Using artificial intelligence to ‘create stuff’ has exploded – but there’s much more potential in AI than as a blunt creation tool. It's a seriously good ‘virtual creative partner’ that can boost your productivity and your career.
As a specialist copy and content agency, we’ve spent a lot of time looking into artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI and AI assistants like Bard, Claude, ChatGPT and Otter.ai.
We won’t claim to be experts. This generation of AI hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to claim that title, and the tools are evolving rapidly. But we are excited about what AI can do today and how it can help marketing departments, content writers and social media managers up their game.
AI can’t replace expert copywriters (there goes our early retirement plans). We’ve tried a lot of generative AI tools, and they just can’t write the way that we can. Although it’s got the potential to grow and learn, today’s generative AI is clumsy and often inaccurate.
Add to that the various ethical and security issues many of the tools have. The industry has a distinct whiff of the move fast and break things era to it (and we thought we’d left that behind a decade ago).
But like any tool, it’s how you use it, right?
AI can be a great creative partner. It’s more than a tool; it’s an assistant, a creative writing buddy who is there when you need it.
BOW co-founder Sue Worthington says it's an opportunity to build on ideas even when you don't have your team around.
“Like any good creative partner, they can help you with your strengths and weaknesses. For example, I’ve always hated proofreading. And I’m not a 100% confident writer. These are my idiosyncratic weaknesses as a creative.
So I've been using Google's Bard to help me with that. When I've finished writing something, I ask Bard to proofread it for me. Then I ask it to evaluate what I've written, and it gives you constructive feedback.
It's also useful to bounce ideas off, a kind of devil's advocate, like I do with my business partner. Maybe I should name it Ben, not Bard!"
One caveat Sue added is that AI isn’t perfect – it makes plenty of mistakes, so you need to apply your own expertise. The prompts also need to be expertly written.
One of our writers, Bethany Rogers, believes prompts are key.
“It’s a little like the scene in Hitchhiker’sGuide to the Galaxy where, after decades of development, the DeepThought supercomputer announces that the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything is 42. The programmers didn’t understand how to ask/prompt the question, so they didn’t understand the answer.
“For copywriters, expert prompt engineering is really important. It’s already something we do at BOW, working with clients to ask the right questions and extract the right brief to prompt success. The skills to evaluate the outcomes and ensure they’re geared for success are essential, too.”
Our top tip for adopting AI into your business? Schedule in some playtime. Only you and your experts will know how to best integrate generative and assistive AI as a creative partner into your business.
We know of businesses having ‘AI playtime’ at the end of the week, where team members are encouraged to explore AI, bringing their industry expertise and curiosity to the tools. But be aware - AI works by scraping any written content, so don’t put anything into AI that’s not for public consumption.
Westpac NZ's economics team have recently released a report saying that businesses, particularly SMEs, need to adopt AI urgently to improve their competitiveness – or risk struggling and facing an uncertain future.
Westpac’s Industry Economist Paul Clark says AI can help increase the adaptability and responsiveness of businesses and boost productivity.
We agree. Smaller businesses are more vulnerable to change – but they’re also in a better position to be nimble, to pivot and adapt. If, as a nation of SMEs, we become early adopters of successfully integrating AI into businesses, we can capitalise on that position globally.
AI is a levelling opportunity.
All our clients are enterprises with significant security, privacy and regulatory issues. Any move to generative AI models will have to be carefully managed – and having writing experts such as BOW will be useful to help navigate the transition.
If you are an enterprise client looking into improving productivity through AI, let's collaborate. We'd love to hear how your journey is going.
