rise of generative AI – A guide for marketers to visual and textual AI content

I had another “HOLY SH*T” “holy sh*t AI moment after attending an amazing workshop on AI over the weekend.

During a brainstorming session online, I came across a plugin that allows me to add the facial features of anyone I know to any portrait created using the Midjourney text-to image creation tool. The results were amazing. I was eager to test this selfie machine.

Even the most experienced graphic designer could not duplicate these personalized images. I was able create stunning images after images in just a few seconds.

The power of generative AI, its ability to mimic and create human-like interactions, and even demonstrate a collective humanity, has sparked these AI “Aha!” moments, some of which are anxiety-inducing.

These large language models were used to analyze and predict outcomes before the advent of generative AI. Businesses used predictive analytics to improve business results, and consumers used AI to select the next Netflix series.

Marketers who are savvy have used AI tools to manage advertising campaigns and market research, as well as for social listening. AI was largely hidden, and it required advanced programming skills and specialized knowledge to develop.

All of this has changed almost overnight.

Dig deep: Why AI is important in marketing

Everyone can play

AI tools exist now that anyone can access. Instead of working behind the scenes, they create works of art in front of everyone. Microsoft launched a tool called Copilot on GitHub that assists coders in writing software. 46 per cent of the code generated on GitHub is using this tool. Microsoft plans to expand Copilots throughout its suite of products.

Generative AI can perform tasks ranging from complex codes to beautiful and moving poetry. It can do everything and we’d be fools to ignore it. In the coming weeks, I will be publishing a number of articles to help marketers get the most out of Generative Artificial Intelligence. It’s called “Decoding Generative AI: A Marketer’s Guide To Textual And Visual AI Content.” I hope it will help you understand the power of these AI tools and put them to use for you and your company.

What exactly is genAI?

Generative AI, as it’s affectionately called by those in the know, is a type of AI that generates things. GenAI is a term that’s been coined by the in-the-know to describe a type of AI tool that creates or generates stuff. From a marketing standpoint, genAI is available in two flavors: visual content creation tools, and textual or text-based content tools.

Text-based Content Tools

The most popular genAI platform is OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It creates textual content. ChatGPT is able to be instructed to create anything, from a Facebook post to promote a new product to an email newsletter or a brief on a solution for a problem. ChatGPT is trained to use billions of data points and pieces of information as the basis for its copy and content.

ChatGPT is available in two versions. ChatGPT 3.5 is a free version that only uses data from before September 2021. ChatGPT 4 (which requires a subscription) has the capability to include more current web data through various plugins. If you are working on something that needs knowledge or information from after 2021, this is important. Asking ChatGPT 3.5 to provide marketing case studies that feature AI technology, for example, would only yield results before September 2021. ChatGPT 4, which includes web data, can be upgraded to include that information after the date. This makes an inquiry on recent case studies more valuable.

Visual Content Tools

The story of generative AI is not just about text-based content. Text to video and image creation tools are available. These tools can take text prompts like “create a picture of a young woman running by a stream wearing an orange baseball cap” and produce an image (or a short video — yes, a video you own) in seconds.

Two popular image creation programs, OpenAI’s DALLE and Middlejourney , have different subscription levels. Midjourney is part of Discord. This is a channel-based system that allows creators and developers to exchange knowledge and create plugins and extensions. DALL-E is a standalone tool, which is housed on a simple website, similar to ChatGPT.

Runway.ml has become a favorite for video content creation. It can create video shorts from a text prompt in a matter of seconds. Other AI video creation software claims to specialize in different areas, such as social video shorts or video creation using static images. However, I have not had much luck with these tools.

AI tools can also be used to turn a video already created, such as a webinar lasting an hour, into dozens of video clips that are suitable for social media. These tools allow marketers to save money by not paying for a video editor or free up their creative team’s time to work on more challenging (and creative!) projects. Many AI video editing software tools are available, but I’ve had great success with glossAI.co as well as lately.ai.

Why genAI is important to marketers

These tools are a huge time-saver. In a few minutes, you can accomplish what would have taken hundreds of years. For example, I made a hundred illustrated flower fairies, each one representing a different gender and ethnicity. Before genAI, I would estimate that each illustration took a designer four to five hours in Adobe Illustrator or even more. For all 100 portraits, the designer would have had to spend four hundred hours. I was able to create the entire series without any design expertise in less than two hours.

With this type of efficiency, marketers can scale personalized content across the company’s website and social media campaigns, email campaigns and digital advertising platforms like Google AdWords. Brands can easily create thousands unique images and visual assets that will help to drive engagement on digital channels. The captions can be tailored to speak directly to the different audience segments.

There are many ways that genAI can be used to benefit marketers. While increased productivity may seem like the obvious way, there are other, more powerful, ways.

Power beyond productivity

A recent AI report by the AI Marketing Institute showed that 77% marketers said that saving time was the most important outcome they wanted to achieve with AI. However, using AI only for generative purposes is a missed chance. These tools are powerful co-creators that can help with strategic development of campaigns, marketing materials, market research and community building, and nearly every other task undertaken in marketing.

I use this tool daily and have created a quick tutorial on how to build your own. This tool is so useful that I use it every day and I’ve created , a quick tutorial to help you build your own.

Accepting your mission

As I believe we must all get our hands dirty to understand the potential of these AI tools, we need to do more than just read about them. As part of the guide to text and visual AI content I have included , a series of exercises which will help you get dirty with GenAI.

These video tutorials, which are a 10-part series, will be released in the coming weeks. They provide practical steps for becoming a GenAI power user. The video series can be found on my YouTube channel. I will also share updates in my XR/AI LinkedIn Marketing Brief.

I am excited to embark on this journey of discovery and can’t await to see what discoveries we make together. Connect with me on LinkedIn and send me any questions you may have about how to use this powerful tool.

The post Rise of Generative AI: A Marketer’s Guide to Textual and Visual AI Content first appeared on MarTech.