There has been a lot of talk about artificial intelligence (AI) recently—and for good reason. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard about ChatGPT. According to HubSpot, the software has suddenly skyrocketed in popularity, growing to 1M users in just five days!
So how does AI fit into marketing? At first, I was not on board with using AI and felt like there was no room for it in marketing, especially regarding copywriting. I remember seeing copy.ai ads across my Instagram feed a year ago and laughing it off, thinking, “Yeah, not anytime soon.”
But recently, I’ve come to learn more about the benefits of AI, in particular, Chatbots or AI content generation tools.
In this post, I’ll explain what building product marketing and communications professionals need to know about AI, including how it works and why it’s such an exciting prospect for the building industry.
How AI works
AI uses machine learning to learn from examples. This means that, given enough data and time, it can start making decisions on its own. It’s like how a baby becomes smarter over time by observing the world around her and interacting with people she meets.
AI can learn from text, voice, and images or any kind of data that you give it.
So what is ChatGPT or Conversational AI?
In short, ChatGPT is Conversational AI, and one of many AI tools marketers are adopting into their processes to save time. Conversational AI systems are based on machine learning algorithms that have been trained with large amounts of data so they can understand natural human speech patterns better than ever before.
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022.
As described by OpenAI: “We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
Fundamentally, ChatGPT is intended to be more than just a question-and-answer bot.
Users can leverage the algorithm to write essays and poems in a specific tone of voice. It can write basic computer programs and code, have philosophical conversations, and more (UCToday, 2023).
ChatGPT is not the first software of its kind, but it took off in 2023 because of how user-friendly and accessible the software is. The technology has been around for a while now, but it is only recently that companies have started taking advantage of its potential. Chatbots are a new way to interact with customers; they can automate tasks and streamline processes by working alongside humans.
Examples of conversational AI:
- Content writing assistants
- Chatbots
- Text-to-speech tools
- Virtual assistants
What marketers can do with Conversational AI
Our team has decided to embrace AI and, for lack of better words, get to know it better. And we’ve been pleasantly surprised.
Our AI tool indeed understands many marketing topics and can even write about building products. While it is a great tool to help with brainstorming, creating article outlines, helping overcome writer’s block, or busting out product descriptions, it CAN NOT replace independent thinking.
To prove my point, I used AI to write this article, but it simply could not generate copy that truly communicates how I feel about AI concerning writing. Or at least not without my providing key talking points.
Ultimately, I view AI as a more sophisticated way to search the web. So instead of clicking and reading my way through AI-related articles, the tool delivered all the information across the web in a narrative or outline, making it much faster to write about the topic.
Nevertheless, without human touch, AI writing feels choppy, repetitive and doesn’t flow. There is no je ne sais quoi, if that makes sense? No flavor, no unique personality.
And I can’t see it replacing unique subject matter expert knowledge and technical expertise anytime soon. When it comes to the building industry, technical expertise, experience and how to is key.
That said, how CAN AI help marketing and communications professionals?
We can use it to:
- Create website chatbots. For example, you could build a bot that answers questions about your business or product.
- Build websites and social media posts with the help of AI-generated content
- Use it for blog writing: creating a list of topics your audience cares about, creating an outline to get you started, overcoming writer’s block.
- Generate ads that are personalized for each user based on their interests or location, which will make them more relevant and effective at getting clicks from potential customers. This is especially useful if you’re running an eCommerce site because it means there’s less guesswork involved in creating ads; instead of having someone sit down at a computer all day trying different combinations until they find something that works well enough (or worse yet–having no idea what works), now we have machines doing this work for us so we can spend our time thinking about bigger picture issues like strategy rather than just making sure our ad copy goes through spell check once before hitting publish.
Challenges of Conversational AI
AI is still learning and needs to be trained. There is still a major human element involved in using AI software. It cannot understand everything, and it can be wrong. Let’s take a closer look at some challenges:
- Human and Cultural Development: Machine learning must continuously progress to learn alongside human cultural development.
- Culture and Values: Remember that AI does not reflect norms and values, so ensure your writing still reflects your company’s culture and values.
- Copyright: In the United States, copyright laws do not protect works created solely by a machine. However, if an individual can demonstrate substantial human involvement in its creation, they may receive copyright protection. The authorship and ownership rights are also disputable. Under the copyright law of most countries, the creator of a work is generally considered the copyright owner. However, when a work is created by AI, it is unclear who the creator is. Such ambiguity can create problems in determining who has the right to exploit the work and in enforcing copyright violations (AIMultiple, 2023.)
- Plagiarism: Is using AI Plagiarism? Many academics feel that content generated by artificial intelligence should be labeled appropriately. Also, check your AI content for plagiarism using plagiarism detection tools and give credit where it’s due. It’s best to start with original talking points and facts.
- Language Input: Dialects, slang, and even background noise can impact a machine’s ability to process language input.
- Privacy: Conversational tools store and collect data to improve its processes, but security or data breaches can cause safety concerns if consumers’ personal information is exposed.
Benefits of Conversational AI
- Achieve more business goals.
- Increase customer satisfaction.
- Reduce costs by automating repetitive tasks, such as responding to customer service inquiries or sending out newsletters, that take up valuable time and cost money in labor costs.
- Improve productivity by making it possible for employees to focus on higher-value activities like strategizing instead of spending hours writing emails/messages manually every day (or worse yet: not doing anything at all!).
- Increase sales by providing personalization at scale via chatbots — no longer will you have just one customer service representative answering questions but rather thousands across different channels.
Conclusion
AI copywriters are already being used by many companies today. But PROCEED WITH CAUTION and be aware of the risks and limitations of using AI for copywriting.
Undoubtedly, AI is the future of copywriting and is poised for growth. With its ability to improve the quality of writing, reduce costs, and allow for more creativity in content creation, AI will help make building industry business more competitive in the marketplace.
It’s a technology that has the potential to revolutionize how we communicate with customers, but some challenges need to be addressed before it can be fully implemented. ChatGPT is one example of how AI could be used in marketing campaigns, but there are many more out there – so keep an eye out for new developments.