2023 Marketing Predictions: Trusted Publishers vs. AI Driven Predictions

Last week we introduced our VIP Newsletter members to OpenAI’s new ChatGPT product demo, and this week we can't seem to get enough of it. 

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We have been exploring all sorts of questions from the simple to the more thought provoking, challenging a bot to give us sage advice. We’ve even been trying it with real work this week, and the results have been good enough for day-to-day use, and in some cases, indistinguishable from “average consulting slideware.”

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Given that it’s 2023 Predictions Season, we asked the robot for some marketing predictions for 2023. Stay for the comparison to what Forbes and Forrester at the end.

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First we asked for some mundane, and jargon-filled, predictions.

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Not bad. Not great, either, but passable as thought leadership. Definitely covers some of the main topics that you’d expect to see in a trend piece, and they’re more or less mutually exclusive ideas.

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We then fed some of our beliefs into the OpenAI playground, and asked it to make “extremely bold” predictions. Here’s what it came back with:

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Not bad! Definitely wishful thinking in some cases, and some fairly provocative statements of opinion here and there. We could definitely use these as a starting point for an article. Ahem.

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Let’s compare these to some 3rd party sources.

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First up: Forbes

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We can’t say that these are much better than the AI output. It’s definitely watered down and caveated with words like could, some, and likely. One thing that’s helpful about AI is that it doesn’t really waffle on ideas, unless you ask it to.

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Next Forrester:

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These are probably the most interesting of the bunch, and with good reason – they’re part of Forrester’s official, downloadable PDF and have likely been vetted and researched by real humans. And yet – many of them are already well underway.

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Generally speaking, if we’d have anonymized these, I don’t think we would have been able to guess which prediction was made by AI, or by a human. We’ve noticed it’s pretty much the same thing when we try asking the AI about marketing strategies.

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The question on our minds: will these tools lead to a convergence or genericizing of approach, or will the proliferation of “obvious wisdom” lead trendwatchers and marketers to dig deeper to find difference and distinction?

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We’re hoping for the latter.

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Until then,

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