content calendar? HiveMind —Hive’s newest feature — has got your back. Using this innovative, free and brand-new tool, you can take full advantage of AI technology to make your workday run more efficiently, streamline your workflow, and best of all, write amazing content. All you had to do is write a prompt, such as: “Write an email back to John about meeting for coffee next Wednesday.”

Use HiveMind to:

Write amazing articles
Respond to emails automatically
Generate business plans
Create lists
Create original graphics to use on social media, your website, etc.

And more. In a matter of seconds, there you have it. This is truly a top pick for AI text generator tools that is easy, simple and extremely proficient in helping anyone write.

Cost: FREE

2. WordAi

WordAi is an AI writing generator that helps you create:

Quick and easy blog posts
White papers
Web content.

It uses natural language technologies to create human-quality content, ensuring that content appears more unique and professional. WordAi is also available in a range of languages, making it a perfect tool for companies looking to do business in international markets.

3. Quillbot

Quillbot is an AI writing tool that allows users to produce high-quality content in just minutes. It uses a powerful algorithm to automatically generate personalized content. It can:

Provide accurate and interesting reading experiences
Offer potential customers an improved level of engagement with your brand

4. GPT-3

GPT-3 is an AI writing tool developed by OpenAI, a leading AI research lab. It provides a powerful writing assistant that can:

Craft content from scratch based on prompts from the user
Allows users to create more natural-sounding articles and blog posts with fewer grammatical mistakes

5. Automated Insights

Automated Insights is an AI writing tool that leverages natural language processing technology to generate insights from data. It can:

Generate reports, summaries, and insights quickly and accurately
Has the ability to take raw data and turn it into written insights that can prove to be very useful for a marketing or sales team

6. DeepCrawl

DeepCrawl is an AI writing tool that helps users create content that is optimized for search engines. It can:

Use natural language processing techniques to scrape content from the web and create content that is more relevant and visible in search engine results

As AI writing technologies become more accessible and affordable, they are likely to become indispensable tools in business operations in 2023. Are you ready to try it out an AI text generator for yourself?

By Hayley Folk

Sourced from Hive

In News

AI is finally good at stuff, and that’s a problem

January 17, 2023 No Comments

By Rebecca Heilweil

Here’s why you’ve been hearing so much about ChatGPT.

A few weeks ago, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick told his MBA students to play around with GPT, an artificial intelligence model, and see if the technology could write an essay based on one of the topics discussed in his course. The assignment was, admittedly, mostly a gimmick meant to illustrate the power of the technology. Still, the algorithmically generated essays — although not perfect and a tad over-reliant on the passive voice — were at least reasonable, Mollick recalled. They also passed another critical test: a screening by Turnitin, a popular anti-plagiarism software. AI, it seems, had suddenly gotten pretty good.

It certainly feels that way right now. Over the past week or so, screenshots of conversations with ChatGPT, the newest iteration of the AI model developed by the research firm OpenAI, have gone viral on social media. People have directed the tool, which is freely available online, to make jokes, write TV episodes, compose music, and even debug computer code — all things I got the AI to do, too. More than a million people have now played around with the AI, and even though it doesn’t always tell the truth or make sense, it’s still a pretty good writer and an even more confident bullshitter. Along with the recent updates to DALL-E, OpenAI’s art-generation software, and Lensa AI, a controversial platform that can produce digital portraits with the help of machine learning, GPT is a stark wakeup call that artificial intelligence is starting to rival human ability, at least for some things.

“I think that things have changed very dramatically,” Mollick told Recode. “And I think it’s just a matter of time for people to notice.”

If you’re not convinced, you can try it yourself here. The system works like any online chatbot, and you can simply type out and submit any question or prompt you want the AI to address.

How does GPT even work? At its core, the technology is based on a type of artificial intelligence called a language model, a prediction system that essentially guesses what it should write, based on previous texts it has processed. GPT was built by training its AI with an extraordinarily large amount of data, much of which comes from the vast supply of data on the internet, along with billions of dollars, including initial funding from several prominent tech billionaires, including Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. ChatGPT was also trained on examples of back-and-forth human conversation, which helps it make its dialogue sound a lot more human, as a blog post published by OpenAI explains.

OpenAI is trying to commercialize its technology, but this current release is supposed to allow the public to test it. The company made headlines two years ago when it released GPT-3, an iteration of the tech that could produce poems, role-play, and answer some questions. This newest version of the technology is GPT-3.5, and ChatGPT, its corresponding chatbot, is even better at text generation than its predecessor. It’s also pretty good at following instructions, like, “Write a Frog and Toad short story where Frog invests in mortgage-backed securities.” (The story ends with Toad following Frog’s advice and investing in mortgage-backed securities, concluding that “sometimes taking a little risk can pay off in the end”).

The technology certainly has its flaws. While the system is theoretically designed not to cross some moral red lines — it’s adamant that Hitler was bad — it’s not difficult to trick the AI into sharing advice on how to engage in all sorts of evil and nefarious activities, particularly if you tell the chatbot that it’s writing fiction. The system, like other AI models, can also say biased and offensive things. As my colleague Sigal Samuel has explained, an earlier version of GPT generated extremely Islamophobic content, and also produced some pretty concerning talking points about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in China.

Both GPT’s impressive capabilities and its limitations reflect the fact that the technology operates like a version of Google’s smart compose writing suggestions, generating ideas based on what it has read and processed before. For this reason, the AI can sound extremely confident while not displaying a particularly deep understanding of the subject it’s writing about. This is also why it’s easier for GPT to write about commonly discussed topics, like a Shakespeare play or the importance of mitochondria.

“It wants to produce texts that it deemed to be likely, given everything that it has seen before,” explains Vincent Conitzer, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon. “Maybe it sounds a little bit generic at times, but it writes very clearly. It will probably rehash points that have often been made on that particular topic because it has, in effect, learned what kinds of things people say.”

So for now, we’re not dealing with an all-knowing bot. Answers provided by the AI were recently banned from the coding feedback platform StackOverflow because they were very likely to be incorrect. The chatbot is also easily tripped up by riddles (though its attempts to answer are extremely funny). Overall, the system is perfectly comfortable making stuff up, which obviously makes no sense upon human scrutiny. These limitations might be comforting to people worried that the AI could take their jobs, or eventually pose a safety threat to humans.

But AI is getting better and better, and even this current version of GPT can already do extremely well at certain tasks. Consider Mollick’s assignment. While the system certainly wasn’t good enough to earn an A, it still did pretty well. One Twitter user said that, on a mock SAT exam, ChatGPT scored around the 52 percentile of test takers. Kris Jordan, a computer science professor at UNC, told Recode that when he assigned GPT his final exam, the chatbot received a perfect grade, far better than the median score for the humans taking his course. And yes, even before ChatGPT went live, students were using all sorts of artificial intelligence, including earlier versions of GPT, to complete their assignments. And they’re probably not getting flagged for cheating. (Turnitin, the anti-plagiarism software maker, did not respond to multiple requests for comment).

Right now, it’s not clear how many enterprising students might start using GPT, or if teachers and professors will figure out a way to catch them. Still, these forms of AI are already forcing us to wrestle with what kinds of things we want humans to continue to do, and what we’d prefer to have technology figure out instead.

“My eighth grade math teacher told me not to rely on a calculator since I won’t have one in my pocket all the time when I grow up,” Phillip Dawson, an expert who studies exam cheating at Deakin University, told Recode. “We all know how that turned out.

Feature Image Credit: Carol Yepes

By Rebecca Heilweil

Rebecca Heilweil is a reporter at Vox covering emerging technology, artificial intelligence, and the supply chain.

Sourced from Vox