“[AI] really does raise the bar in terms of what people are going to expect from you,” our analyst Jeremy Goldman said on our recent “ChatGPT and Generative AI” panel.
As AI matures, it will become more specialized, automating mundane tasks, ushering in personalization, and changing the way consumers, retailers, and marketers use the internet. Here are eight predictions for that not-so-distant future.
We’ve entered a “new era of the internet,” according to our analyst Yoram Wurmser, but that doesn’t mean all that glitters will remain gold.
Right now, a few AI models boast a broad spectrum of capabilities, but in the near future, individual systems will niche down.
AI has the capacity to take over tasks like building spreadsheets, drafting small changes for social posts and retail listings, and compiling data.
AI has the capacity to take customer information and turn it into hyper-specific product recommendations, or even develop products specifically for a given consumer.
AI personalization could present too many options to consumers, resulting in decision fatigue. Or it could creep out customers by predicting their desires.
With current AI models, prompt writing is a need-to-have skill, according to our analyst Dan Van Dyke.
Consumers already have little trust in Big Tech. “All these businesses have a big task ahead of them to make sure that what they’re doing in generative AI is very plainly disclosed to the consumers that are interacting with them,” said our analyst Debra Aho Williamson.
An influx of AI could result in people expecting that all content is in some way touched by AI, breaking down trust even further.
Or there’s a chance consumers will ignore low-quality AI content altogether. “If there’s more content out there, you’re not even going to necessarily notice as a consumer because you don't have any more time to pay attention to it,” said Goldman.
AI will eventually overcome many of its shortcomings, but as it stands, humans still play necessary roles in assuring data privacy, accuracy, and authenticity from AI.
One of ChatGPT’s limitations is privacy.
AI also risks plagiarism, or even being called a “pathological liar.”
In addition, AI can’t provide high-quality customer service for all instances. “The tech also lacks really the kind of emotional intelligence and empathy to deal with situations where the consumer is perhaps getting a bit frustrated or with really nuanced complaints,” said Perkins.
It’s hard to make accurate predictions about AI in marketing and retail, because the field is changing so fast. With that being said, Auto-GPT, where AI functions autonomously without or with little human input, will transform the way people use AI. Auto-GPT could be able to not only come up with a business plan, but deliver on intermediate tasks, or it could create a collection of image-generation prompts and then actually generate those images.
“That far-off use case is maybe not so far off in the future,” says Van Dyke. Experiment with the tech now, but keep a hand on the AI pulse.
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