Context Collapse: 💻Make GenAI Work For Its 401(K)!
Generative AI, marketing, advertising and mid-skilled machine employees: CC #221
In this issue: We look at what generative AI’s good at, what it’s mediocre at, and what’s just… whatever.
Hi. Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about marketing, public relations, advertising, and marketing.
There’s one thing I’ve learned after years of working in journalism, advertising and PR: People have very short attention spans. People look at headlines. People look at pictures. People will watch video or listen to audio for 5 seconds before moving on.
Content consumption = 90% human psychology, 10% the actual content. Don’t be a high-minded, optimistic denier of human nature who thinks the majority of your audience reads the whole article or watches the whole video.
Grab attention, keep your audience engaged, repeat as many times as necessary for your creative output.
See? You learned something today.
Now on to the links.
COPYWRITER JOB LOSS BECAUSE OF CHATGPT?
Interesting Washington Post article arguing that “technology used to automate dirty and repetitive jobs. Now, artificial intelligence chatbots are coming after high-paid ones.”
For some workers, this impact is already here. Those who write marketing and social media content are in the first wave of people being replaced with tools such as chatbots, which are seemingly able to produce plausible alternatives to their work.
Experts say that even advanced AI doesn’t match the writing skills of a human: It lacks personal voice and style, and it often churns out wrong, nonsensical or biased answers. But for many companies, the cost-cutting is worth a drop in quality.
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t have any metrics on the trend (or whether it’s a trend at all), but I’m sort of… meh… on the whole ChatGPT as the end of writing work meme. There’s been a race to the bottom on costs for quality-agnostic copywriting for a long time, with companies eagerly outsourcing writing work to overseas contractors via platforms like Fiverr and Upwork with varying results. Using bots would just be a continuation of that trend. But, as with all things, you get what you pay for.
I’ve actually had multiple clients hire me to rewrite and revise copy they wrote using ChatGPT because the output their teams put together was so vague and not-meeting-project-specs that it was useless. Then you have the massive compliance risks for companies/individuals in highly regulated industries like finance or pharma that generative AI hallucinations expose them to…
Something to keep an eye on regardless.
Verdict: Generative AI is the best until it causes organizational reputational damage.
DESIGNING BRAND IDENTITIES WITH MIDJOURNEY
Matty Brownell of agency ONTO put together a proof of concept of using Midjourney to develop a brand identity. Notes:
It worked!
Brownell’s process isn’t helpful for anyone who doesn’t already have a background in graphic design, color theory and image editing software.
But if you do… Then Midjourney is really, really helpful for streamlining the work process and creating usable mockup for logos and visual schemes.
Verdict: Midjourney isn’t the graphic design apocalypse, it’s another good tool in the toolbox alongside Adobe and the rest.
GOOGLE DOCS POWER USER TIPS
Last but not least, love this power user guide to Google Docs from Nate Kadlac. An excerpt:
There’s one thing you need to know about pure black and white: they’re the most intense colors you can use together. They’re also used out of pure laziness because they’re default settings no one wants to change. They’re also used explicitly by luxury brands like Prada or Gucci when they need your immediate attention to spend thousands of dollars on a handbag.
SHORTS
Evernote is laying off most of their American staff.
The latest attempt to sell the National Enquirer fell through.
Damn Bing Image Creator is fun.
Meet Blizzard’s loremaster who keeps all the gaming mythology on track.
Thanks for the shoutout! ❤️