Almost certainly, yes. I personally have hold no illusions pertaining to this fact. I don’t think normal people, like you and me, can currently comprehend the limits of AI. Nor, perhaps, even the folks actually working on AI. Its eventual effects will likely be staggering.
The question is: how soon will we start to notice a disruption? When will marketers, like you and me, start to realize we’ve been replaced?
I think we’re still a fair ways off.
There’s a few ways I think we’ll notice the AI revolution is coming to marketing.
First, it’s AI telling us where the gold nuggets in our database are. Or which leads to target first. Salesforce is touting its Einstein functionality and I’m sure it’s awesome if you’re a legitimate enterprise business, but at the small business level it’s still next to useless.
Now, I’m no expert on AI, but I did write this article right here on MarTech Advisor about AI in small business. I argue, based on my own experiences with several major marketing automation platforms, that things like “AI” and “machine learning” are buzzwords. Unless you have tons of (good) data, the machine can’t tell you which leads to target just yet. And since data integrity and volume are problems for many B2B companies (where there is simply less volume than in B2C) I don’t see this part of marketing automation make any waves anytime soon.
Then there’s content being generated by AI. Sure enough, like any art, writing is based on principles. I’m sure those principles could be coded into a machine and have it spit out good copy. Maybe. And maybe soon.
These are pretty isolated examples of AI. They’re very specific tasks. I absolutely think that any repetitive, production task can and will be automated in the near future.
But the real art of marketing is figuring out what to do next. You’ve got data, awesome. What does it all mean? Can your AI understand what your customers need, before you do? Can it couple data points to copy to intelligent conversations with customers?
AI might be able to do all of that at some point. Humans are very sophisticated, however. While AI might replace us for the mundane and repetitive, I think we’ll remain unmatched in the creative for quite some time.
At least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. 😉
