“What shall we do with our shiny new toy?”
Image created with Midjourney.
AI Won’t Target Your Audience.
When you’re trying to reach the right audience, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available. AI automation feels like a content targeting solution, especially when your machine-learning assistant can mine through terabytes of data to get you the leads you need.
The problem? Without human intervention, the filter system simply is not reliable.
As one of many recent examples, an ER doctor used ChatGPT to help diagnose his patients. The AI platform had just passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam – impressive! – but only got a proper diagnosis for half of the patients. “Not bad,” Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver wrote in Fast Company. “Then again, a 50 percent success rate in the context of an emergency room is also not good.”
Also true for your business. How about only half of your content being on point? It’s essentially taking, for instance, that 1 percent click-through rate on your current campaign and cutting those results in half.
Here at Contrend, we’re not comfortable with those odds at all. Instead, we view AI tools as just that: tools. They need to be used properly within the context of your goals, your audience’s needs, and your resources available.
So, at Contrend, we combine the machine-learning intelligence of our proprietary content analysis platform with the expert-driven content-creation expertise of Immedia Content. One fuels the other. It also creates an incredible checks-and-balances system, so the content gets sharper as the platform learns, just as the platform gets wiser from the editorial leadership. They operate in unison.
Banking your business on any new AI-driven technology is as precarious as travelling with only a physical map. Yes, a map will give you the terrain, but no terrain is fixed: Recent construction, sudden accidents, or even long-term road closures will never be updated on paper cartography. To wit, as of Spring 2023, ChatGPT’s knowledge cut-off ended in Fall 2021 – making the comparison to an outdated map quite literal! It is the latest technology pulling from at least 18 months ago. How different was your world a year and a half ago?
Instead, future success stories will be made with a hybrid model. A map and a compass, if you will. The map’s fixed data – the AI-driven approach – is convenient as a starting point, from coming up with new places to explore to knowing what paths have already been laid. The compass’ centering presence – the human-curated approach – is the immediate pulse of the culture, from knowing what shifts are happening in the territory to seeing where the gaps are in previously documented paths. In other words, innovation isn’t possible by just computing raw, outdated information, no matter how powerful the platform.
Most notably, humans at your company still have one leg up on the latest AI: common sense. At the recent TED 2023 Conference, we at Contrend attended tech innovator Yejin Choi’s talk, “Why AI Is Incredibly Smart and Shockingly Stupid”. As she elaborates: “AI is passing the bar exam. Does that mean that AI is robust at common sense?… So suppose I left five clothes to dry out in the sun, and it took them five hours to dry completely. How long would it take to dry 30 clothes? GPT-4, the newest, greatest AI system, says 30 hours. Not good.”
If your business wants to use AI to level up your audience targeting and content impact, then you’re heading in the right direction. But treating modern AI like an electric-vehicle cruise control is reckless and just as dangerous.
Make sure you have someone at the wheel.
Contrend’s proprietary analytic system will identify gaps in your specific content landscape, be it topic, format, genre, tone, style or length. We then enable and empower you to create a targeted and bespoke content strategy to open new marketing frontiers for you. We’re ready to talk anytime! Drop us an email at info@contrend.com.
