First and foremost – I am not a Generative AI expert. In fact, there are very few at this stage of the journey. In fact, if you’re reading this, you may fit into one of three categories:
- Marketer who want’s to harness the power of AI to do your job better
- Marketing Services provider who wants offer AI services to clients
- Leadership who wants to better understand AI for your organization
For those of you have been doing this marketing thing since the early 2000s, the rise of AI might feel familiar. Remember when social media was new?
Social media recap
Social media actually began in the late 1990s, it really kicked off when Facebook and Twitter launched in 2006. Instagram and Snapchat followed in 2010 and 2011 respectively. For those who remember, here’s how it played out – and bonus points if you had a SixDegree, Friendster or MySpace account:
- 1997 – SixDegrees
- 2002 – Friendster
- 2003 – MySpace
- 2004 – Facebook (for college students)
- 2005 – YouTube
- 2006 – Twitter
- 2006 – Facebook (for all)
- 2009 – Pinterest
- 2010 – Instagram
- 2011 – SnapChat
- 2018 – TikTok
- 2023 – Threads
If you were “of age” at that time, you probably noticed the explosion of “Social Media Experts” around 2008-2010, approximately 2-4 years after the major platforms launched. This was fueled by businesses recognizing the potential of social media for marketing, but not knowing where to start. As social media and best practices become more complex, many “experts” began to specialize in one way or another.
Is generative AI following a similar path?
Yes and no. Let’s start with speed. AI is advancing more rapidly than social media did “back in the day” making true AI experts an illusion. Just as experts specialized with social media, we’re starting to see the same thing happen with AI, only quicker. Keep in mind that ChatGPT launched for the public in November, 2022, just a year and a half ago at the time of this article.
As opposed to social media, AI has actually been with us longer than we may realize. There is a long history of academic expertise surrounding AI and use of AI in big data and machine learning. In fact, the term “Artificial Intelligence” was coined at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956! Do you remember when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997? And IBM’s Watson won Jeopardy in 2011. And OpenAI’s GPT-2 was released in 2019, and GPT-3 released in 2020 showcasing natural language abilities.
November 2022 simply marked the turning point in public awareness and access, and there’s no turning back. Although AI has been developing for the past 70 years, the pace of practical adoption has leveled the playing field of any expert claims at this stage.
Now that generative AI is here to stay and evolve and a rapid pace, we AI adventurers will need to both specialize, and understand the context of what we’re doing. All at the speed of light!
Resources for AI adventurers
I challenge you to do two things: 1) learn by doing, and 2) find who you can learn from. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of platforms, applications, and educators in this space. Don’t be impressed by those who rattle off zillions of tools you’ve never heard of. Just start with a few and go from there.
Learn by doing
I’ve been “playing” with ChatGPT4 for a while, and have recently started using Claude, Gemini and Perplexity as well, just to see how they differ and which I prefer. The catch is that each of them seem to cost $20/month for the upgrades, so can become a pricey exercise. I’m doing one upgraded platform at a time. I don’t have results yet, but will be happy to share them as I go.
Learn from others
I know I started this article saying there were no AI experts, but from a marketer’s perspective, I’m finding voices that I trust to learn from. Here are a few I recommend to get started.
- Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute
- The Artificial Intelligence Show (Podcast)
- AI Explored Podcast- Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner
- HubSpot Next in AI (blog)
- AI Marketing Ethics Digest
- AI In Business Podcast wit Daniel Faggella (great for executives wanting to understand real-world use cases
This is hardly an exhaustive list, but it’s a great place to start.
The good news here is that there’s a place at the table for all AI adventurers, regardless of intent and level of knowledge. This is a time where having a growth mindset is more important than tenure. We have all jumped into onto this moving train and will learn as we go…so welcome!