Executive summary
In today’s digital marketplace, content marketing is an essential growth enabler for brands, because it drives brand visibility and discoverability. Generative AI will help to optimise content marketing ROI and accelerate growth. But it is not a cure-all: it must be used selectively and combined effectively with experienced creative talent to ensure the best results.
The promise of generative AI
From generating text that’s indistinguishable from human-created content, to producing award-winning visual art: generative AI is on every CMO’s mind right now—and for good reason. Every brand can benefit from the speed and scalability of AI-generated content.
Brands that need to refresh large amounts of legacy content (such as product pages) benefit even more from AI. Now, they have the ability to perform large, complex content refreshes that would previously have been impossible.
While there’s plenty to be excited about, it’s important to understand what generative AI can do, and what it cannot do (yet). The good news is: generative AI already has the power to improve your marketing ROI and help your brand grow.
The brands embracing this technology right now are gaining a powerful head-start in the content marketing environment of the future. But you’ll need to take the right approach if you want to get the maximum benefit while avoiding significant risks. In this article, we’ll show you how.
How does generative AI work?
Generative AI consists of 3 basic ingredients:
- An algorithmic model that contains parameters which enable it to make predictions based on data
- A very large dataset for the model to analyse and learn from
- The computing power to run the model and quickly generate content
The dataset used to train OpenAI’s GPT-3 (the model used in ChatGPT), for example, was around 570 GB in size—that’s around 300 billion words of text from websites, books and other online sources (over 510,000 times the length of Tolstoy’s War and Peace). GPT-4, the successor model to GPT-3, was trained on images in addition to a reportedly much larger text dataset.
AI technology like this works by analysing huge volumes of data. It identifies natural patterns of human language and learns to replicate them on demand. So, when a user types in a prompt, the model generates a response by predicting what a human would most likely write.
How does generative AI benefit content marketers?
Marketers are already using generative AI to do many tasks that previously only humans could do, including:
- Creating new content
- Translating content
- Refreshing existing content
Since generative AI produces new text within seconds, it dramatically speeds up the content creation process. That means faster go-to-market at a fraction of the cost. It also enables you to scale your content output, which is essential to maintaining your brand’s growth, visibility and competitiveness.
One of the most powerful applications for generative AI is refreshing large volumes of legacy content. Performing bulk tasks like this using human labour would be too expensive and too time-consuming. AI can automatically update and optimise that existing content, resulting in a far greater ROI.
What are the downsides of generative AI?
The possibilities of generative AI are mind-blowing, and the technology is continually improving. But the truth is: this technology is still in its early stages, and there are still bugs to be worked out. Even companies like OpenAI admit that there are limits to what AI can currently do. Models like GPT-3 and 4, for example, are prone to ‘hallucinating’: producing false information, yet stating it in such a way that it sounds believable.
For marketers, putting brand safety at risk is the greatest danger when using generative AI. In its current state, AI cannot yet be trusted to convey your brand’s personality and tone of voice accurately. While brands can already rely on AI for many important content-related tasks (like refreshing large volumes of product text), it’s still too risky to rely on AI alone to create content such as hero pieces with a high brand impact.
How brands can leverage AI while minimising the risks
Despite the risks, now is the time for brands to start leveraging the power of generative AI. Its unique ability to accelerate content production creates a strong competitive advantage. Brands that are slow to embrace this game-changing technology will struggle to grow.
So, how can your brand tap into generative AI without risking brand safety? The answer is to combine selected AI technologies with best-in-class human talent. Let the technology do what it does best, while relying on experienced creative talent to safeguard your brand and tone of voice.
Our solutions roadmap
Contentoo is a pioneer in the field of content marketing technology. In 2018, we launched Europe’s first full-service content marketing workflow platform, connecting brands with our global network of top creative talent. Today, we are leading brands into the AI-driven future of content with our unique approach: offering the right combination of customised generative AI and professional creative talent for every project.
Content technology and talent come together on Contentoo Creators Cloud, our workflow platform that helps you set the optimal mix of AI technology and human creative talent for each project. It offers augmented AI technology that’s trained on data specific to your brand and industry. At the same time, it gives you access to our global talent marketplace.
Our approach helps your brand to grow by leveraging the overwhelming benefits of generative AI, while safeguarding you against the risks. Our bespoke AI technology enables our clients to achieve up to a 200% increase in their content marketing ROI.
By adopting generative AI now, you gain an early competitive advantage. And you can count on our experience in the field of content marketing technology and talent to make your transition a smooth one.
Contact us to learn more about how generative AI can help your brand to grow faster.
