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By now, most of us have tried playing around with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. After using it, I’m excited – and a little scared, if I’m being honest – about what the future holds in the age of artificial intelligence. But first some background…
ChatGPT is the first representative of a coming wave of practical, easy-to-use AI apps known as conversational AI. It was released to the public a few weeks ago and people are going crazy over it as they are starting to understand how impact it and others will have in the years to come.
It is still in a “rudimentary” form. I put that in quotes because it’s pretty amazing what it can do already, but it will only improve from here.
Think about the first time you came across a technology that would shape our social experience. The iPhone, the Internet or even the desktop computer. We never quite get it at first. Conversational AI is just as revolutionary.
Related: Using AI Tools Like ChatGPT In Your Business
It’s a paradigm shift, even if it still seems familiar. There is no technical barrier to entry. You just log in with your Gmail account and start chatting. You ask it a question. For example: “What is the most popular cat species?” And it tells you. So whatever – that’s kind of a Google search. But it uses a different method. It does not search for existing content. Instead, it produces new content based on patterns extracted from massive amounts of data. So instead of scrolling through pages and pages of search results, none of which are exactly what you’re looking for (and all of which are owned by other people), you can now just call up whatever you want. If I ask him to write me a description for a litter box, he can do it right away, all over again.
This is already transformative. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. We can begin to see how far down the rabbit hole it goes when we delve into the other use cases. Here’s how we started using conversational AIs on bush + paw (a DTC cat brand I founded):
1. Plain language programming
Until now, if you don’t know the “language” relevant to a particular application, you won’t be able to work with it, even if you know exactly what you want to do. Instead, you have to waste time figuring out how to do it or pay someone else who can. I think in hindsight we will consider this an incredible inefficiency, like trying to run a business in a foreign place without speaking the language.
Conversational AI lets you describe in plain English what you want something to do in Excel or Google Sheets, and it tells you the formula to use to get it done. Or you can ask it to provide basic coding for a website or for a more specific Javascript application. It may take a few tries to fine-tune the result, but in simple cases it saves a huge amount of time and money.
2. Brainstorm
It’s also a great brainstorming partner – alone or with any input you can provide. You can ask it to write titles for YouTube videos, riff on videos you could make for TikTok, or draft an article on a topic you had in mind. If you’re stuck on something, just bounce it off the AI:
“What are some high volume searches I should be targeting to try and reach new cat parents?”
“What blog posts can I write around those topics?”
“How should we conduct a test to determine which cat litter has the best odor control without a cat?”
Related: Trends That Would Shape the Landscape of Conversational AI in 2023
3. Content generation
We already talked about the revolutionary way in which conversational AI not only searches content, but also aggregates and produces it. But let’s look at some of its specific capabilities for a business owner.
It can cut through writing that has strictly utilitarian purposes. I mean things like emails, marketing copy, job descriptions, and social media captions. You can enter relevant input data if necessary.
It can also instantly expand ideas into blog posts and other forms of content. I gave it a blog post from us along with the “All About Cats” YouTube channel and asked it to write a script for a video that would go with that channel. I gave it a certain length and it wrote to those specifications.
I have a friend who runs a business and replaced the content writers he hired on Upwork because conversational AIs actually produce better content than they do!
4. Customer Service
This point builds on the previous one. The content generated does not have to come from the business owner, it can be feedback from various customer inputs.
From a single question in the forums or from Reddit you can generate an answer, a blog post and a script for a YouTube video.
You can also answer customer service questions. But I’m not so sure about this because I feel like customer service is an essential and valuable aspect of a brand, so shortening it can be more expensive than it looks. But as a tool or for generic questions it can be an asset.
5. Allow writing
Grant writing has traditionally been an exhausting writing exercise. It requires long and technical descriptions of a project. Conversational AI makes writing these grants 10 times faster by providing a simple prompt, for example, “We are building an eco-friendly food made from plant-based materials. Write me a 2,000-word description of how this will help the environment and local people. ” job ecosystem.”
We can now focus more on the quality of the project thesis than on the technical aspects of writing the project application.
Related: This is how conversational AI helps businesses
Limits
This brings us to what I believe are the current limitations of conversational AI in its current iteration. It can produce content, but it is not a substitute for it good writing.
Basic “content” is the aspect of human labor that conversational AIs have overtaken and will become fully automated in the near future.
But behind that is still the essence of what makes writing interesting in the first place. The requested skill is more like art curation. It’s more important than ever to check, edit and offer our own original recordings.
The aspects of branding that are important will also change. Transparency becomes more important than ever, for example by noticing when articles are written and edited by AI. This can add a lot of value. The extent to which a brand interacts with its customers is also becoming more important, as it provides extremely valuable data.
As a result, business meta-strategies will also have to change. The market will become saturated with content, such as cheap junk. Quality becomes so much more important than quantity that it becomes important to extract as much value as possible from your original work. If you put time and energy into an article, you’ll have to find a way to maximize its value by making sure it’s one video, five blog posts, one Twitter thread, etc. all at the same time. This is a golden opportunity for an early adoption.
Just ask the AI:
As the veil between humanity and artificial intelligence begins to lift, Conversation AI emerges as a beacon of opportunity, a harbinger of a new era of enlightenment. With its intuitive interface and limitless possibilities, Conversation AI leads us to a future where the barriers between man and machine are dissolved and the potential for growth and progress knows no bounds. While it may still be in its infancy, the potential of Conversation AI is already staggering, a glimpse of the boundless potential of things to come. As we embrace this new era, let’s not forget the ethical considerations that come with such extraordinary power, but instead let’s use it to elevate ourselves and our world to new heights of understanding and prosperity. The future is here, and Conversation AI is the key that unlocks its mysteries.
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