🧩 #9-Stop talking about AI. Now is the time to execute!

📍THE news that needs your attention

Amazon announces $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic - to compete with Microsoft and Google in cloud AI space.

The short of it: In itself, the emphasis isn’t solely on Amazon’s development (even though it’s obviously a smart move). However, Amazon's equity investment in Anthropic stands out, symbolizing the new phase of AI we are entering. This is occurring concurrently with the decline in ChatGPT usage and its integration into numerous apps and marketing software that we, as marketers, use daily. We are transitioning into the second phase of the AI era: the execution phase.

Source: (🔗 Here)

🧠 What does that mean for us, humble humans?

• We are entering a second phase of the AI era: The structuring of the AI market. As is typical, this structuring is occurring through mergers & acquisitions among big tech monopolies and major AI tech platforms. The hype around AI tools should start to subside, and the AI tools market will likely structure itself around three main trajectories: disappearance, merger & acquisition, or growth.

   

• AI Tools’ hype should slow down:

  • Disappearance: AI tools developed casually by tech enthusiasts on Sundays through GitHub may not endure long. 78% of GenAI start-ups are early-stage or haven’t raised any equity funding (🔗Here).

  • Mergers & acquisitions: The current AI leaders are poised to be absorbed by Big Tech. Clearly, Amazon's investment in Anthropic is one of the most significant moves so far this year.

  • Growth: Some emerging contenders who succeed in fundraising might propel themselves to the forefront to become the next major players. The Generative AI software “Writers” which recently raised $100M Series B is one of the most recent examples of this trend (🔗Here).

     

• We, as marketers, are trapped: AI is being integrated ubiquitously within the MarTech ecosystem we operate in, including in marketing software, major tech platforms, and brands.

• Marketers need to answer 2 questions:

  • Which aspects of their job will benefit the most from AI?

  • Once identified, what are the main tasks they need to undertake to integrate AI into their daily jobs?

🎯 THE insight from social networks

This post from Allie Miller - and incidentally, this provides a comprehensive breakdown of the topics and main questions executives should focus on to 'transition to AI.' If you can't afford Allie's courses, posing those questions to Perplexity.ai is a viable alternative. It will certainly teach you a lot as well ;).

The short of it: The AI Hype is leveling off. Now it’s about execution.

Sources: Check the full post (🔗 Here).

🧠 What does that mean for us, humble humans?

• Stats show a decline in ChatGPT. 29% down since this past May (🔗Here).

• Awareness of the benefits of Generative AI is being raised (🔗Here).

• Executives across various industries should prioritize integrating AI, treating its incorporation as a high-level priority, akin to a 'board of directors’ decision. However, this execution is hindered as budgets have yet to accommodate this shift and transition (🔗Here).

💡 A Sample Framework to Help You Integrate AI :

In any business, transitioning to AI involves brainstorming and (re)structuring around the idea of adopting AI. Just as we once worked on digital transformation when the internet truly became significant, businesses today need to organize and make the shift to AI.

This is the approach I use to assist digital marketing agencies in implementing AI within their organization:

• Establish an 'AI Task Force' or a 'Think AI' committee: Typically consisting of at least two individuals who have an interest in and/or some background in AI. At some point, anticipate the growing need to hire or appoint a 'Head of AI' or a 'Head of AI Marketing'...

   

• Prompting Library: After identifying the aspects of your business and the related tasks that can be optimized by GenAI, creating a dedicated prompt resource center for the company is now essential. This goes hand in hand with training on prompting. At least one person within the company must become the 'prompt person.'

   

• AI Tools Observatories and/or R&D for AI Software Acquisition: Testing and learning about AI tools should be a priority for at least one or two individuals within the business. It might be wise to consider acquiring 1 or some AI tools that enable the scaling of major tasks.

   

• GenAI Guidelines & Principles: Consider how you and your team use Generative AI responsibly. Establish what is permissible and what is not. These considerations need to be addressed upfront, and everyone in the company needs to be on the same page.

   

• Becoming an Ethical AI Company: Reflect on what it means for your business to be 'AI-Ethical.' This AI code of conduct should be integrated into your overall Terms and conditions and should be upheld by your team.

   

• Secure Your Data/Content from AI: Those in AI leadership must consider and explore ways to protect your data and content. Exploring blockchain capabilities could be one of those ways.

   

• Create Your Community: Primarily within your business, at least to start. This AI team cannot operate in isolation. An intra-community should serve as the cement, connecting and disseminating all the AI research, testing, brainstorming—and implementation among each member.

   

🧩 AI Marketing Corner

Topic: Adapt + Focus + Practice… and MASTER!

🤗 1 tactic (from me):

Roll up your sleeves and based on what you’re doing the most at your job, start training yourself to truly MASTER the few platforms you’re currently using the most after having identified their new AI features.

To save you some time, here is a short list of the new features I’ve identified in some of the most commonly used marketing software.

🛠 THE Marketing + AI tool you should master for your marketing:

Practice what you preach.

Instead of spending hours testing new random tools (which, let’s be honest, are listed in nearly every basic AI news curation newsletter out there) I’ve adapted to the trend I’m discussing in this issue and shifted my focus to deliver deeper into certain commonly used tools AND some emerging ones that are clearly gaining wide adoption.

New AI features into:

• Canva - They have integrated several AI-powered features to improve the design workflow and make it more approachable for users. Here are some of my favorites. Using it daily now. Some are an absolute breeze to use.

  • AI Image Generators: Gives you several AI image generators, including Text to Image, DALL·E by Open AI, and Imagen by Google Cloud, that allow you to create unique images from a simple text description

  • Magic Write: AI text generator and writer that allows you to brainstorm, generate short-form and long-form text, expand writing, and create outlines.

  • Magic Design: Their free online AI design tool offers drag-and-drop design tools to create any design quickly. For me who sucks at design, this one saved me hours of work (and $$).

  • AI-Powered Templates: Cool features too. It uses machine learning to suggest design elements and layouts based on your content.

  • Background Remover: This allows you to remove the background from an image automatically. SOOO useful.

  • Color Palette Generator: Suggests color palettes based on your branding and content.

  • Font Pairing Suggestions: Suggest font pairings based on your content.

  • Photo Straightener: Automatically straightens crooked photos. Life saver…

  • Image Cropper: Suggest the best crop for an image based on your content.

  • Design Element Suggestions: Suggest design elements based on your content.

New crazy features in some widely used tools:

• Spotify - just announced a new AI feature: a new AI-powered translation and speech generation pilot for podcasts. A partnership with Open AI will let podcasters replicate their voices to automatically create foreign versions of their show. they will replicate (🔗Here).

My favorite one was discovered thanks to my dear friend Scott Scowcroft:

• Castmagic - A pure gem. Just download your video. Click on the “AI Content” tab and let the magic (for real!) happen:

  Get in a few seconds ideas of titles, a list of main keywords, speakers bios, introduction, timestamped overview, main questions asked, key topics and sub-topics, a clip-finder that gives you quotes and hooks, Reel scripts, Twitter threads ready to use, LinkedIn posts, Newsletter, and Threads for Instagram. An absolute social media manager’s dream coming true (🔗 Here).

📝 THE Generative AI landscape

There are many landscapes out there that offer a vision of the most important tools to be used daily.

My issue with most of them is that they seem to be based on the fees the content creators received to promote some of them. I tend to think that the most “objective” ones are those based on the level of funding they've received. Based on this idea, I find this landscape of the top 250 Generative AI start-ups, updated as of today from Dealroom.co, to be pretty cool.

🎙 THE podcast episode worth your listening to:

This episode from Gartner 👉The AI Hype cycle 2023: Generative AI reaches the peak of inflated expectations (🔗 Here).

🎁 THE Linkedin Live Episode about Google SGE

I host a Monthly LinkedIn Live with Andy Crestodina. This past week we discussed with 2 top SEO experts who are literally testing Google SGE on a daily basis: Eli Schwartz and Wil Reynolds.

👉 Some (awesome) answers (🔗 here).