Generative AI: Is there an existential risk to content creators?
While artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for a while, the public's interest in and discussion of the technology tends to spike whenever a new AI-powered tool or service is introduced
The questions remain:
- How do you evaluate technologies and their potential benefits?
- How to implement them?
- What ROI can you get?
This time, generative AI has captured the attention of a broad audience as they bring not only unseen possibilities but also a bunch of threats, from security concerns to the potential loss of thousands of jobs.
Why does it happen like this now? Previously, most AI-based technologies were discriminative models that predicted the likelihood of a particular class label given an input. They were mainly focused on these five areas: pattern recognition; decision-making; analytics; data classification; and fraud detection. That means that these tools have the potential to mimic cognitive functions and perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as spotting small details or processing massive amounts of data much more quickly than humans can.
Meanwhile, generative AI is able to produce new content, such as chat responses, images, synthetic data, or even deep fakes, that is similar to the training data. While the content is considered unique, it's basically a mix of information these systems have seen before.
What are the most well-known and accessible AI tools?
While there are various developer-oriented models, the tools accessible to the general public have received the most attention, including ChatGPT, DALL-E, Midjourney, Jasper, etc.
When talking about average users, these technologies can be implemented without coding them from scratch. Instead, you can either use some of them as a standalone tool or integrate them into other solutions, such as content management systems.
For example, ChatGPT (or its newer version GPT-4), Jasper, or Copysmith can generate various forms of text, including blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, product descriptions, and so on.
DALL-E is an AI system built by OpenAI (the same company that developed ChatGPT) that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Midjourney is another model you can use to create unique imagery from short text descriptions.
Impact on content creators: can AI replace humans?
So now, when a bunch of content can be easily generated within seconds instead of hours or days, how would that affect us humans, who've created content before all that fancy technologies? Will writers, designers, or even developers lose their jobs?
The good news is that while the content can be produced quickly, its quality and style are still not enough to replace a human. No artificial intelligence tool has yet been developed that can invent something completely new. Yes, it is able to generate good texts, even SEO-friendly ones. It can explain a concept as a five year old child or a professor at the university. It can build a code that will work. Creating an image of an elephant riding a bike wouldn't be a problem, either.
However, the algorithms often make mistakes, and can produce violent or untrue content, or just robotic texts lacking any personality or emotion. The reason is that these models are trained on the information from the internet, databases, or any other content that was initially created by us, humans. And we make mistakes. So if the system is shown an image that has been labeled as a dog, but is actually a cat, it will continue to use the incorrect label until a human corrects it.
We should also keep in mind that we have to make a request before we can access the AI-generated content – the more specific our inquiry, the more accurate the response. In any case, it's crucial to double-check whether the AI-generated text or image is reliable and factually correct before using it for any important decision-making or dissemination of information.
Intellectual property rights are another tricky topic to think about. If the content is intended for commercial purposes, it's essential to carefully review the terms and conditions of the AI tool. For example, in the case of Midjourney, users can only claim ownership of their assets by purchasing a license. These rules, however, might vary by companies, regions, and legislation.
Ok, I'm not scared of AI - how would I use it?
Despite some pitfalls that this technology might have, the value it can bring to businesses is huge. In addition to increasing the speed of content creation, artificial intelligence can also transform the way that companies distribute their content, allowing them to gain deeper insights into their audience by analyzing user preferences, behavior, and demographic data. This information can then be used to create more personalized content and improve user engagement.
Since the technology is meant to give us some predictions and train on data again and again, it can spot opportunities faster than people. Hence, AI-powered content distribution tools can target the right audience with the right content at the right time, maximizing their reach and impact.
Finally, AI-powered content consumption tools, like voice assistants and chatbots, are transforming the way users interact with content, making it more accessible and convenient than ever before. Customers can engage with the brand anytime while lounging on the couch and surfing the web. Unless the issue is particularly complex and calls for the manager's attention, you won't have to wait until the next business day to hear back from customer service. At the end of the day, all companies strive to speed up checkout and these tools can help.
How brands should prepare their tech stack for AI
The obvious question for many businesses is how to implement this trend into their process. The answer here is not only about AI, however. Whatever innovative technology you intend to implement, you'll need a solid foundation to back it up. Meanwhile, both SMEs and enterprise-sized companies often have a legacy or an outdated tech stack that slows their scalability. Yet, adding new functionality can be time-consuming and costly, especially if it is written in modern programming languages or runs on new frameworks.
Let's take the content management system as a core tool for running a website. Our most recent study found that 46% of businesses use two or more content management systems, with 28% citing the need for a new technological stack as the primary reason for doing so. Besides that, 48% of respondents are still using monolithic CMSs that aren't designed to be flexible; the technology's all-in-one, tightly coupled structure makes it difficult to update things or add new features, and can even cause the entire system to crash if something goes wrong. Thus, many businesses may find it simpler to add yet another CMS to increase their capabilities, despite the fact that doing so is not sustainable and inevitably results in disorganized workflow, content silos, and problems with communication.
Headless architecture, on the other hand, decouples the backend from the front end, giving brands greater flexibility when choosing and implementing new technologies and frameworks. That means if a new technology trend arises, your tech stack is future-proof, and incorporating new features won't break the system.
When Storyblok's partner, Virtual Identity, developed a plugin for our content management system (CMS), it gave us our first taste of generative AI in action, allowing content creators to incorporate graphics generated by DALL-E onto their webpages in real-time. In one swift motion, Virtual Identity eliminated the time-consuming task of searching image libraries and the financial burden of purchasing stock photos. Now, designers can access the most appropriate images for their projects without leaving our content management system.
Wrapping up
While it's exciting to see businesses experimenting with new technologies like AI that have the potential to boost productivity, it's crucial to stay focused on long-term goals, especially in the current economic climate.
Investing in a future-proof, scalable, and secure IT infrastructure will not only streamline operations, save time, and reduce costs, but will also allow you to create more effective marketing strategies. Moreover, it will position your company to take advantage of future technology trends that we might not even imagine right now.