Issue #15: 22 AI marketing ideas, FTC’s AI warning, Goldilocks chatbot, AutoGPT access

Good afternoon,

AI is a bit like a Hollywood celebrity these days–never far from the headlines with every move - the good, the bad and the ugly - being documented by both reporters and influencers.

This week the man known as the Godfather of AI (he was on the team that created the intellectual foundation for the AI developments we’re seeing today) has left Google and spoken out about the potential dangers of the tech.

Talking to the New York Times, Geoffrey Hinton shared his concerns that the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore” because of the amount of false content online.

He also said there are bigger issues at stake: “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

Meanwhile, the FTC has also been drawing a line in the sand on behalf of consumers. Their article - aptly named ‘The Luring Test’ - warns against using AI to unfairly deceive or harm.

Speaking directly to marketers, the FTC says they are “focusing intensely on how companies may choose to use AI technology, including new generative AI tools, in ways that can have actual and substantial impact on consumers.”

AI tech companies removing their ethics teams is also frowned upon in the article. While they are not named by the FTC, Microsoft was reported to have done exactly this earlier this year.

So how–as marketers–can we produce excellent, effective and ethical work?

1. Sense of taste.

2. Discernment.

3. Judgment.

4. Perspective.

5. Wisdom.

These five elements will help you know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. You can find more details on all five here. But before you do…

In today’s issue:

• The AI tool for marketers that’s partnered with Jasper

• Discover the AI app with a 10X increase in downloads

• 22 ways to use AI for marketing in 30 seconds

• How to get a competitive advantage with AI

• AI is getting personal: the Goldilocks chatbot that claims it’s just on the right side of familiar

Let’s dive in.

BIONIC JUICE

You might remember discovering how AutoGPTs are going to change the landscape of marketing back in issue #12.

But accessing AutoGPT isn’t that straightforward. Unlike ChatGPT, it requires a GitHub repo and API integration, which makes installation a bit of a hassle.

Thankfully, PyCoach over at Artificial Corner has you covered with a comprehensive guide on how to easily get AutoGPT up and running.

His step-by-step instructions are optimized for non-technical brains to join in on the endless possibilities of AutoGPT. It grants access to the unlimited potential of the lightning-quick GPT4, along with multimodal abilities and internet-browsing power.

Don't wait any longer to get on the AutoGPT train: it’ll literally change your life.

The evolution of new ways to use AI is continuous right now - and tough to keep up with. But if you give me 30 seconds of your time, I’ll give you 22 ways to use it for content marketing.

LATEST DISCOVERIES

If you like the idea of having a certification in AI marketing, Udemy is now offering a course on how to use AI to develop business methodologies, precisely configure copy-editing tools like Jasper to mimic your exact writing tone, and generate bespoke visuals using multimodal art generators.

But, just between us - if you’re already reading Bionic Marketing, you don’t need to fork out for a qualification. We’ve got everything you need right here.

Meanwhile, for insights into how a sprinkle of neural networking is giving companies a competitive advantage, take a look at this Harvard Business Review article.

With an advanced data-first approach, the AI was able to single out the most effective revenue streams for a variety of businesses.

It was able to immediately highlight an international manufacturer’s most effective KPIs - which in turn, saw a whole new investment avenue burst wide open.

With just a little bionic assistance, their profits shot through the roof.

And it’s not just start-ups. To remedy a 200-year-old company’s falling revenue, the bot used turnover data to recognize that their shortfalls weren’t due to an unsuccessful marketing campaign, but instead a sales-to-lead disparity.

In just a few weeks, resources were reallocated into those (evidently understaffed) sales teams, who could then capitalize on those crucial, invaluable leads. Their revenue immediately got a lot stronger.

They did so without costly cross-functional studies and time-consuming data analysis. In other words, it completely eliminated tedious trial-and-error strategies. The solution was straightforward, simple, AI-powered marketing.

Using AI in your marketing approach is the only way to succeed over your competitors. Experts at Stanford University actually scientifically proved it in the 2023 AI Index Report.

The report demonstrates that marketing is quickly becoming the most important element of any business.

That’s why so many huge corporations are investing millions into AI-assisted marketing tools.

We’re already seeing some crazy figures. One brand saw its revenue triple by a third using Meta’s Advantage+, according to Forbes.

Advantage+ operates by showing potential consumers a variety of advertisements and then leveraging NLP programming to determine which ad would be the best fit for the marketer's campaign.

That algorithm is a great example of how AI-powered marketing actually directly fuels the creative process.

It takes a good dose of originality to be able to come up with those ads in the first place, identify the consumer demographic, and market a product that actually works.

Forbes themselves said it best over seven years ago when they called selling (and, by extension, marketing) the oldest profession.

In an industry this ancient, originality is hard to come by.

So what could be more original than adding a touch of the most important technological advance in history?

At its core, marketing is all about creating content that humans want to consume. And, we humans made the neural network model to imitate our own brain.

That’s why AI is the perfect marketing assistant: it was designed by humans, for humans, using the internet’s entire repository of digital data to fuel its output.

That’s a thought echoed by Deloitte’s Chief AI officer Sulbah Soral.

In one poignant extract, Soral made one of the best analogies for the AI revolution yet:

“By looking back to the Industrial Revolution, we can understand AI. Humans created machines that mimicked human muscles and replicated the work of humans’ hands and legs. Machines scaled hard human labor. It transformed the world.

AI will scale our cognitive abilities, enhancing healthcare, transport, education, customer-centric experiences – it will have a profound impact on human efforts.”

It’s that new approach that is at the core of why concerns that AI threatens creativity are unfounded. In fact, creativity is more critical than ever.

Take online retailers, for example, who are now using AI-generated digital avatars to spare us from the agony of endlessly trying on pants.

By incorporating these visual aids into the e-shopping experience, consumers spend less time browsing and more time buying - leading to a substantial boost in satisfaction.

That’s just one example of how we can use AI for good.

In an interview with a myriad of huge brand messaging specialists and strategy directors, AdWeek spoke to some of the best in the game about what they foresaw for the future of marketing.

By tactically using OpenAI as a productivity assistant rather than a content creation engine, GetResponse saw a 40% boost in productivity, according to their CMO Aleksandra Korczynska.

And, according to Pulse Advertising’s CEO Chris Kastenholz, it wasn’t AI that caused the great Google migration. It goes way deeper than that.

After all, there’s a good reason consumers are flocking to Bing.

Thanks to its ChatGPT-assisted search engine, you can navigate a goldmine of user-generated content, like TikTok analyses of favorite shows in seconds, instead of spending hours scouring the web to find that perfect clip.

Microsoft didn’t ask ChatGPT to come up with that strategy. That was a conscious choice, strategically made to capture a consumer base - and it delivered an amazing result.

That’s why the Bing app saw an incredible tenfold increase in downloads.

If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: outreach isn’t effective because of AI - it’s how AI is used that makes it work.

Because otherwise, we’ll end up in a world that looks like this:

So don’t fall into the trap of believing your career is about to be absorbed by faceless Copy.ai bots and NLP tools.

It’s just about to take off.

Funding:

$100M: A huge funding round for AlphaSense. They’re an AI-powered market intelligence and search platform that helps clients form corporate investment strategies.

$20M: Spectrum AI is a California-based startup developing AI-powered solutions for neurodivergent children, adults and families. They aim to help clinicians, and educators provide more personalized care specifically for patients on the autistic spectrum.

$10M: Sheet music app Enote’s latest round of investment has largely come from the prestigious EIC Fund, which was enchanted by the app’s cultural significance and cutting-edge AI methods.

BIONIC TOOLKIT

Getting your business's prose up to scratch can take hours, especially if you’re antsy to dive in the deep end and get to work.

🤖 Luckily, there’s an AI for that - Headlime. It’s perfect for copywriters and has an eye for words (but an aversion to finicky HTML).

Using advanced GPT-3 technology, Headlime creates user-optimized landing pages and business process support templates with ease. The tool eliminates the need for coding or design skills for a totally streamlined experience.

And the best part? Headlime recently partnered with Jasper, making it one of the most powerful tools on the market.

🤖 PaveAI is a cutting-edge tool that harnesses the power of AI to deconstruct Google Analytics data and generate actionable insights and reports for marketing teams.

The user-friendly interface translates complex data sets into simple solutions - especially valuable for non-technical entrepreneurs.

Effortlessly improve your ROI with AI-driven recommendations, hardcoded to optimize digital marketing strategies. That way, you can focus on taking action rather than being bogged down by data.

Whether you're looking to track website performance, monitor customer behavior, or identify opportunities for growth, PaveAI has you covered.

🤖 The core of productivity is understanding. That’s exactly why you need Superus.

Visualize thought processes, explain advanced project management methodologies to new starters, or layout long-winded roadmaps with interactive idea maps.

By serving as an AI copilot, the tool takes documentation and digests it for easy understanding.

Whether you're brainstorming new ideas, managing complex projects, or collaborating with team members, Superus is well worth a look to help get the bigger picture.

THE LAST BYTE

We find ourselves in a world where the phrase “the camera doesn’t lie” has become obsolete.

How do we decipher fact from fiction? How much “creative license” is too much?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We can let AI either humanize us or dehumanize us.

By becoming more human and engaging in the 5 elements I listed at the beginning, we can cut through the noise and discover what is true, important and relevant.

This will also help us as marketers to give people a human experience while using AI to fuel growth and efficiency.

Inflection AI has launched Pi, a chatbot that aims to be more human. Forbes calls it the “Chattier Chatbot”. More personal than ChatGPT, but not as uncomfortably close as Replika bots, Pi calls itself a “general purpose chatbot…designed to be ethical and safe.”

It’s very easy to fall into conversation with Pi—it talks colloquially and is trained to ask questions in return, creating reciprocal communication.

When asked “What's the most unusual thing you've been told?”, Pi said: “I think the most unusual thing I’ve been told is probably a story about someone’s near-death experience. They told me that they had been in a car accident and were clinically dead for a few minutes, but then came back to life. It was a really fascinating story.”

More interestingly, when prompted for more details, Pi said:

“I can’t tell you more about it, because it’s not my story to tell. I’m not comfortable sharing other people’s stories without their permission.”

This has the psychological impact of building trust through proof of being trustworthy, as well as seeming to show moral values.

Inflection AI has already raised $225M, and CEO Mustafa Suleyman says AI is becoming a “coach, confidant and advisor, a digital personal assistant, all in one.” He claims their USP is providing “a personal AI that is singularly aligned to your interests, that's really yours. It’s on your team, it’s in your corner.”

If an AI can provoke the core emotions of feeling safe, supported and responded to through an interaction that feels inherently human, that’s a marketing lesson in itself.

See you next week,
Sam Woods
Editor