Mildly terrifying,” is the term that Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds used after reading an advertisement script created by Open AI’s ChatGPT for Mint Mobiles. After having tried out this extraordinary phenomenon for ourselves, we second his opinion. But first, a full disclosure – this story is free of Chat GPT inputs.
Artificial Intelligence has been a hot topic for quite some time now, and its applications have been found in almost every sphere. Brands have also been trying their hands on AI for the past 2-3 years, but new and emerging innovations within the AI sphere have people talking and speculating about the number of ways in which these AI models can be used. Case in point here is the all new ChatGPT. Whether they will be a boon or bane, remains a mystery.
Recently, Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds asked the AI powered chatbot to write an ad script for his network operator, Mint Mobile, and received compelling results. Indian real-estate portal Housing.com also tried their hands at ChatGPT for their digital marketing campaign. Jeevansaathi.com created a welcome message at the start of the New Year for its LinkedIn family with the help of Chat GPT, at the end of which they wrote – *Sends email to HR to pause copywriter hiring (emoji).
To be fair, it does have its drawbacks, as we saw when Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft, asked the chatbot to name the best South Indian dish at the Future Ready Technology Summit in Bengaluru, and it inaccurately answered ‘biryani’ along with ‘idli’, ‘dosa’, and ‘vada’.
As helpful as it claims to be, and being widely available, unlike other tech tools, there are many questions that have been doing the rounds – Can ChatGPT be used in advertising and marketing; will these generative AI models replace human involvement in content creation; and will it be a threat to the advertising industry by taking up jobs done by humans?
“The emergence of ChatGPT is a significant development for humanity, akin to the invention of calculators. This AI has the capability to pass professional legal and medical exams, and can perform a wide range of tasks, from telling jokes to solving complex mathematical equations, using the same underlying model. In my view, ChatGPT (and similar language model companies) will become a crucial tool for any professional in the field of knowledge,” affirms Ashray Malhotra, CEO, Rephrase.ai.
According to Swapan Rajdev, Co-Founder & CTO, Haptik, ChatGPT has really unveiled the future of AI for us. He says, “Generative AI models have been around for a very long time, but for the first time, we’re seeing something that works really well. Being conversational in nature makes it very easily usable as well. The problem of technology is that a lot of great things are being built, but it’s just very hard to use and even understand what’s happening.
“OpenAI has built a very good machine learning system, and also made it very usable. It was obviously a good strategy as they made it available to everyone. In my opinion, until now, AI and ML were very techy world things, but with ChatGPT, the world is seeing the power of AI and it has really shown us what the world can look like in a couple of years from now.”
What is ChatGPT?
Though ChatGPT has become a buzzword with people across the world experimenting with it, many are still unaware of the technology that goes behind the answers we are receiving from the chatbot. There’s a lot more to demystify, let’s hear from the experts…
“Chat GPT is trained on a massive amount of text data, such as books, articles, and websites. Once it has been trained, it can then generate new text that is similar to the training data, but not an exact copy. This allows it to respond to prompts or questions in a way that is similar to how a human would,” explains Malhotra.
Elaborating further, he explains that the chatbot works by predicting the next word in the conversation based on the context of the conversation. “It uses the context to generate a probability distribution over the vocabulary, and samples the next word from this distribution. As the conversation continues, the model updates its understanding of the context.”
Anuja Dhawan, Co-founder, Dubverse.ai, shares that ChatGPT is a system that is programmed (trained) to generate human-like responses from any given text input. “So when you ask creative questions like ‘Write me an ad copy for an AI video dubbing company,’ it guesses the upcoming words and tries to keep the overall sentence coherent. Which in turn, looks like it is giving the correct answers.”
Explaining in a layman’s term how ChatGPT works, Sanjeev Menon, Co-Founder & Head of Product, E42 shares, “Typically when you hear a word, there are a lot of contexts that pop up in our head. When you hear two words in an incomplete sentence, you automatically fill in the blanks. For example, sometimes in our conversations, somebody says half a sentence but you are able to complete the sentence. How do you do that? It comes from your experience with the language and the topic itself. Similarly, a generative model understands the distribution of words across a wide language space and based on the distribution of words in that itself, it is able to look at and predict word by word.”
Impact on Advertising
As ChatGPT is capable of doing most of the tasks which advertising agencies are burdened with, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of impact it’ll have on the overall advertising industry.
Yash Kulshresth, CCO, Atom takes a brave stance and declares, “We are not scared of tech. We embrace it and evolve together. For us, it’s a new employee. Get used to its quirks, appreciate strengths, and laugh when it says something stupid. Any function that requires more intelligence and comparatively lesser thinking will be a sweet spot for ChatGPT.” He also added that ChatGPT will eventually replace copywriters who have suboptimal ideas and writing. “As I said, it’s a new employee with a pen, lots of data, and no emotional matter. If you are the same, find a new career.”
“More than brands, agencies want to use ChatGPT creatively. Everyone’s trying to crack a ChatGPT version of the ‘Buy My Cancer’ campaign. We only hear a little from brands. They are intrigued but are yet to be interested. Also, even if we use AI for copy, art, music, or anything, it will be self-destructive to reveal it to brands. But we are exploring ways where we can provide solutions to aid growth and better customer service using ChatGPT. It’s in the pipeline. ChatGPT is learning about us. We are learning about it. What a weird world!” he shares.
“It has the potential to usher in more agility. I daresay, some of the time that creative professionals spend on Google for research or inspiration may actually get diverted to ChatGPT instead, where they could get more structured responses,” shares Navin Kansal, Chief Creative Officer, 21N78E Creative Labs. “We have intuitively learnt over a passage of time on how to frame keywords and phrases better to get more relevant search results on Google. Likewise, smart use of prompts (or prompt engineering as they call it) can help agencies and creative professionals to use ChatGPT to their advantage.”
Speaking about cost optimization, Kansal further shares, “We are seeing time optimization but cost optimisation is unlikely to happen in the near term. In the end it is still an informed human who will take calls on the quality and efficacy of the AI generated content.”
“Creativity is clearly the ability of a human mind, but inspiration can come from anywhere. I believe ChatGPT could be one such source,” says Rammohan Sundaram, Country Head and Managing Partner – Integrated Media, DDB Mudra Group. “It could help in aiding creative copy and brand planning functions to begin with, and over time can spread into decision sciences that will have direct impact on media planning.
“Personally, I don’t think it will impact jobs in advertising to a large extent, as these AI tools always recommend having a human review before your content/copy goes public,” observes Vishal Chinchankar, CEO, Madison Digital & Madison Alpha. “ChatGPT works brilliantly when you give the right stimulus that would still be handled by humans. And it will just push the boundaries for professionals to be more creative in their approach. Yes, but I strongly feel that if people in advertising do not adapt to AI, they will be outdated.”
Girish Lakshminarayana, CTO, SingleInterface believes that it is probably more of an opportunity than a threat for the advertising industry, just like the internet was. “Emergent tech like this always opens up new channels. I feel optimistic about it. The optimism comes from me being a target of an ad. If you ask me, I would rather be shown an ad by ChatGPT rather than Google. Google knows me at a keyword level, while ChatGPT knows the context, a lot more about what I am working on and my interests at a deeper, more semantic level. So I would imagine that the ads it shows will only be more relevant to things on my mind. If it’s good for me, it should be good for the ad company too!”
Impact on Marketing
Microsoft and OpenAI have said that businesses can add ChatGPT to their chatbots in order to increase its effectiveness for better customer engagement. While ChatGPT can largely be used by brands for customer service, there are many other parts of the business where the AI powered chatbot can play a significant role. Moreover, AI alone doing multiple jobs that once required many human hours might also reduce the cost of a campaign. Will brands demand the cost benefit to be passed on to them?
“If it is capable of replacing a human, which to me is highly unlikely (unless people resort to getting dependent on it instead of using it for inspiration), then naturally AI based premium solution licences can be procured by the brand directly, and they can just deploy it as per their requirement,” explains Sundaram. “That will mean reduction in costs for sure, which will also mean loss of jobs. I for one would therefore want to believe that for the betterment of mankind, people will use it as inspiration rather than a dependency.”
Speaking about the demand for AI based solutions from brands, Niraj Ruparel, Head of Mobile & Emerging Tech – GroupM India & Emerging Tech Lead – WPP India, shares, “There is definitely an interest in AI based solutions from brands. But currently, it is only being treated as a way to enhance or optimize their marketing initiatives. But it will be a while before they start looking at AI to create their campaigns. The human element is very important to maintain the emotional and cultural connect. So, as long as this situation persists; marketing costs will not reduce. These tools will only add value to the existing work that is being done.”
“AI language models like ChatGPT are expected to have a profound impact on brands and marketing. I am not scared to admit that ChatGPT can create a revolution. They have the potential to revolutionise the way brands interact with customers, create content, and automate tasks. However, it means freeing up resources for more strategic initiatives and taking marketing efforts to the next level.” says Mustufa Arsiwalla - Head of Marketing, Bel.
ChatGPT vs. Search Engines
Search engines have been a part and parcel of our internet culture and usage for the longest time. Until yesterday, they seemed undefeatable. But now with the development of ChatGPT, the question is whether it is good enough to challenge search engines like Google? As per news reports, Microsoft is looking to incorporate OpenAI’s platform into Bing to give Google a run for its money.
“In terms of their impact on search engines like Google, it’s possible that AI-generated content could be used to create spam or low-quality content that could negatively impact the user experience. However, search engines have sophisticated algorithms and systems in place to detect and filter out such content, so it is unlikely that AI-generated content will significantly impact the overall quality of search results,” says Malhotra.
According to him, Models like ChatGPT are not designed to be a replacement for search engines like Google. “While they can generate text based on a given prompt, they don’t have the same capabilities as search engines in terms of indexing and ranking large amounts of information. Moreover, search engines like Google use a variety of algorithms and techniques, which are constantly evolving and improving, and are currently much more sophisticated than what a single language model like GPT-3 could offer. ChatGPT is not a direct competition for search engines, but it can be used to enhance the search results in some way,” he explains.
“ChatGPT is only used by a lot of tech enthusiasts. Penetrating as deep as Google beyond tier 2 cities could be a challenge for whoever is trying to build the future of search engines. It is hard to adopt apps that force you to change your behaviour in general,” notes Dhawan.
“Google is a company with a lot of depth into generic AI and cognitive services. It is impossible for ChatGPT to finish Google, that too in a short span of time,” opines Menon. However, he further adds that with Microsoft integrating ChatGPT into all their products, the role of Google in our lives will subside.
Benefits of Generative AI/ ChatGPT
Generative AI, specifically ChatGPT, can perform a wide range of tasks, from telling jokes to solving complex mathematical equations. Many also claim ChatGPT to be the most capable AI system available to mankind right now. And there have been cases where people have used the AI powered chatbot for better performance.
According to Ruparel, Generative AI tools can help in creating content on a real time basis for the user. Since Generative AI can create images, blogs, and so many other creative assets in almost real time and at scale, it is going to enable advertisers to leverage this at scale.
He believes that for content creators, it is an equally challenging moment as it is an opportunity. “Creative professionals cannot afford to miss the bus in not being able to train on these tools – else, they will get left behind very quickly. This is also an opportunity to pick a niche and go deep into it – becoming a subject matter expert or getting extremely good at journalistic research.”
Vishal Jacob, Chief Transformation & Digital Officer, Wavemaker India shares that ChatGPT is a tool that can aid creative professionals in multiple ways. For instance creative professionals can use ChatGPT as a sounding board to brainstorm and churn and create new ideas around a topic. It can also help in giving new perspectives around a topic which a professional wouldn’t have thought of. The other use case is how it can help content writers to produce more articles around a topic. For instance, if a content writer needs to churn a couple of articles for a website they can now, through the help of ChatGPT , churn a lot more within a short span of time.
While this is certainly an added benefit for businesses, taking the help of such a tool may lead to the dulling of the mind. The creative process that an individual goes through could be severely affected if he or she is wired to use the tool on a regular basis.
Challenges/Demerits
As they say, every coin has two sides, there’s nothing that comes without its challenges and demerits. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT became a star in AI systems in no time, controversies around it have already started.
“It also raises a plethora of questions around plagiarism, originality and lack of an emotional/ human connect,” observes Ruparel, while adding that there will be a sudden surge in fake testimonials and product reviews that will be difficult to track.
ChatGPT has been banned in some public schools in New York City and Seattle, furthermore, it was also prohibited at top French Universities. Following the global trend, Bengaluru-based RV University has issued an on-campus ban on the chatbot. This also raises a fear on whether ChatGPT can really solve academic assignments or tests?
It has been found that the chatbot was able to pass a University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business final exam, four exams from University of Minnesota’s Law School, and parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing exams. However, it didn’t ace those exams, and only cleared them with low grades.
“The overall problem is that it is not grounded on reality. It might not give you factually correct information.” opines Dhawan. “We at Dubverse are also working on building a layer on top of ChatGPT so creators can use it better.”
Aid or a threat to the Creative industry?
Creativity has always been a human element. However, we are seeing ChatGPT do copywriting, content writing, etc., which are essentially some creative jobs wherein humans excel. Although the extent of its creativity is not known yet, and it’s still evolving, will it be an aid or a threat to jobs in the field of creativity?
“If everyone has the same tool, the value of humans increases multi-fold. Creativity will never be automated. Thinking cannot be automated,” asserts Kulshresth, while adding that intelligence is data, and thinking is what we do with it. He suggests, “Focus on thinking, and use AI for its intelligence.”
Jacob is of the opinion that ChatGPT won’t be a threat to any copywriter. He believes that it’ll only enhance their productivity. “For instance, if an organization earlier needed five writers, maybe now they need less, or the other way to look at it is if those five writers can produce one or two creatives/ articles a day, maybe now they could produce ten. So, it will improve the productivity of writers rather than replacing them.”
“I believe it could be a boon if used as inspiration by all copy writers, but if they are going to use it as a shortcut to reduce their thinking capabilities then organizations in the future would rather work with GPT directly instead of paying salary to a copywriter,” opines Sundaram.
“I have seen many phases in my 25 years of journey where it sounded like human jobs are at stake, but I believe people who are always learning and agile never face any challenge,” says Chinchankar.
As of today, we have learnt that OpenAI has now developed a tool that will determine whether a given text is written by a human or a bot. Dear readers, welcome to a brave new world.
