With the recent surge in popularity of AI powered creative, there is a lot to unpack. Although the concept has been around for many years now, advanced algorithms and improvements to computer power and storage have seen AI boom. With different types and formats of AI the possibilities appear endless.
What are AI Powered Creatives?
The capabilities of AI span many media formats. These include audio, text and visual creatives such as photos and videos, but what do these look like? The long and short of it is that AI is a simulation of human intelligence processed by machines. Artificial Intelligence makes it possible for computers to learn from experience and perform human-like tasks in more time efficient ways.
So with this in mind, how are AI powered creatives of value to us? The major benefit here is the time efficiency of the process, as well as reduction in space for human error. AI generated creatives also appeal to human instinct since it learns from appealing creative and therefore tends to resonates with people. As time goes on and more data is gathered, AI will only become more intelligent and therefore seemingly more appealing.
To understand the capabilities of AI in more detail, each is explored in isolation:
AI Generated Video and Photo Creative
When thinking of AI, photo and video content is likely one of the first forms that come to mind and rightly so. AI powered creative is used for imagery and video across many sectors and in more media than you may realise. With retail, sports, security and much more adopting AI, the pool of content continues to grow.
In December of 2022 a new craze hit the internet, AI generated photos of people which saw several companies benefit financially. The technology behind this involves the user submitting images of themselves. The software then uses these prompts to generate up to 50 AI images that people have shared to social media.
Within photos and videos, AI can also be used to detect patterns and recognise faces or objects. The data collected through this process can be used to help inform future decisions and predictions.
AI Generated Audio
Another major AI capability comes in the form of audio. The way this works is by inputting audio data of a person into software such as play.ht. This software then manipulates this data to create a snippet of this person’s voice that says what the user specifies. It doesn’t stop there though, this also includes the ability to generate conversations between two people, even if they didn’t happen in real life. Again, this capability extends further, providing users the ability to generate a conversation between those dead or alive. An example of this is the 20-minute-long fictional podcast on Podcast.AI that sees Steve Jobs and Joe Rogan discuss a number of topics.
When provided enough data, AI software can begin to learn an individual’s vocabulary and mannerisms to such a level that it will begin to mimic this in its content. This opens a raft of opportunity for future use of this resource. However, this would require hours of voice recordings.
Lastly, AI creative has gone so far as to compose music, further blending the lines of AI powered creatives and human creation.
AI Generated Text
Another AI generated creative capability involves the creation of text from different data sources including websites, taglines, keywords and more. It takes this information to create text in a variety of formats, including blogs, social media posts, marketing materials or ads. The capabilities extend to text being written in a certain tone of voice, making it applicable to different contexts. Use cases of this for business include websites and taglines, where AI can be used as a tool to generate ideas and save time.
Platforms such as Jasper.ai and ChatGPT offer software for individuals to do this more simply. When using the software, it simply asks for the content or brief of the text, the tone of voice and any keywords you want to be added to the piece. The user can then specify the length of text they want and sit back to watch the magic happen.
The Dark Side of AI
Although AI looks to be the future of content, as with anything, it comes with its cons. Although AI is seemingly all knowing, this is far from the truth. AI has to first be trained from existing materials. This is an ongoing process where continuous new data will be required to maintain its intelligence.
From there, though AI seems to remove the need for human interaction, it’s more than likely going to require human intervention at some point. In the case of AI generated text this could come in the form of proof reading. Not only this, but as time goes on AI generated content will begin to share similarities and possibly reach a point where content created by artificial intelligence begins to replicate pre-existing creative.
Additionally, there is the issue of manipulating the truth by using AI. This is already a prevalent issue especially when considering the data collection for news reporting. Readily available software to generate AI will increase the amount of content across the internet that manipulates the truth. This creates an issue when it comes to differentiating between credible and non-credible information, an issue that those in the news reporting industry could face.
For me, the most damaging thing about AI generated creative is that it steals the work and art of others. At present there are no laws to protect people’s work against this, revealing a huge issue in which artists could begin to see their work exploited without receiving any financial incentive. This brings up the moral issue of how we are going to prevent this. Undervaluing artists’ work has always been an issue and AI only makes it more predominate. So as society, is this something we are going to let slide?
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
This is just the beginning for AI generated creative. The next five to ten years see AI entering all avenues of life. With current AI capabilities offering potential for data collection and content creation, it is a valuable tool for marketeers.
The moral question is, where do we draw the line?
