Many people writing about ChatGPT have used the gimmick of revealing at the end that it was written by ChatGPT. Not only is it now cliché, it’s a bad idea for more important reasons as well. These reasons underscore the missing elements in discussions claiming ChatGPT will either solve all our problems or bring on the zombie apocalypse.
At its core, authenticity helps us connect with people on an emotional level. Machine learning, AI and ChatGPT can emulate authenticity, but they can’t replicate it as humans can. That’s the key point — at a human level. Empathy is connected to authenticity. Both are essential for marketing success, another lesson we learned during the COVID disruptions. As a marketer, you have to have genuine empathy and authenticity. Sure, you have to know how to sell. But you can learn that..
You know you have empathy and authenticity when you’re creating an email campaign, writing a blog post or a tweet We can ask ChatGPT to write a draft — something we can read and adjust. But reading is different from writing. I have difficulty understanding how we can capture that innate emotion of empathy or authenticity.
One of my writing powers is connecting something I did in financial services with something I will do in retail. Or, I can call on something I did over the last 25 years of my career and relate it to a challenge a marketer faces today. Extrapolating from my personal experience informs how my brain works and how I communicate it in a venue like this article or a presentation to 200 people. That abstract connection doesn’t come from any database other than the one in my head.
Inspiration can be captured and defined, but you must have lived the experience to give it the impact that informs and engages your audience. In other words, to communicate the authenticity that makes your words worth reading or hearing. A language model or other technology can’t capture or replicate that lived experience.
Let’s ask, “How can it enhance what we do?” Could ChatGPT and other natural language processing (NLP) models write copy to appeal to a specific persona or model data? Let’s be patient and have fun with the possibilities, not the doomsday predictions. Heck, we don’t even have full pricing yet.
Story 1
Story 2
..................................................