So anyone who says they’re not using AI is telling porky pies… or is an avowed luddite.

Some of our people signed up to ChatGPT pre-launch.

It was so obvious that… assuming it worked… it would be a game-changer…

…certainly for all of us in the marketing world (agency or in-house).

But like everything that seems too good to be true… it is. Too good to be entirely true.

And don’t tell me in a portentous, terribly wise voice that ‘It’s going to get better, you know’.

Of course it is.

It’s going to get better at what it already does (and does astoundingly well, sometimes).

It’s NOT going to suddenly start doing what it doesn’t do.

Two words for you – ‘judgement’ and ‘creativity’.

AI doesn’t do them.

AI doesn’t differentiate between a quality research source and one that is simply parroting what others say.

It doesn’t.

On the other hand, it’s Google on steroids. It brings me a very good source reference compilation in seconds. It’s not complete. Some of it’s spurious. Some of it is rubbish. Some of it has been fabricated by the machine. A lot of it is irrelevant or off the mark.

BUT… a lot of it is great. And I’d have found it in an hour or so. But now I can do it in seconds.

Assuming that I’ve asked the right question and framed the query with dozens of guide points and caveats. Asking the right question in the right way is an art in its own right (if you want your people trained on this, call me!).

And you really have to know your subject in the first place to make best use of this wonderful new machine. So it’s not powerful – in fact often grossly misleading – without initial, traditional study and learning.

It’s like the curate’s egg – good in parts.

So I’m both a massive fan and a massive sceptic.

Listen up dumb business leaders (there are a few about) … you can’t replace your knowledgeable and skilled people with AI.

You can’t.

If it allowed you to bin a whole load of expensive people or agencies, everyone would already have done it.

It DOES make them massively more productive. It DOES increase their value-add.

But it’s ENHANCE NOT REPLACE.

So – back to the theme – AI doesn’t do judgement and it doesn’t do creativity.

OK.

But taking the second theme, just how much creativity do you need?

How creative was the generality of marketing activity before AI?

I would argue that much was boring and pedestrian.

I would argue that it did not stand out – neither in style nor substance – neither intellect nor pizazz.

So if you’re a marketer that just wants to get through the day and you’re not concerned about attention-grabbing or stand-out… use the machine.

Let the machine do it for you. Because that’s what it’s great for – churning out fluent, dull, generalities. It’ll create fluent boredom for you all day, every day… some of it accurate, some not.

And by the way – why not also use it to versionise your core, clever content. Go on. See what it comes up with.  Guess what? No judgement. It doesn’t understand what’s important and what’s not.

But if you just want to get through the day and possibly bunk off early for an easy-peasy life, then let the machine substitute for you.

Be careful though.

You’ll get found out.

Because all around you, smart, clever marketers are grabbing the power of AI – not to substitute for their judgement – not to replace their creativity – not to blunt their company’s differentiation – but as a supercharged assistant… whose work and input they always, ALWAYS double check.