YOUR INAUTHENTIC AI CONTENT WILL DESTROY YOUR COMPANY
By Kevin Hamilton, Chief Technology Officer & Investor
Every Thursday, THE BOARD BRIEFING brings you curated industry insights directly from our Members to your inbox.
If that’s you, get over it.
Right now.
The, let’s not get fired, response to AI in 2022 was to recognize and distance. As was the response at a company I worked for at that time that released a mandate that AI would not be used by their editors to create content across their brands. I don’t think I’m far off in saying that was the general response at the time, the safe and correct response. Sort of like dealing with the corona virus.
“We don’t know yet what it is, let’s keep an eye on it from a safe distance.”
From that safe distance we as a society have rapidly grown with AI and are now, I believe, at a tipping point where most content produced may be considered to be “produced by AI”. It is a point where we must consider how we treat AI generated content. Is “Generated by AI” actually any less “Made by Humans” than products are “Made in America” even if you get that label just by stitching a logo onto the product in the final step of production?
But still, there is a stigma around it. It almost feels like cheating. The feeling of “I’m just not sure about this”. It’s there, for example, when I’m vetting a new technology partner and I begin to inquire about their use of AI in product development and engineering. I’ll pose an innocent question, something like “how much of your codebase is written by AI?”, or “Do your teams leverage AI?” They’re not quite sure how to respond. They’re thinking to themselves, “Do we admit just about everything we do is built by AI?”.
I had this conversation recently and I could feel the tension through the WhatsApp call. The reply was almost defensive, something like “we have really great systems and quality controls in place”. There was this hesitation to respond with total honesty - like the use of AI was something taboo, should be hidden, or simply not talked about publicly.
It is also the case with the content we produce and publish. There is a little more to worry about than software as it is going out to the public, especially if you’re publishing to third party platforms. It is this fear of judgement or being reprimanded. What will my audience think? What will the platform do if they discover my content is generated by AI? Does it need to be branded with “Generated by AI” as sort of a Scarlet Letter?
All valid.
It isn’t going to destroy your company. Well, probably not.
Caveat, if you “prompt and go”™ - you might be headed for disaster.
You know what I mean.
With 10 articles due this week late on a Friday afternoon you finally get around to kicking your AI into gear with something like: “Give me 10 headlines for eye popping, attention grabbing, click worthy articles to publish on WE ARE THE BOARD’s Linked In.”
And then for each headline you go like this: “Here’s an attention grabbing headline, turn this around into the monster, viral article it was meant to be. No less than 1,500 words.”
Copy. Paste. Deliver.
You have problems.
Don’t do that.
The same goes for your presentation to the board.
In simple social posts, it is the same thing. If we “prompt and go”™ , we’re headed for trouble, and this is a huge, justifiable fear. The AI will predict the wrong thing. Post it to your social media account and your audience will revolt.
Your content is inauthentic. It is generated by AI. You’re DOA.
Is that any different than giving free reign to a brand new junior editor who has never published content before and only heard about your company for the first time just now?
… it is the same with software development. Consider AI like a junior programmer.
Then if we just put the same processes in place with AI that we would put in place for a new junior hire, we should be golden.
… in fact we’ll be much better off, because we’ll also plug in AI to automate the time consuming, non-creative functions of the job. The stuff that humans grind through, the AI punches out quickly.
How does it look? Human, AI or both?
The content generation process:
Pitch the idea
Research
Pull together the summaries and compose an outline
Write the piece
Find or produce media (related images, videos)
Extract hashtags
Build and publish the post in each social media platform
Pre-AI, the human does everything.
With AI, every editor has their own personal editor:
“Here’s the headline for an article I’m pitching, give me 10 variations of this to help me think it through and see it from different angles.”
What this process looks like then in a post-AI world
HUMAN + AI Research
AI Pull together the summaries and compose an outline
HUMAN + AI Write the piece
HUMAN Review and iterate
AI Find or produce media (related images, videos)
HUMAN Review and iterate
AI Extract hashtags
AI Build and publish the post in each social media platform
This kind of automation, powered by AI will retain your brand voice, your authenticity and arguably lead you to producing better content than otherwise would be possible on any budget. It is applicable in nearly every facet of your life and business on every team in your organization from social media posting to board room presentations. And once we dissipate any fear of AI destroying our businesses, it will actually become an expectation, if it isn’t already.
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