Keeping the “I” in content AI

Artificial intelligence can churn out as many words as you want, but for original, effective, and tailored content, leave it to the humans.

In this line of work, I’m asked whether I’m worried about AI taking my job on a fairly regular basis.

While this line of questioning used to be reserved for a throwaway remark that could easily be batted away, in recent months, as margins are being squeezed, I have detected a genuine interest in how and when it might happen.

Often, the question is posed by those in roles in our broad financial services industry, who – with a poetic sense of irony – could be replaced much sooner than me.

Fund manager? Whack an algorithm on it. Sales person? Pop the product on a website. Underwriter? Write a programme drawing from billions of sources to understand and project future risk.

Content, which many still consider to be words that in some way relate broadly to the matter at hand, is a different beast. And while I would say that, wouldn’t I, indulge me a little.

First of all, I am in awe of AI. The progress we have made over the past austerity-led decade blows my mind.

That we get frustrated with customer service chatbots is an illustration of the breakneck pace of change. Instead of being amazed at this level of autonomous technology, we’re annoyed it isn’t perfect yet.

I also dream of the day that “sidebar” news stories are written entirely by bots, freeing up talented journalists to go after stories that are additive to the news agenda and make a real difference.

The same can be said for content.

There are going to be elements of it that can be automated. Research, using carefully collated materials to draw up an outline of a complex piece or strategy, is going to be a gamechanger.

It will help marketing, content, and comms teams not just identify, ideate, and align their output needs, but also more easily validate these ideas to boards and those signing off budgets.

Timelines suddenly get shorter and campaigns should be more effective.

Just think of the budgets that could be deployed more effectively, before we even look at how AI can help us measure impact, rather than just counting clicks.

For the content creation itself, it’s not as clear cut. For the moment, AI is a replicator.

You ask it to write a play in the style of Shakespeare or paint a scene using the hand of Gainsborough, and it will oblige.

Of course, the key is to give it the right information. I don’t have the column inches here to go into the legal and compliance issues around how and where your bot might find and curate the information, but rest assured, it’s a complex knot to unpick.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s say you have the legal agreements in place to access all the right data, and you have fished out all the anomalies and biases that could colour the piece.

You have asked your bot the right question and input your exact expectations and the objective you are aiming to achieve with the piece.

Let’s also assume that your bot knows how to build in the cultural aspects and recent context for each of your audiences, combined with the secret sauce that makes your company unique in an industry of peers selling very similar products.

Let’s say all that is covered off, what your bot will produce – for the moment at least – is a really well reheated version of an amalgamation of everything you have done before. You won’t be able to see the joins.

It will sound pretty much like your company, it will broadly cover off the points you wanted to raise and source them well.

If that’s what you want, you don’t want content. Or, at least, you don’t want effective content.

Romeo and Juliet. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The Nike Swoosh.

If you asked a bot to create them from scratch, it couldn’t.

The inspiration present at the very moment you create something that conveys and expresses the exact message is something undefinable. It also varies depending on the time you get this inspiration.

As such, it is unattainable by a bot.

An analogue form of AI for content has been around for centuries. Famous artists used to have studios with teams painting in their style. Best-selling novelists have similar set ups – even after their death.

It’s a cracking idea to expand the amount of product to get out of the door to a hungry, buying public.

But without the name of the original artist or writer above the door, how much would these studios shift?

You can spot a real diamond from a fake by the fire it holds inside, and while I would never claim a white paper on the investment opportunities within renewable energy could be Tiffany cut, the concept remains the same.

Automate part of the process by all means, efficiency helps us all, but for effective content and releasing the fire inside, for the moment at least, content still needs to be the real deal.

This article is taken from the print edition of Financial Promoter. Click here to subscribe.