Aye AI Captain: All at sea in an ocean of hyper-reality

The AI revolution is adding chop to the communications industry waters. I’m not anti-AI; I’m grateful for it. It’s incredibly useful in my day-to-day work, and I believe that it’s enabling all kinds of industries – from manufacturing to tax collection, forensics and medicine – in complex ways that I cannot comprehend. It’s a broad field advancing on many fronts, but the one most accessible to non-technical specialists, must be AI’s ability to generate content – words, images, songs and videos.

It’s these applications that are upending marketing communications where the floodgates have been opened to seemingly infinite possibilities.

The AI-generated influencer, Mia Zelu, caused quite a stir with posts of her in her blonde statuesque glory sitting courtside at Wimbledon. Her total ‘fakeness’ doesn’t seem to concern brands that use her as a vehicle for messaging. Isn’t that astounding? To me, it signals an acceptance that there’s a high tolerance for ‘manufactured reality’ on social media.

But AI-generated words and concepts aren’t always a winner.

The ‘truth’ bar is set a bit higher in journalism, for example, as a freelancer learnt in May this year.  He used AI to generate a summer book reading list and did not check its veracity.

The Chicago Sun, among others, used the syndicated content, which led readers to search for authors’ books that did not exist. In ten out of the 15 listed books, AI had generated titles and falsely attributed their writing to popular authors.  You could probably argue that the fake books were ‘half-right’, which might be acceptable in some contexts. But in this one, it was 100% wrong.

I’m not entirely sure where this is leading us, especially in marketing communications and reputation management. On the one hand, it appears that consumers have a high tolerance for ‘make-believe’ content, so long as it strikes them as credible on a pretty superficial level.

On the other hand, AI is making fools out of journalists and lawyers who blindly cut and paste what their chosen platforms provide. Obviously, being truthful and accurate still has a place in the world.

But not everything is measured against the same yardstick. Fantasy, whimsy, and comical distractions, as well as ridiculously incredible soap operas, have been widely popular long before AI started generating realistic ‘influencers’.

The point, I suppose, is to be open-minded and use (ethically, of course) the right tools for the job. Communication is an art, after all.

I recall an incident at an advertising conference where the dimly-lit auditorium had slipped into a collective post-lunch slump. As a creative guru (from the agency that punted ‘disruption’) approached the lectern, he stumbled, sending a glass of water flying down the front of the stage. It was as if someone had switched the lights on, and he had us rapt for the rest of the afternoon.

He chose the right tool for the job, and it worked!

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Photo Credit:  Mia Zelu/Instagram