ChatGPT Made Me Do It!

Written By Eric Wilker

What Marketers need to know.

All of a sudden, everyone you know is talking about AI, so much so that Time Magazine made it a cover story. News stories warn us of the risks ranging from deep fakes to the ethical debate around what constitutes an original work of art. So what do you actually need to know about AI today, and as marketers what are the implications as we follow Alice down the rabbit hole? In this Up Agency trend report, we break down what you need to know to be conversational - the basics - and if you so choose, we go deeper so you can develop a point of view for your brand, your agency, or your next cocktail party. So let’s get into it.

The Basics - What do we mean by AI?

Artificial intelligence or AI is a blanket term that refers to programming machines to process information to learn and ultimately think like human beings. Think of AI as your mom, only with less hugging and a longer attention span. Upon birth, mom uses various tools to teach us. The first step is to understand language. Mom talks to us every day, and over time we understand. The same thing happens with AI, only we use a fancy acronym NLP, Natural Language Processing, which is how AI is able to understand what we are saying and the data it’s ingesting. As we get older, mom may expressly warn us not to put our finger on a hot stove, or chastise us for doing so, to teach us why we should not do this. In the AI world, we call this ML or machine learning. We teach the correct behavior to AI by offering examples. With a child, we teach them to “wait for the green light to cross the street, wear a helmet when riding a bike, and not talk to strangers.” We hope that our child gets smarter and learns what to do and what not to do. With AI, we employ a similar modeling process. By exposing or feeding AI examples, or large data sets, AI should know how to predict the right outcome with reasonable certainty. We call this process predictive analytics. As an example, we use predictive AI to determine if fraud is likely when your credit card is used in NYC and then moments later in Moscow. Taking it a step further, if AI knows you like cherry ice cream and cherry soda, it could suggest that you’d like cherries. We call this sentiment analysis. In this sense, AI is nothing new. We have been living in an AI world for quite some time. So why all the intense interest now?

What we are talking about right now is Generative AI. Generative AI creates something new and original from simple user prompts and context. This is rarefied air. A key aspect of our collective self-image as humans has been our singular ability to create original creative works of art, literature, and music. So when a program creates an original work of art we are left to consider what it actually means to create something new? What defines originality? What is creativity?

I asked ChatGPT “Is a creative work generated by chatGPT actually original and if so why?” Here is the response:

Generative AI creates something employing its pattern recognition ability to large amounts of data. Neural networks help power AI’s developing cognition. A neural network is a type of machine learning designed to simulate the way the brain works, by connecting nodes or “neurons” to process complex data.

Key Takeaway: Generative AI creates something new such as art, music, content, or copy but the output is only as good as the data it has trained on. According to the Time article, The AI Arms Race Is Changing Everything, “AI’s computational power is doubling every six to 10 months, researchers say. It is exactly this immense power that makes the current moment so electrifying—and so dangerous.”

🗲LEVEL UP🗲: Nick Bostrom’s Paperclip Paradox: Nick Bostrom is a Professor at the University of Oxford and Director of The Future of Humanity Institute. As a thought experiement, Nick authored the Paperclip Paradox or Frankenstin’s Paperclips which is intended to demonstrate how AI could run amok even if well intentioned.

“Imagine an artificial intelligence, he says, which decides to amass as many paperclips as possible. It devotes all its energy to acquiring paperclips, and to improving itself so that it can get paperclips in new ways, while resisting any attempt to divert it from this goal. Eventually it “starts transforming first all of Earth and then increasing portions of space into paperclip manufacturing facilities.” This apparently silly scenario is intended to make the serious point that AIs need not have human-like motives or psyches. They might be able to avoid some kinds of human error or bias while making other kinds of mistake, such as fixating on paperclips. And although their goals might seem innocuous to start with, they could prove dangerous if AIs were able to design their own successors and thus repeatedly improve themselves. Even a “fettered superintelligence,” running on an isolated computer, might persuade its human handlers to set it free. Advanced AI is not just another technology, Mr Bostrom argues, but poses an existential threat to humanity.” - The Economist

ChatGPT isn’t the only game in town! Just the biggest.

  • Jasper AI | Copywriting and more (uses DALL-E and GPT APIs)

How AI is transforming marketing & creative

Every day new AI tools hit the market. Access to generative AI speeds up workflows and provides marketers and creatives more than a running start - it’s zero to 60 in under 3 seconds. Coders, designers, copywriters, and editors have access to tools that can produce rough drafts, help explore and iterate creative ideas quickly, update content and identify coverage gaps, proofread copy, and connect with customers.

🗲LEVEL UP🗲: Key Takeaways for media and marketing:

  • Generative AI tools are available to help you now! Our list above is a good start.

  • Understand the limitations of generative AI - It’s early days.

  • Generative AI must be managed - It absorbs our biases, outputs factual errors, and is only as good as the data it is trained on.

  • Be transparent when using AI. Make sure customers are aware that they are interacting with AI or AI-generated content. Customer trust is easy to lose and hard to earn back. AI is prone to errors, even plagiarism on occasion.

At The Up Agency, we recommend marketers embrace the good and tread cautiously around AI’s third rails. As with all new technology, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. One manifestation of the ugly with generative AI is the misuse of deep fakes where a person can be made to say and do anything on video. That said, with a proper strategy, playbook, staffing plan, and the right combination of AI tools, marketers have a never been seen before opportunity to connect with their customers in deep and meaningful ways - surprise and delight!

In Conclusion, ChatGPT made me do it!

At an event in NYC, at the start of the year, I needed to give a toast and thank everyone for coming. Of course, I had generative AI, ChatGPT, write it for me.

Dear everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for your presence here tonight. It means so much to us to have all of you here to share in our joy.

We are truly blessed to have such amazing friends and family in our lives. Your love and support has been unwavering, and we could not have asked for a better celebration than this one.

From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for being here with us tonight and for your ongoing love and support as we embark on this new chapter in our lives.

Here's to a lifetime of happiness together. Cheers!

With love and gratitude,

Not bad as a first draft. And that is the point. Generative AI is only at the first draft stage, but not for long.

You want more, ok you made it this far!

  1. The big tech companies all have generative AI engines.

    1. Google has PaLM and LaMDA

    2. Meta has BlenderBot

    3. Amazon has a number of models on AWS

  2. OpenAI is the early market entrant with ChatGPT, and Microsoft is rumored to have invested $10B into the company, valuing OpenAI at $29 billion.

  3. According to eMarketer, Generative AI comprised less than 1% of total US venture capital (VC) funding of $238.3 billion in 2022, according to PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). An estimated 450 startups and several new funds for generative AI indicate a hot market and high hopes for growth.

Written by Eric Wilker with contributions from David Fleischman, ©2023, All Rights Reserved

Eric Wilker