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The Editors’ Perspective – What’s really happening with AI?

6 things you need to know about generative AI

The World Media Group hosted its latest Smart Briefing yesterday with a panel of AI experts distilling the reality from the hype. Chaired by Economist Impact’s Emma Winchurch-Beale, the panel included Jeremy Kahn, AI Editor at Fortune, Elena Corchero, Director of Emerging Tech and Innovation at Dow Jones Live, and Hugh Langley, Senior Correspondent at Business Insider. Below is the discussion video and our key take outs from the event.

1.   Cool demos – but not worth paying for yet

Insider’s Hugh Langley said it felt like there had been 500 hype cycles since the arrival of Chat GPT 18 months ago, and that would continue as the models got better. However, it’s still not clear what generative AI’s consumer proposition will be for Large Language Models (LLMs). Langley paraphrased Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI’s description of Chat GPT as a ‘cool demo, bad product’. “I think what we’re going to see with these tools is that they’re cool to play with, but not yet necessarily turning into things people are going to pay money for,” Langley says.

Langley believes we’ll start to see a more specific focus on use cases such as medicine for LLMs in the future. He said we’re also likely to see an increase in AI Agents automating processes and taking away the leg work for companies. An Agent could be used to track invoices, for example, with a minimal amount of human supervision, or an AI Travel Agent could save time building an itinerary.

2.   Chat GPT still the leading model for businesses

Fortune’s Jeremy Kahn referenced a recent survey from the venture capital firm A16z, that asked 2,000 businesses about their adoption of generative AI and the models they were using. “It turned out that lots of people are playing around with lots of different models and different methodologies. But very few people actually have anything in full production,” he said.

Anything that is in full production is almost exclusively using Open AI’s GPT4 API. That may be because people are most comfortable with it as the first to market, but Kahn says it’s also still the most capable model available. “That reliability is important in enterprise use cases where being 86% accurate as opposed to 79% accurate actually makes a difference in deployment,” he says.

The vast majority of models currently in production are in employee-facing applications, not in customer or consumer-facing applications, which Kahn puts down to two things. Firstly, there’s the question of whether it’s reliable enough to be customer-facing. Secondly, the cost versus the return on investment. “These models are still very expensive to use,” he says. “People haven’t quite figured out how this is really going to be worth it.”

3.   Big tech companies are winning out over start-ups

The cost is one of the problems facing start-ups. Those in the Open Source world are giving away their model for free in the hope that people will build on it. But just because you get the model for free, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to save you money. ”It costs a start-up a tremendous amount to build an API and it’s not clear what their business model is so the large tech companies seem to be the big winners here,” Kahn says. Rather than investing in building AI themselves, he is noticing many organisations are waiting to see what companies like Microsoft or Salesforce create.

Despite some narratives that suggest that some of the big tech companies like Google are behind the curve on generative AI, Langley thinks they will catch up fast because they have the scale, infrastructure and brainpower to win in this space.

4.    Think of AI as a layer you can add to anything

The clients that Elena Corchero works with at Dow Jones Live are enthusiastic about the potential for AI and have embraced it in the same way they have other technologies such as the Metaverse, NFT, AR and VR. Rather than it being simply the ‘next shiny thing’ however, Elena sees generative AI as the key to propelling these other technologies to the next level.

“It’s a layer that you can add to absolutely anything, so all the investment in other technologies had not been in vain,” she says, as illustrated by the Dow Jones project Sustainable Horizons.  This new method of immersive storytelling demonstrates how AI can create a more sustainable world. The experience is developed using generative AI with human supervision for the script, the audio, the music, the imagery, the animation and the environments within the 3D world. It’s a brilliant example of how all the technologies come together under the layer of AI.

Kahn talked about how AI is being used in this way with self-driving cars. By layering LLM testing on top of a foundation model, the AI can explain what it’s doing while it’s driving. “It can talk through the logic of what it’s trying to do – ‘I see a pedestrian here, therefore, we’re going to apply the brakes,’” Kahn explained. This acts as a debugging technology for engineers building the systems.

It also works for financial analysis tools. Kahn cited an example of a CEO asking how to save 10 million on a budget in the next quarter. Seconds later, the AI had generated suggestions of the areas it was possible to make cuts in.

5.    It’s only as good as the human controlling it

Although all our panel agreed that generative AI technology is world-changing, we shouldn’t worry about it stealing our jobs (yet). Chatbots are only as good as the search prompts you give them and much of what AI can do is flawed without human intervention. That said, employers have a responsibility to consider how they support the workforce and help people to navigate this uncertainty.

“The reality is that generative AI is going to empower people; we need to upskill them on how to use these APIs and to understand where it can fail and the flaws to look out for,” Corchero says. “We need to focus on enhancing all capabilities, but also safeguarding collective values, which is the human alignment that is missing from generative AI.”

6.   Heightened vigilance and rigorous fact-checking required

The final topic centred around how to combat disinformation and misinformation, particularly in an election year. The rise of unintentional misinformation stemming from the proliferation of AI-generated content, combined with intentional disinformation, such as deep fakes, is presenting serious challenges to newsrooms.

Although some standards and legislation are in place, there is still a long way to go. “While the industry seems to be coalescing around the C2PA standard, it’s not perfect and can be manipulated,” Kahn says. Likewise, watermarks can be removed and audio content can be difficult to authenticate.

As journalists grapple with the task of distinguishing between genuine stories and fabricated or manipulated content, our panel agreed that it requires heightened vigilance and rigorous fact-checking procedures for newsrooms.

However, Corchero says this also presents an opportunity “for trusted media brands to distinguish themselves as impartial sources of truth, and to regain public trust. Now more than ever, it’s going to be very important to support people by providing that.”

Find out more about the World Media Group’s events programme or sign up to our next Smart Briefing here.

Key Takeouts: WMG Post-Cannes Wrap Up

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The World Media Group hosted a post-Cannes wrap event last night at The Adelphi in London, giving the audience a taste of what went on at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year. The panel, chaired by Hannah Last, Sales Director UK at The Economist, included Mark Bembridge, CEO Smartology; Arif Durrani, Director, Reuters Global Content Studio; Massimo Marioni, Europe News Editor, Fortune; and Shula Sinclair, CSO, MSIX & Partners.

Last began by asking the panel to describe the event for those in the audience who had never been. Durrani, who has been going to Cannes since 2009, has watched the event evolve from its film festival roots to incorporate Media, meaning media planning and strategy and media owners to PR and Adtech. “Adtech has grown each year since then to become a much bigger part of the equation,” he says. “They own the marina, all the yachts; the money is there.”

Although official figures suggest there are about 10,000 paying delegates, Durrani suspects that you can times that by four once you account for all the unofficial visitors enjoying fringe events along the Croisette throughout the course of the week.

This year’s highlights

Marioni, ranked the Spotify concerts high on his list, but more importantly, Cannes gave him the opportunity to talk to “high-ranking Google executives” about the development dangers and issues around generative AI. While Fortune doesn’t report on Cannes itself, the event generates plenty of content and affords Marioni unparalleled access to top executives through panels, meetings and lunches.

Commercially important

For Smartology CEO; Mark Bembridge, Cannes is a serious business. “We’ve had more meetings than ever this year. It’s commercially important to us. You get all the key decision makers in one place and it’s an opportunity to sit down and thrash out real deals,” he says.

Sinclair agrees. “From an agency perspective, we talk about looking for inspiration from the best creative work, but make no mistake, we’re making deals.” Does she feel the festival’s moved too far from its creative routes? “It’s moved with the times,” she says. While Sinclair admits it’s quite a fractious relationship between creativity and new technologies like generative AI, she believes it’s all part of the essential ecosystem. Don’t assume that creativity is separate from business, she says.

The hot topic – generative AI

Every year, there’s a buzz around a new theme and this year, it was generative AI. Last asked the panel whether they thought the hype was justified.

Marioni doesn’t believe it’s been overhyped. While there remain lots of questions around how we use it responsibly, he believes it will be transformative for the industry and could reframe what intelligence or creativity is.

Bembridge believes AI’s still got a long way to evolve, but will do so quickly because of the huge uptake. One of the challenges, however, is scale – there aren’t enough people to programme and build the models required for it to move as quickly as we might like.

In the meantime, many marketers are using it in its current form. Reuters’ Content Studio is using programmes like ChatGPT for content and strategy ideation, for example, tapping into what Durrani describes as “Google search on steroids’. They are also working with a new Beta version of Photoshop that incorporates a new feature called Generative Fill that allows you to add to existing images using AI, allowing you to create credible mocks for pitches in seconds.

Other themes for 2023

Moving away from AI, Last asked the panel about their creative highlights. One of the highlights for her, she said, was seeing Apple win Creative Brand of the Year –surprisingly for the first time.

Sinclair cited Dove’s Grand Prix Award-winning ‘Turn Your Back ‘campaign encouraging people to turn their back on a TikTok filter, which she said felt “really defiant”. Sinclair also highlighted a clever, emotive use of Metaverse technology in Tuvalu’s campaign, ‘The Last Digital Nation’, which won a Titanium prize. The sinking island is being recreated in the Metaverse to preserve its history and culture before it finally disappears.

Marioni referred to Mastercard’s Priceless campaign, now in its 25th year. “LinkedIn told me an interesting anecdote – the data Mastercard had at the time was pointing them away from using the campaign,” he said. “But despite the data, the people in the room felt there was something about the line that could resonate. And they were right, so there’s hope for everyone!”

“At the core of every powerful idea there’s an innate human universal truth,” says Sinclair. “When I see that, the jealousy I feel is the mark of a brilliant campaign!”

More than just a jolly

With Cannes often being viewed from the outside as a ‘jolly’, Last asked the panel how they justified it to their bosses. Everyone agreed that if it wasn’t great fun, it wouldn’t attract the high-ranking attendees, from stars like Kevin Hart and, last year, Ryan Reynolds, to the senior executives from the industry’s most successful companies.

“It’s difficult from both a sustainability point of view and from a work justification point of view but it does deliver,” says Marioni

Bembridge agrees: “There are two parts – the deal-making and the networking. It’s the one touchpoint in the year where you meet people you haven’t seen for a while in real life. You share something together as an industry and that keeps those relationships going throughout the year.”

The Croisette and The Gutter

Part of the lure of Cannes is who you might meet walking down the Croisette. Sadly, this year, roadworks dominated the main thoroughfare, which, according to Durrani, was a major detraction. “It wasn’t just a terrible aesthetic, it actually changed the experience because it removed the serendipity of bumping into friends, colleagues, speakers and stars when you’re walking up and down the strip. That’s a big plus of Cannes and unfortunately it was totally prevented this year,” he said.

Thankfully, the roadworks didn’t stop people gathering in Cannes’ famous Gutter Bar, a small corner bar outside the Martinez Hotel but where hundreds spill out into the street in the early hours of each morning. Sinclair’s advice is to avoid The Gutter at all costs, but while Durrani understands the sentiment, he does see the reason it exists: “Cannes is increasingly restrictive – in the evening it’s all private dinners, wristbands and VIP groups. If you’ve just won an award, or have spent the day pitching clients, the Gutter is the one place where everyone can go to celebrate or just catchup.”

One final piece of advice

Finally, Last asked the panel to suggest their one tip for anyone attending for the first-time next year.

Bembridge says organisation is key: “Get really organised and really prep because there’s so many great things going on and so little time. Really organise your time well.”

Sinclair agrees but suggests giving yourself some flexibility: Plan but don’t be too rigid. Let serendipity happen. Running into people you haven’t seen for 20 years can open up an opportunity that you may never have expected.”

Prioritising is essential, according to Marioni: “Plan, prioritise, be open to possibilities, and remember, there are lots of invites but not everything’s going to be beneficial.”

Durrani’s advice? “Take advantage of the fact that there are so many different marketing and tech disciplines as inspiration for true creativity. It’s when you can mash 3 or 4 ideas, trends or connections together and come out with something completely different where the magic happens in terms of creative thinking. Cannes is great for that.”

You can watch the video of the WMG’s Cannes panel on what Generative AI means for trust and truth in marketing here.

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The Implications of AI on Trust and Truth In Marketing

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The World Media Group hosted a panel in Cannes with Amir Malik, Managing Director, Digital Transformation Accenture and Evan Bretos, Director, Newsroom at The Washington Post discussing the implications Generative AI may have on trust and truth in marketing. Emma Winchurch-Beale, Executive Director, Insider, chaired the discussion, quizzing our experts on issues such as:

  • How marketers are currently using generative AI and how quickly it’s changing
  • The impact generative AI will have on personalisation
  • What will happen when there’s more AI generated content than human content
  • The consequences of AI generated by bad actors

Watch the full video to find out what our panel had to say about all these questions and more.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/zovMMqy41pI”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

What marketers need to know about Generative AI by Belinda Barker, Chief Executive of The World Media Group

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What marketers need to know about Generative AI

You can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV these days without stumbling across a story about Generative AI or, more specifically, Chat GPT. Last month during a panel on the subject at the CIM Financial Marketing Leaders’ Summit, I was one of the few people in the room to admit that I’d never used Chat GPT. I’ve since rectified that and can see some benefits for marketers – as long as we’re able to navigate the potential pitfalls.

So, what do marketers need to know about Generative AI? Here are my key outtakes after listening to the panel of experts on the subject.

A powerful tool if wielded correctly

Anyone who has asked Chat GPT a question will be aware of its shortcomings when it comes to delivering accurate information, but with the right data, it has the potential to hugely enhance productivity. Lindsey Herbert, Chief Innovation Officer at IBM Garage, put this into context with a brilliant example of how, if wielded correctly, Generative AI can be a powerful tool.

Herbert explained that it took about 10 years to train IBM’s question-answering AI, Watson, in 12 languages. However, by adding the foundational modelling made possible by Generative AI to Watson’s natural language processing, they were able to increase that to 25 languages within just one year.

The US company CVS Pharmacies reaped the benefits of this when, during the pandemic, they were receiving a deluge of calls about the Covid vaccine. Using the natural language processing capability for IBM’s voice AI, they were able to handle 28 million calls, launching the programme from scratch in less than 3 weeks.

Seventy percent of callers were 100 percent satisfied by the response – unaware that they were speaking to an AI. It’s clear from this example that the potential for human-like chatbots to streamline the customer care business is enormous.

Hyper-personalisation has become a reality

Marketers have been talking about hyper-personalisation for years, but generative AI can make it a reality. Amir Malik, MD, Digital Marketing at Accenture, told the CIM Financial Marketing Leaders’ Summit audience that there’s a radical change coming around how we will experience Account Based Marketing.

Generative AI can generate tens of thousands of drafts for a hyper-personalised experience to one segment of customers in just a few hours, making it possible to reach people faster and much more effectively. Add to that technology like Synthesia, which creates a human avatar that has ChatGPT speech personalised to the individual, and it starts to feel like something out of a sci-fi movie.

But that’s not necessarily a good thing. As Herbert pointed out, in most sci-fi movies when we see a character walking through the streets of a futuristic city bombarded by talking ads, their reaction is generally to avoid or ignore the advertising! When there’s a deluge of content, standing out becomes so much more difficult, so creativity will remain the key ingredient when it comes to reaching audiences.

Expect quantity over quality 

According to Malik, Generative AI is evolving four times faster than Moore’s law. As the rate of improvement rapidly increases, it has the potential to disrupt many industries. While we can undoubtedly save time and resources by generating large volumes of content such as blogs and social media posts, the source of the information may be spurious.

Programmes such as Chat GPT are only as good as the information they are being fed. If you’re using AI to create content, it could well be answering your question based on a high volume of low-quality articles that dominate the search response. Editing and fact-checking your material is essential. Here’s where the 80:20 rule comes into play – AI can do 80 percent of the job, but the quality of the output will be determined by the last 20 percent of human input.

Add to that the fact that there’s currently a lack of regulation around AI worldwide. If we think about a worst-case scenario, in the wrong hands Chat GPT could be flooded with a high volume of political disinformation and misinformation or content from conspiracy theorists.

Being human is what makes us unique

While there’s no question that we can save ourselves hours of time by using AI, productivity means nothing if it doesn’t lead our customers to engage with whatever it is we’re promoting. As marketers we’re competing for people’s attention and the best way to capture them is to present a unique creative idea.

As IBM’s Herbert pointed out, if you’re asking a programme like chat GPT to write copy for your campaign, and you use it as is, you have failed! What Chat GPT is doing is providing the most likely answer to the question that you’ve posed. If the person you’re targeting is able to predict what you’re saying, they’re very unlikely to bother reading your email or following your call to action.

Where Chat GPT can come in useful is testing out your new marketing campaign or your copy against the AI to check whether what you’ve written actually is unique. If Chat GPT comes up with a similar result, it’s time for a re-think!

Having immersed myself further into the world of Generative AI, I think there are plenty of opportunities for marketers to get excited about. The danger is that if, in our race to increase productivity or to achieve hyper personalisation we lose sight of creativity, we risk going from brand to bland.

If you’re heading to Cannes and would like to find out more about the implications of Generative AI on trust and truth in marketing, join us for our panel discussion on the subject:

Date                  Wednesday 21st June
Time                  9.45 – 11.00 CET
Place                 Axel Springer Freedomhaus, Hotel Barrière Le Majestic Cannes, 10 Bd de la Croisette, 06400 Cannes, France

Please fill out the form here to confirm your attendance.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]