Is The Future of Commerce Content AI-Driven?

I know this because that’s a network I follow, but I have to say, as convinced as I was then that the nuances of English, for example, would forever escape the machine, today I’m not so sure.

With AI content (you know it when you see it) basically on a par with the content produced by, again as an example, a non-English home language speaker writing in English, how long before that artificial brain builds a lexicon of language nuances and turns of phrase that would put current English literature to shame?

Now that we can see just what AI is, how alarmingly quickly it can close a gap, is commerce content particularly going to be best rendered and managed by AI in a few years time?

The thing about training AI by algorithm, and asking it to make sense of an arena like commerce content, which is saturated with algorithmic architecture, is, well, the better it gets. The more we digitise the online space (and here I’m thinking especially of the next level stuff big tech is planning, the augmented and virtual reality space they’d have us enter), the more AI will become the default pro. The resident expertise. Eventually, and not too long now perhaps, the boss.

But wait, there’s more…

Before any marketers start scoffing at the level being vanquished by AI, the marketing level is even more prone to automation. Here, algorithms really dictate the pace, and analytics records it all. If content marketers are frank, which would be harder for AI as it currently stands－writing colloquially and in an engaging manner, or putting that writing out in the right manner, at the right time, and in the right place online?

Both the producers and the marketers of content seem unfortunately directly threatened by AI’s propensity to take over the arena. If AI was a kid, it would be one of those totally brainy types, who graduate from university at age 13 and submit a PhD at 15!

Artists of colours and tones, lest AI leave you out of the loop, are not going to fare much better, if AI manages to emulate the top current human performance in the realm. A platform like Synthesia that can literally “film” your movie with AI generated everything, from only a script, is already pretty amazing.

Content creators are now more empowered than ever, but how long before AI knows every niche of consumption, every audience, every angle, every style, and every desire of us?

Then, YouTubers and other content creators might find themselves swimming in a sea of AI generated content, as AI emulates our best graphics with ease. We can make movies from talking into a microphone, but so can AI, and its brain is bigger. Much bigger.

The boat might get a bit crowded, what with writers, marketers, and graphic artists all in.

CAD designers, draughtsmen of all hues, even instrumentation technicians will all be looking for a lifeboat too, to name but a few fraternities. Don’t panic though, swim steadily towards the boat, the sharks are still busy with the bodies of voice-over artists.

Gamers are likely going to be happiest, as when AR and VR come into play, all puns intended, driven by and through AI-designed games, the fraternity might just swell by a few million participants.

Quick, stunning design in games seems set to take gaming to the next level. AI will be the designer and workforce all in one, producing ever more enticing gaming experiences.

Of course I’m stretching things a little, because people still do business with people, and whether through insistence on humanity or simply by habit, business has to remain human to a very large extent. Being on the right side of history, in this case, would mean figuring out where the line will be drawn, between human roles and wholesale automation.

When “synthetic personalities” can send personalized messages to people, a wholly artificial and hugely expanded marketplace awaits. Hopefully it will employ people. Perhaps retooled people, but people nonetheless.

AI and the future of Commerce Content

Online, leveraging AI in order to put the right stuff in front of the right people (prospective customers) has been happening for a while now. It’s not as though the AI component of digital marketing arrived yesterday. Analytics as a tool no longer a novelty, and it’s getting faster and, ultimately, smarter because of AI, for one thing.

That’s AI at the tail end, handling that massive amount of data we collected but simply couldn’t deal with. How long before AI is running circles around us at the front end of things too?

Whereas machines were always very much in the mould of the Industrial Revolution, and humanoid robots are still something to stare at, machines today are capable of more than just rote factory work. Now, we’re asking them to make decisions and think ahead too, and we’re showing them how to do it.

The insight generated by AI is becoming uncannily accurate, because it’s a model that feeds of data. The average modern business has more data nets in the water than ever before in history.

AI can easily and quickly bundle a huge amount of diverse data and come up with likely predictions and on-point marketing campaigns. AI quickly and accurately answers questions we deliberate over for weeks. AI-driven marketing is already here, but AI is a developing intelligence, not just some current app or static way of doing things. AI evolves, and I suspect it’s going to evolve right over many formerly sacred talent arenas.

As long as AI’s performance keeps getting better at talking like a human, writing like a human, targeting content, and ultimately raising ROI, business is going that way! There’s not going to be any debate with the CEO. Even less with the CFO.

So… Goodbye people?

It may well be that the AI putsch of the human ranks spawns tiers of content, where perhaps more upmarket publishers will command a premium for human- derived content. That sounds almost speciest to say today, but it’s a distinct possibility.

The likely great salvation of the humans writing, designing, and marketing content, especially commerce content, remains the fact that people want to deal with people.

That might change－the transhumanists would have us synthesise ourselves, right now, so perhaps anything really is possible in the near future－but that would be a first.

Business is still about people, and business buys the content, and business pays the people. Publishers could thus equally likely find that their readers have a limit as to just how impersonal they want their lives to be, rewarding them for a visible human presence.

There might be a soft but definite demand for a genuine human behind content, marketing, and business overall.

AI is capable though, already extremely so, of fundamentally changing commerce content’s source, optimisation, and ROI, for everyone concerned.

We’ve asked an artificial brain to handle the bulk load of data and think it through, because we could never do that as well as AI. Maybe we can do people better though!