Generative AI is arguably the pinnacle of human ingenuity. Though its traction today has elicited excitement and apprehensions in equal measure, it will be looked back at as an inflection point in technological evolution.
AI has made inroads into every sector with actionable use cases. That said, its impact in a few domains has been particularly revolutionary. Content creation, traditionally dependent on human creativity, is a notable example in this regard.
AI’s ability to streamline processes, augment creativity, and personalise experiences has been nothing short of a revelation in content creation. Evidently, it is not stifling creativity but augmenting it, leading to compelling content and stunning visuals in significantly lesser turnaround time.
That possibility is pushing the bounds of value creation in the content industry. And, as expected, many content-related startups harnessing generative AI have mushroomed across GCC in the last few months.
The cornerstone of the majority of such ventures is “intelligent creativity” — the amalgam of human competencies and AI’s generative, analytical, and automation abilities. Users of Natural Language Generation (NLG) tools such as ChatGPT are churning out impressive articles and product descriptions through well-defined prompts.
The Machine Learning (ML) models working in tandem are adapting with every input, eventually primed to produce the most desirable output. What are their implications for the content industry?
Personalisation at its peak
Ever since the proliferation of digital content, marketing teams have emphasised personalisation. AI algorithms, which can process vast amounts of data pertaining to user behaviours and preferences, have armed content creators with insights. The Big Data accrued over the recent years has found renewed utility with the widespread adoption of AI tools.
Insights-led creation enables teams to effectively segment the audience and ensure that individuals receive content that resonates with their interests and requirements. Such personalised engagement can keep the audience captivated and evoke specific emotional responses and triggers, leading to sales conversions.
In GCC, where the majority of people exhibit high digital dexterity, personalised content is a prerequisite to good customer experience (CX). Most importantly, the deep-learning models will pick up cues that creators can use to course-correct the messaging for successive campaigns. That will inadvertently lead to better engagement, enabling creators to build long-term relationships with customers. Per a survey, about 44.4 percent of marketers have used AI for content production thus far — a figure set to increase significantly in the coming months.
Value plus volume
As creative endeavours cannot have rigid time constraints, content creation has traditionally been a laborious process. The creation aside, content dissemination, too, entails significant time. With AI-powered automation, content creators can optimise and streamline the end-to-end process, with profound implications for scale, costs, and speed of marketing campaigns.
Insights help creators pick the right time and channels for maximum impact. For example, Narrato is an AI tool specialising in end-to-end content creation, with features such as brief generators, SEO, planning and collaboration, and workflow management.
Many content creators have realised that to err is human but not AI. In application, AI-driven transcription, translation and grammar check tools have shown immense potential in producing error-free content in significantly lesser time than humans can.
Visualisation tools can analyse complex datasets and enumerate them through charts and graphs; summarization tools can seamlessly extract lengthy documents and give concise synopses for easy understanding — tasks that would otherwise require content teams to burn the midnight oil while still prone to making errors.
The possibilities surrounding audio-visual (AV) content have soared since the advent of AI. Content creators are now delivering hyper-immersive AV experiences by leveraging AI to analyse several clips, detect appropriate ones, and piece them together. Tools such as Midjourney are gaining ground in the content industry because of their hard-to-ignore potential: mesmerising and unique artwork generated using prompts in just a few clicks.
Likewise, Synthesia can create videos from plain text in minutes. In the pedagogical context, that helps create tutorial videos with complete narration. AI-powered speech synthesis algorithms are empowering creators in the voiceover industry to seamlessly translate content to different languages, churn out audiobooks in no time, and enhance the accessibility of critical information for foreign audiences. Such possibilities will allow cross-language information flows — for example, from Arabic to English and vice-versa.
The importance of judicious use
For what it’s worth, AI is still a nascent technology, with radically evolving and expanding use cases. At this juncture, there is an onus on content creators to ensure its ethical use. A human-in-the-loop approach to AI automation will help strike the right balance, upholding the notion of “intelligent creativity”.
At the same time, conscious efforts should be made by regulators and individuals to combat AI’s use for generating hyper-realistic deepfake content. Often intended for evil purposes, deepfake and other misinformation will pose a hindrance to the meaningful adoption of AI if not tackled strategically and determinedly.
As it turns out, the solution to AI’s unintended consequences is its judicious use. Many reputable deepfake detection platforms are predicated on AI and ML. Intel’s AI-based FakeCatcher technology identifies deepfakes with high levels of accuracy in real time.
If anything, that reinforces AI’s significance for the content of tomorrow. As it evolves, all stakeholders — content creators, distributors, and consumers alike — will embark on a journey where possibilities go as far as the imagination can take.