Will ChatGPT Take All Of Our Jobs?
As we stand at the crossroads of artificial intelligence and natural language understanding, the potential of ChatGPT to revolutionize communication, problem-solving, and creativity appears boundless.
Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI innovation, where human interaction and technology seamlessly converge to shape the fascinating trajectory of ChatGPT's future. As we stand at the crossroads of artificial intelligence and natural language understanding, the potential of ChatGPT to revolutionize communication, problem-solving, and creativity appears boundless.
The above paragraph was written by ChatGPT itself (surprise) when I asked it to “write an introduction for a blog on the future of ChatGPT!” - I was going to ask it if it was going to come after all of our jobs but got a bit paranoid and felt this softer approach was the safer option. Much like Covid19, ChatGPT seemed to come out of nowhere and spread just as quick! It now has people in marketing, publishing, education and wider professions rushing to use it while claiming that our world as we know it is about to change!
But should we be worried? Is this just the latest internet tool to make our lives that little bit easier? Or will it eliminate the need to employ talented humans when there is a free ready-made consultant, resident expert on *insert topic* and strategist only a few clicks away? With similar ArtAI, VideoAI and PhotoAI platforms now being rolled out, it’s clear that AI will be a flashpoint in the coming years with huge implications for creativity, intellectual property and copyright laws also.
As we’re still in the infancy of a potential AI Era, here’s my own personal experience and thoughts on ChatGPT through my use of it in my marketing role. There’s already hundreds of so called ChatGPT gurus on social media already, so I’ll also draw on some of their observations to see if we really are heading to a Terminator style apocalypse.
What is ChatGPT?
According to the OpenAI website, they introduce the tool as a “model which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit it’s mistakes, challenge incorrect premises and reject inappropriate requests”. What this translates to for marketeers in particular, is a tool that can crawl the web to deliver copywriting, blogs, ad copy, strategy, market research and more.
As a marketeer with over 8 years’ experience, I’m always cynical of the latest tool, software or magic pill that will automate X, result in Y and essentially streamline both my own role and wider business operations. These tools usually come attached to a sales company, a friendly account manager and multiple demos before a long training induction and internal roadmap.
What makes ChatGPT and similar OpenAI platforms different, is that they’ve come out of nowhere and are free to use (for now) in the same way that Google is. When I say free I mean you still have to at least sign up with your email and register before agreeing to their terms. There’s also an option to buy the premium version (naturally) which is $20p/m and includes a more powerful version with even faster response times.
It's Very Impressive
So what is it like to use? Well after playing around with the tool, you can’t help but be impressed. It’s the speed at which it delivers on your requests that makes it hard to fathom just how it works. It’s simple and dynamic in the way that you can ask it to delve deeper into certain elements of its answer, rewrite parts more succinctly or even take a different approach to your current problem.
Parts of its responses sometimes come across as robotic or don’t flow in the way something that’s generated by a human would, but the quality of these responses usually give a good basis for whatever it is you need to produce. Having worked in many social media focused roles, a simple example of a test request I gave the tool was to “Devise a Social Media Strategy for a Luxury Jewellery Brand”
The above image shows just the first three steps of a twelve step strategy that does cover all of the key best practices that social media managers would use. It also uses data to suggest the most effective platforms to leverage (in this case Pinterest). It then notes the key considerations like luxury being tied into exclusivity, the need for educational content on product features and the importance of community management and reviews.
This is all great information, but in reality this would just work as a roadmap or reference point for a social media manager or team to execute. It’s like researching the latest studies or receiving the latest best practices/algorithm update from a Facebook Business Newsletter. The data itself is useless, if you don’t have the humans to deliver on it.
It’s All In The Prompts
Questions are one thing, but where things start to get really interesting with ChatGPT is when you learn how to give the tool better “prompts”. More specific prompts will start to deliver you more specific and niche outcomes. There are already AI Gurus online who will give you the ultimate template or tricks or tips to get the best from this new technology. So lets put these to the test.
To take my earlier question, if I was to elaborate on this and give it the following prompt - “create a content strategy to promote luxury lab-grown diamond jewellery to a millennial audience”, ChatGPT will deliver an answer that focuses more on transparency, lab-grown technology, environmental impacts, personalisation and other content that aligns with millennial specific values. You can then ask the tool to explain the positives associated with lab-grown jewelry (American spelling is needed here) to this specific audience in a short way. What you’ll receive is something like the below…
So really when asking the tool for what you want, your prompt needs to give it the context, as much accurate information as you can, what this information will be used for and the level of detail you want. Once you begin to consider these before asking the questions, you start to see the potential power of it. Still not happy with the result? Then ask it follow up questions. You’ll then start to build out the use case for it in your own company, career or profession.
The Verdict
Above are just simple examples of how it can be used effectively in marketing. My own verdict is that I imagine every large and small tech company in the world is either already using the tool or is considering using it in the future. Once they do I think that for now at least, it will be something that people keep available in the background as an additional resource. It reminds me of a friend of mine who knew a lad who bought a tazer gun and when asked why he said “because it’s better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it”
Initial usage will be more to support teams and be another “brain” in the strategy meeting. So far, it also seems to be devoid of any real humour or personality and when you prompt it for anything too creative, it will fire back something that just doesn’t seem right. So for the true creative genius’ out there, you’ll be safe for now.
Ironically, I can see companies spending the next few years actually hiring AI experts and consultants to review the ways in which this new technology can streamline their operations. Before these “experts” will be no longer needed once the tool has had enough effective prompts to do it all independently.
I might be romantic and so like to think that human creativity, interaction and productivity will always be valued over the technological tools that aim to mimic this. However, the landscape of work has changed a lot since 2020. With many people now working partly or completely remotely, the face to face element of work and the value placed on these personal interactions and collaborations have diminished in my opinion.
This provides the perfect backdrop for these tools to be welcomed with open arms by many. Companies looking to save costs, will use them to inform their activities instead of bringing in new hires. Businesses outsourcing work to agencies will have this work sub-outsourced to AI-gencies (think I should trademark that) and few will even notice. There is hope though as there’s already reports of ChatGPT itself experiencing fatigue due to its workload. So maybe it’s already a lot more human than we think…
These Clickbait Articles Are So Bad They'll Make You Cry
The third one will take you by complete surprise! :O
With a headline like that you had no choice but to click it so I’m happy you’ve fallen for the trap! Now that I have your attention, I want to talk about the increasingly weird world of online clickbait. Clickbait is internet content that’s main purpose is to attract attention and clicks to a certain webpage. Having worked for a time as a professional meme maker, I know what it takes to grab people’s attention on social media. One thing that I can’t help but notice over the last year or two however, is the levels that online publishers and even news websites will stoop to in order to rob us of a click.
In a time of “fake outrage” and “fake news”, it can be hard to wade through the nonsense and actually read genuinely entertaining or informative content. For those of us who are blissfully unaware of how major online publishers work, it’s a rather simple business model. You create content that grabs people’s attention and funnel them to your social pages and website. The more people you drive to your site, the more money you make from the display ads that are plugged into it. You can also make big money by leveraging a large engaged audience to negotiate sponsored content pieces and blogs.
Via: Psafe
With thousands of daily visitors required to keep these publishers profitable, it’s an intense environment where at times all that matters are the numbers. Whether people even read an article or enjoy it is regularly a secondary concern. This has led to what many describe as a factory line of “Churnalism” around subjects that are guaranteed to generate interest. Although this isn’t exactly a new practice, in the last few years with major platforms restricting the amount of content your fans see, it’s obvious to me that mainstream online publishers now spend the bulk of their time coming up with click worthy divisive spins on what they produce.
Much like video and picture content, they don’t just want you to just view what they create, they want you to comment on the social posts associated with their articles too. One clear way to do this is to steep their content and accompanying captions in blown up or even non existent controversies and drama. This gets the keyboard warriors typing and gives the content more online reach. How do I know this? Because I too fall for it multiple times a day. In this blog I’m going to dissect some of the worst clickbait examples I’ve seen lately. These are the kind of stories that have been fashioned out of nothing and served to you with a side of “caption sass” that will make you cry/angry/hate the world/get rich/get that beach body etc etc.
“People aren’t happy about…”
This is a modern clickbait technique that involves scouring popular hashtags and collecting the most negative tweets or comments associated with it. You can then say (because you have the evidence obviously) that people were “outraged at” or “are not happy with” a certain thing. It can work for anything from government announcements, celebrity interviews, holiday traditions or even the way someone uses a spoon.
I didn’t even click this one but I can only imagine
If there’s anything that’s gotten a large or small reaction online, you’d better believe there’s a poor intern somewhere collecting the most extreme reactions and thinking up an emotive caption to accompany the “article” that houses them.
Everything is an “attack”:
Anytime people on TV have a debate or disagreement this is neatly packaged as an “Attack”, “Bust Up” or “War of words”. If you sprinkle in a few side eye or fist emojis to the mix then it’s near impossible for people to keep scrolling by. These attacks usually consist of a running commentary of different pieces as both sides inevitably have “their say” on Twitter. The abbreviation of “In case you missed it” ICYMI will usually appear in captions to make you feel even more out of the loop. The Joe.co.uk article below illustrates this perfectly and just in case the blurry pictures weren’t enough, they’ve even gone to the trouble of circling David Jones sullen expression. This has all the elements of a juicy bit of clickbait and I was as disappointed as anyone else who fell for it - turns out it the attack was merely Souness moaning like a spoilt child.
Azealia Banksgate:
Back in January the clickbait Gods shone down on Ireland and the world as controversial pop star Azealia Banks took to her Instagram stories to “attack” (there’s that word again) not only Aer Lingus staff but “All Irish women”. She called them oompah loompah’s (I really enjoyed that) and suddenly everyone was circulating the story. Azealia having witnessed just how much coverage she was getting began fuelling it herself by dedicating a song at her Dublin gig to “all the beautiful Irish women” and responding to another Irish detractor on her Instagram with “don’t you have a famine to go die in”.
I don’t think any rational Irish person would take anything that the relatively unknown pop star had to say to heart but that kind of response just wouldn’t drive clicks. The nation was suddenly plunged into “Storm Azaelia”! Media publishers managed to produce a week long click fest of almost hourly articles about identity, race, the “treasonous” fans who still went to her gig and of course follow up pieces about why people who took real offence to her words should be more worried about the “real issues”.
The Unpopular Opinion
Another thing that I see publishers thrive on is the unpopular opinion piece to draw in a big reaction (and more importantly clicks) from the majority of their own audience. This would seem counter intuitive but in the world of clicks it makes perfect sense. They’ll re-examine your favourite programmes and tell you that it’s actually “problematic”, let’s not forget what they said about Friends, or worse deconstruct the latest critically acclaimed album, film or TV series and tell you why it’s not nearly as good as you think it is.
I’ve seen the likes of Vice do this countless times and even re-share the above article regularly since last summer. I haven’t seen the film myself, but I know from just how passionate people’s love for it is that this is a powerful “thumb stopper”.
The “PC Gone Mad" Piece
Publishers are fully aware of the growing feeling in recent years that the world has gone “PC mad”. Due to this, they latch onto the latest PC story to get people going. Whether it’s the issue of Mansize Tissues or Vegan Sausage rolls, they relish in stimulating both sides of the arguments to visit their website and get the latest update. One of these stories that got the attention of the nation online was when it was reported everywhere that the Irish health system (HSE) was considering “banning staff from referring to patients as dear or love”. As you can see from the below tweet, the story had been spun from only a half sentence from a 122 page report. In a world where people now sadly read past a headline, a 122 page report would be like tackling Ulysses!
With these sly methods of clickbait filling up our timelines each day, it’s hard not to exaggerate and even bend the truth when it comes to drafting blogs and driving clicks to your site. If you’re a brand or an individual producing written content, it’s now more important than ever to remember that quality content is the key to building a real following. Readers know within seconds if you’ve put the time, effort and genuine interest into a written piece and will build their impression of what you do off that alone.
Yes you’ll still need to draw them in with a snappy caption, but that doesn’t have to mislead them or give them inflated expectations for what lies behind their click. If you’re looking for help with creating your content marketing strategy, then get in touch and we can have a chat. You can also follow me on my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for future content.
The Life Of A Full Time Meme Maker
I lift the lid on my short lived career as a full time meme maker.
A meme is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as:
“An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.”
When I graduated from Maynooth University in Media Studies in the September of 2015, I had aspirations of landing a dream job in media. What I couldn’t have predicted was that within a few months, I’d be making memes full time (so it pretty much came true). An opportunity came my way when someone posted about a job vacancy as a “Content Creator” on a media graduates Facebook group. Although I didn’t know what a content creator was at the time, I didn’t let that stop me and applied for the job. After putting together some fairly ropey photoshop samples (Youtube tutorials can teach you anything), I interviewed for the role and started creating content for CollegeTimes and TeenTimes the following week.
CollegeTimes were like Ireland’s answer to LADBible back in 2015 and TeenTimes was similar to publishers like Pretty52 but aimed predominantly at a teenage female audience. For anyone unfamiliar with how publishers operate on social media platforms, here's a quick run down of how they become profitable;
They identify an audience on the web and social media
They engage that audience with content (videos, images, blog posts etc)
They convert this new audience into a loyal following through future content and competitions making them more susceptible to seeing their future posts and ads
They run sponsored ad campaigns to promote their own brand/merchandise or affiliated products/brands to this audience through articles/targeted ads etc. This is then scaled up and the profits become greater
Social networks themselves generally work to an ever changing algorithm that ranks posts on your timeline based on your likes, characteristics, behaviours on the platform and the activity of your close friends. Publishers take advantage of these algorithms and deliver content that focuses solely on share-ability. This means that it’s not enough for a user to simply "like" their content, they must either comment underneath it or share it on their own timeline to give it greater reach.
If this content is then directly shared by other popular pages and influencers, it accelerates the reach of both this piece of content and thus your online brand. Publishers make their money by consistently pumping out content like this and being in a constant state of “virality” (I don’t think that’s even a word….yet) among their audience.
Although most of the above will be obvious to anyone who spends time on social media, my role involved sharing viral videos, articles from our team of writers and creating my own memes (9 a day!) to build our following at a relentless pace. This may sound easy but I am about to take you on a journey into the dark corners of the meme world. This piece isn't meant as an exposé on other full time meme makers but I am about to lift the lid on the whole industry (kinda).
Generally, as a meme maker, you work off trending topics, pop culture imagery and current affairs to put together a fresh idea that then becomes your meme. Unfortunately, when you’re trying to churn out 9 memes a day, this isn’t always realistic. To combat this, I’d routinely scan Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to spot where that perfectly relevant meme was just waiting to be discovered. Once discovered, I’d redesign it and add our logo. Some would call this process stealing, I called it inspiration so I could sleep at night.
This is common place in the meme world and by the time any meme has really gone viral, it’s original source becomes insignificant. Once out there, it belongs to the ether of the web and is destined to float there in it’s multiple forms for eternity. In many cases, we would find that some of our most popular memes would appear on larger or smaller pages with similarly high levels of engagement. It was kill or be killed!
Enough of the blabbering, it’s time to let some of my finest work do the talking. TeenTimes was a publisher aimed mainly at teen girls from the ages of 12 and 18. Content for this page was mainly related to things like BFF’s, fairy light room decorations, Gossip Girl and Channing Tatum. These topics (as stereotypical as they may sound) were almost a sure fire bet when it came to getting those likes, shares and comments.
When it came to the memes specifically, TeenTimes already had a distinctive design for their memes which they called the "Emoji Memes”. Michael Breen, a student intern from DCU at the time, initiated me into the world of Photoshop as we began to design and share masterpieces like the below on a daily basis;
The sad fact that I was a 23 year old man designing memes like the above all day was not lost on me. The experience did teach me a lot about social media though. Why that meme did so well (386,000 shares) was because it spoke to that audience in a way that encouraged them to tag their friends or share it out on their own pages. The page did already have over 1,000,000 followers at the time but that level of organic engagement for a single post is still incredible.
Facebook has since hindered publishers and brands massively when it comes to organic reach but the above still illustrates how even the simplest pieces of relevant content can stimulate engagement. When you share content like this consistently, then “pennies make pounds” and your page reach and thus awareness snowballs. Below are two more of my tragically cringe worthy TeenTimes memes that further illustrate this point but are also just great to laugh at (my captions are particularly priceless).
College Times on the other hand had a smaller audience of around 280,000 fans when I began to create content for that page. With the help of a great team of content writers producing blogs and my ever increasing meme powers, we began to push the reach of the page to new heights. Identifying that the audience for this page was more about skipping lectures to go on the rip than their younger TeenTimes counterparts, we focused our content on exactly that.
Again, I’d like to note that personally I never really found any of these memes to be clever or funny, I just knew by looking at them that they would get the engagement levels we were after. Below are just two examples of the types of memes we would share on CollegeTimes;
The beauty of the meme game is that even when you feel like you have it worked out, there’ll always be a surprise waiting for you. My surprise came on the day of May 7th, 2016. Having arrived into work to review my previous days memes and reply to any of the top comments, I was shocked to see that one I hadn’t really thought much of had began its viral journey to an unprecedented 80,000 likes, 67,000 comments and 25,000 shares.
Now I’m not a mathematician but if you account for the way the algorithm on Facebook worked at that time, I’m gonna say this post alone reached more eyeballs than the World Cup Final in Brazil the summer before. This is still a meme that I see regularly pop up in random corners of the internet and I always give it a quick like to keep it going on its way.
I didn’t only make earth shattering memes during this period of my career, I also got the opportunity to create promotional posters, feature images for blog posts and most memorably a recruitment poster aimed at writers in the summer of 2016. While brainstorming how we could do something different with this poster, I scanned the internet again for inspiration. After a couple of minutes, I opted for a nod to the then clown like figure who was always in the news during his laughable attempt at becoming the president of the USA.
Sadly for me, as quickly as I had gotten a foothold in the meme world, my foray into social media virality (I will make it a word) was to end. The company that managed both pages was sold in the middle of 2016 and I had to give up the meme dream. I did learn a lot from my time as a professional meme artist and the experience has honestly been a great basis for my work in digital marketing since.
Memes will always be around in some way or another online as long as there is content that engages people and their inherent need to share it with others. Marketers and brands should always operate on this basis when their posting to social media platforms in particular. If you’re not putting out consistent content that people will enjoy (videos, images etc), then how can you expect them to listen when you’re giving a more commercial sales pitch?
If you’re looking to boost your own brand through content marketing or just looking for someone to talk to about your meme addiction, get in touch with me here. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook.