By Leigh Ann Hubbard
Artificial intelligence is the talk of the marketing town. With ChatGPT making headlines and AI making artwork, scuttlebutt has it: AI is the future of content marketing!
Copywriting, drip campaigns, blog posts — ooh, the possibilities. What will the future look like???
… What will the future look like?
… Excuse me, I zoned out. I heart progress! Anyway, here’s something neat: The folks at HubSpot and Jasper.ai, “your AI marketing co-pilot,” have clued us in to the society some AI companies are pushing toward — I mean shaming us into embracing — I mean predicting in an unbiased way with no financial interest whatsoever!
In this HubSpot article, writer Caroline Forsey chats with Samyutha Reddy, Jasper’s head of enterprise marketing. Forsey finds the conversation “positive and uplifting,” concluding:
As marketers, we don’t need to fear AI: We need to embrace it as technology that will help us do our jobs better.
(By the way, HubSpot has an AI Content Writer tool, which is totally unrelated.)
So, cool beans! Let’s take a peek at the future of content marketing, shall we? Oh, fun.
AI won’t replace humans!!!*
*Except the annoying ones
AI augments the human experience, but it doesn’t replace the human within that experience.
— Samyutha Reddy, Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing
Well, phew!
For example, one helpful thing Reddy says AI can do that won’t replace humans is “reformat” a blog post into ads and the like. “Reformat” isn’t how I think of that process, but maybe I’m being clingy. (More on that in a minute.)
“It enables me to truly be a project manager and a strategist, versus someone who is waiting on other people to deliver their end of the bargain.”
— Also Samyutha Reddy, Jasper’s Head of Enterprise Marketing
… Annoying people.
AI will do time-wasting things for you!!*
*Like research
I’ve never met a content creator who has said, “Wait. I really want to spend more time doing all the rote tasks of reading everything I need to know on the internet about a given topic.”
— Reddy
Right??! If there’s one thing I hate, it’s researching for myself. I would like only the Correct Facts please. I definitely trust that this will not be abused by people who want to control the masses.
If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.
— Fahrenheit 451
Hey, how’d you get in here, Ray Bradbury?
AI is the future!*
*Don’t be clingy.
If you’re a writer, content creator, or a marketer, you’ll want to ask yourself, “Am I going to be someone that embraces technology and figures out how to upskill myself and actually become the cream of the crop in terms of talent? Or am I going to be someone who pushes technology away, refuses to believe it’s happening, and clings onto an old way of life?”
— Reddy
Are you going to embrace Progress™, or are you going to be irrelevant? Those are your only choices.
What’s that lurking in the corner? Government suits and a black helicopter? Meh.
I’ve got an article to write. … OR NOT!
This is utopia.
And we are now the stewards of this technology and how it’ll be used within the enterprise, and we get to pilot it and see how it can supercharge our work.
— Reddy
Indeed.