It’s 2024 and words like Artificial Intelligence and Chat GPT still make a lot of people in the digital industry a little nervous. I have worked in this sector a long time now and being open and honest, when it first started to become more mainstream I started to feel a bit nervy about the future of Marketing roles and how businesses will operate. But, when you stand back and look at the bigger picture, we need to embrace these platforms and software to help us, not work against us.

For people who know these purely by name rather than what they do, Chat GPT is a chatbot and virtual assistant that was originally created in November 2022 and is based on a language model. In Marketing terms, it is there to help with content creation, emails, social media posts and letters to internal or external stakeholders, plus much more. Combine this with artificial intelligence (which is a term probably more well-known) which is scientifically created with building machines and computers that can learn, act and develop behaviours normally associated with human behaviour or data that exceeds what human can analyse or portray. This is created through an algorithm to outperform human capabilities. It can feel a bit overwhelming when you consider these doesn’t it?

With this being said, I wanted to share my opinion and my own insight on what I think of these platforms and how they should be used. I have seen a lot of viral posts recently of people sharing conversations with Chat GPT where they ask basic questions like “how many e’s are in the word evening?” and it has responded by saying 4. Seeing and hearing things like this completely changes people’s mind sets when it comes to Chat GPT, for obvious reasons. My observation would be Chat GPT is there to help and support with content creation, or ideas for content, not to replace. As humans we are adaptable and can be reluctant to change, particularly when there are so many negative connotations associated with something – as such with Chat GPT and Artificial Intelligence. We are going to eventually realise posts that have been created purely through software and not with human touch and emotion. Marketing is about building relationships that lead to trust and loyalty with a customer and having a personality within a brand to go alongside is imperative. Writing content on the many channels that are available now using only Chat GPT won’t build a relationship but will harm one. Use it as a guide, not as a “better” way of grabbing people’s attention.

Less than 24 hours ago there was a news article with the title “Millions forced to use brain as ChatGPT takes morning off”. A tongue-in-cheek view of Chat GPT going down affecting millions of people worldwide. This already shows that this software is an easy trap to fall into when it becomes to reliance. It will only work when you use it as an extra arm of your team, not the main point of how you operate.

The digital world will grow, it will adapt and it will become more aligned with every day life. Time moves on and business needs to evolve, this is why we need to embrace these platforms and use them to make us better as marketers. Don’t see it as a replacement, it still needs a lot of development!

We’re currently starting to build artificial intelligence into our marketing apprenticeships, giving the learners a greater understanding of the platform and how it can be used to strengthen their marketing efforts.

Click here to find out more about our marketing apprenticeships and how they can benefit both businesses and learners.