The Marketer's AI Toolkit: Promises, Pitfalls and the Unavoidable Human Touch

We’re more than halfway through a year where the news cycle has been dominated by AI, both as a topic and as the author, it seems. 

The last time I explored generative AI was to report that 1,000 AI experts, tech entrepreneurs, researchers, backers and scientists signed an open letter calling on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4” for any risks they may pose to be properly studied. 

One of the signatories was Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, who, in a keynote address at a Chinese government-backed AI conference this month, said: “I do think we should be very careful with development of, especially, artificial general intelligence, or very deep intelligence. [...] Artificial general intelligence is a computer intelligence that is smarter than all humans at everything. That is something we should be concerned about.” 

From concerns about job-stealing to outright calls to ban it, AI, it seems, isn’t going anywhere (yet). So, if you can’t beat it, join it. 

That’s right; I’ve been having a dabble. In fact, the whole Marmalade team has. It would be foolish to ignore these potentially game-changing tools as a tech-led recruitment marketing business. I have to confess; we were quite taken with a few of them. But we’ve also moved beyond the honeymoon stage. As great as they are, the current limitations are clear. 

When it comes to generative AI tools used for content, like ChatGPT and Google Bard, that rapid result when you press enter is overwhelming. “It wrote a blog post! And the thing actually makes sense!” 

Granted, the first blog IS great, as is the first social media post you ask it to create. Beyond this, however, you might notice everything starts looking a bit…same-y. No matter how different your prompts, the little blighter churns out content similar in structure. It’s got to the point where the Marmalade team can now spot AI-generated content on blogs, social media posts, newsletters, emails, etc. If you have the patience to keep re-instructing the AI to get that tone spot-on, you might get something close to a satisfactory finished product that sounds you. However, you’ll still need to go through it to make sure it makes sense, rewrite parts and add your own flavour. 

So, in the name of transparency, here are our findings on some of the latest AI tools and how we currently use them: 

ChatGPT/Google Bard 

There are a lot of tools out there for content generation and these are the main ones we’ve messed around with. ChatGPT can only pull information up to 2019, so don’t ask for any hot takes or predictions. Everything we’ve ever generated has been rewritten, so we mainly use it as a thought starter – particularly if we’re having one of those days when the cursor is blinking at us. We find it’s better in short form, so if you need a snappy headline for a press release or a snappy slogan for a banner ad, get on it. 

MidJourney/DALL·E 2

The ability of AI image generators ranges significantly, with some giving you the option to get a couple of freebies and others demanding cash before they display their wares. If you have a Canva subscription, you can get a few free images daily. We’ve tried a few, and the results are hit-and-miss but mostly hilarious. I’ll be honest; we’ve not used AI image generators for anything other than to have a laugh (celebrity faces in weird places, anyone?). We can see the potential for this tech to help explain bigger campaign concepts to clients, but it’s not something for us at this stage. 

Gamma/Tome

AI-generated presentations sound like heaven. I don’t know anyone who loves putting together slides for a presentation. Tools like Gamma and Tome promise to take away this hassle, generating impressively slick presentations from text or even transforming existing Google Slides. As with the content generator tools, it requires you to tinker with the results to ensure the layout works and that it’s picked up on all the most important points. If you’re an established business with a slide template you’re happy with, it’s not for you and doesn’t save that much time once you’ve checked everything and shifted things around. 

There are other interesting tools, including Murf AI, which turns text into realistic human speech, and Fireflies.ai, an app that transcribes and summarises voice conversations, that we’ve just started exploring, too. I’ll report back with our thoughts. 

Most of the decent apps cost money, so if you want a complete AI suite, those subscriptions and costs to buy tokens will stack up. We concluded that, for a start-up with zero collateral, AI provides a highly-accessible pathway to a slick-looking business. In the same way that the likes of Squarespace and Wix enable companies to get the website of their dreams at a fraction of the cost, AI tools go some way in levelling the playing field and opening the door for start-ups and small businesses to compete at a higher level. 

That behind said (there’s always a caveat), the output of AI tools is only as good as the input. Trust us; it’s a fine art. The Marmalade team is currently undertaking certifications in Prompt Engineering to ensure we’re ahead of the curve and understand how to utilise AI effectively. So, while you have these access to these transformatively powerful engines, as with build-your-own-website programmes, you’ve got to know how to fuel it, steer it and (let’s carry on with the driving analogies while we’re on a roll) hand over the wheel to an expert when it gets too complicated. 

For more established businesses, the value of AI decreases. If you’ve got a tone of voice, a style guide, branding you’re happy with and brand awareness in the market, you’ll have more to do with whatever content or imagery an AI spits out. You’ll need to spend time amending, shaping and rewriting to make it reflect the brand your audience expects, knows and loves. That’s not to say you shouldn’t play around with it; you might find the perfect tool that makes an aspect of your job a lot easier. Just remember to trust your knowledge and experience over the AI. You know the business and its quirks and intricacies much better than a machine ever could. 

Are you utilising AI tools? Got any that you recommend? Have any changed your life?! We want to hear about them. Get in touch today.