The opening panel of yesterday morning's event highlighted the increasingly central role that AI-generated content is playing in the marketing field.
Few topics are as hot on the minds of marketers today as generative AI. So it was only fitting that The Drum Live US opened yesterday morning with a panel discussion about this technology and its growing influence across the advertising industry.
The three panelists (Bacardi's Laila Mignoni, Uber Advertising's Mrinalini Nar, and Runway's Emily Golden) brought a wide range of enlightening perspectives to answer the central questions discussed throughout the conversation. T: How is generative AI transforming marketing today and how is it poised to do so in the future?
In recent months, the tenor of the mainstream discussion about this technology has been foreboding given its potential to cause confusion and misinformation in a critical election year in the U.S. and elsewhere, but yesterday's panelists was optimistic about the potential of this technology in the marketing industry.
Golden, head of growth marketing at Runway, a company that builds AI models to generate images and videos, highlighted her views on the democratizing effect of technology in the creative field. “What we really aim for with the runway is to bring more people to the table and tell their stories,” she said. “Nowadays, anyone with an idea can create something.”
However, she added that AI models themselves are not enough to ensure that they produce high-quality content. Like any other creative tool, they are only useful in the hands of a capable artist. “Just by holding a paintbrush, [that] It doesn’t make you a Picasso,” she said.
It’s one thing to use generative AI technically skillfully (many of us have spent the past year and a half or so honing our nimble engineering skills), but using it ethically is quite another. It means. As this technology grows in fame and sophistication, public awareness of its unsavory nature, such as the fact that in some cases models are trained using copyrighted material or content collected from artists without their consent. awareness is also increasing. .
The issue resurfaced during the recent Hollywood writers' strike and in a recent open letter signed by a number of prominent musicians calling for an end to the “predatory use of AI” within the industry.
Mignoni, Bacardi's global head of brand marketing communications, says brands can play a leading role in this regard. In the latest edition of the Music Liberates Music campaign, Ram His Brand recently partnered with superstar hip-hop producer Boi-1da to build an AI model that can be used to empower up-and-coming artists. The model was trained using only Boi-1da's catalog of beats and a portion of his unreleased tracks to ensure that the output did not include material collected without consent.
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Mignoni added that in the absence of federal regulation, marketers should look first and foremost to their own moral compass as they try to navigate the sometimes hazy ethical waters of generative AI. “There is no need to wait for accurate results. [regulatory] Guidelines need to be put in place,” she said. “We already know what's right. [and] What it isn't. ”
If there was a single unifying theme that emerged throughout yesterday's 35-minute panel discussion, it was this: Generative AI is a powerful creative tool, but it's still in its infancy and marketers need to approach it like anyone else. It has a spirit of experimentation and playfulness, tempered with a healthy dose of caution.
Nair, Head of Global Partner Solutions at Uber Advertising, puts it succinctly: “We're all learning at the same time.”
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