February 14, 2019

When AI Is Done Right

by Alex D'Amore

We’re hearing a lot about AI these days and increasingly it’s being incorporated into various marketing technology platforms as well. This week, I had the good fortune of receiving a demo from an up-and-coming social media management platform that incorporated a subtle, yet very effective AI application in its offerings.

In a nutshell, the demonstrator selected a long-form article from the company blog and with the click of a button the software instantly parsed the article into 48 different, keyword and brand relevant social posts. There were no misspelled words or broken sentences. Each one of the 48 posts was different and yet all were still relevant and ready to be posted on Facebook and Twitter. It was, in a word, impressive! 

The demonstrator didn’t even mention that this output was achieved through AI. In fact, he only conceded that it was an AI application when my curiosity insisted that he tell me how this amazing content creation feat was accomplished. I was all the more impressed that the company rep completely eschewed the AI hype in favor of simply demonstrating a very useful feature of the software.

Whether you’re developing or using these new tools, their use of AI may or not impress you. But the functionality and the utility of the output probably will. The tools are getting better—fast—and that’s a good thing for practitioners of the marketing craft as a whole.

Let’s learn to leverage the power of these new tools. And let’s also use our human intuition and marketing acumen to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.