What is Chat GPT 3 and how could it affect influencer marketing and the creator industry?
What is Chat GPT 3?
Research Company OpenAI’s GPT-3 is a text-based artificial intelligence (AI) and one of the most impressive generative AI (ndrl = the ability for AI to generate novel content, thanks to machine learning, rather than simply analyzing or acting on existing data) innovations we have seen recently. Simply put, it’s arguably the most advanced conversational chatbot, responding to written prompts with elaborate and eloquent written content.
Some of Chat GPT's current use cases could dramatically change the way we do our jobs and our relationship to content we are exposed to.
Some examples include education ( help with writing report summaries, translation, etc), daily life help (e.g. a digital personal assistant using the AI’s powerful search engine capabilities), or content creation streamlining.
In the case of content creation, as the technology continues to develop and help people create ‘effortless’ content, we might wonder how our appreciation of said content might vary.
Let’s take the example of the widely anticipated Kaleidoscope, a suspenseful series that premiered January 1st 2023 on Netflix. The buzz generated by the series is mostly due to its interactive story and unique experience: each subscriber will get to view each episode in a different order, affecting their understanding of the plot. This impressive jigsaw of intertwined storylines is already applauded by critics for its screenwriting complexity. In a future where the writing process is overly simplified, artistic propositions like such may not receive as much praise. Should we see AI as another tool at the service of humans to propel and stimulate their inspiration and creativity?
What does it mean for influencers/content creators?
The automation of content creation will certainly mean less time spent brainstorming ideas for new videos and social media captions. This could mean more time spent on the actual production or on curation. What then would be an influencer’s added value, or craftsmanship as a content creator? Should we anticipate a future where AIGC (AI Generated Content) is overtaking UGC influencers or influencers in general? Or will influencers who forgo the use of AI stand out more in this new world? This could be heavily influenced by how platforms and media react to this new type of content.
What does it mean for brands, platforms, and influencer marketing?
The repercussions of a wider use of AI like Chat GPT on brand content, social media platforms, and traditional media are broader and raise more questions than we currently have answers. Content will surely be less costly to produce for brands.
How will AIGC impact our perception of authenticity? Will more brands turn to (embodied) live formats, as they are more fitting to convey authenticity and a sense of individuality and personality? How will platforms react to this influx of AIGC or AI aided generated content? Will social platforms penalize accounts using AI? Will they invest in finding ways to filter out or flag AIGC?
How will it eventually change the platforms themselves and their unique selling proposition (USP), if everyone can generate similar generic content? We might see growing popularity of platforms able to offer stronger identity verification mechanisms and private group and community features.
Will the future of AI in content creation reinforce media and platforms curating roles, therefore underpinning pay-for-play mechanisms? We would certainly see a change in revenue models as we progress towards these possible scenarios.
Influencer marketing ecosystems could be drastically changed, driving major disruption in our understanding of marketing effectiveness and ROI metrics. Measuring traditional or digital campaigns (including Influence) performance using AI predictive models, could be a game-changer for brands.
Key takeaway: Chat GPT use cases in the creator economy will redefine each stakeholder's unique added value to the ecosystem, as AI becomes both a great equalizer in content creation and an effective time and cost saving aid.
Beyond the creator industry itself, Chat GPT poses the question of our relationship to creativity and the narratives we are exposed to.
Are content consumers actually ready to welcome the AIGC change? Does it matter whether human curation is still a part of the equation? How are audiences to react if we reach a point where they are mostly exposed to a full feed of AIGC?
The question of people’s attitude toward AIGC, is adjacent to how we end up redefining influencers/creators and how we consume their organic and sponsored content.
What makes a creator? I create, therefore I am?
Or rather I entered-the-prompt-and-refined-queries-to-assemble-this-piece-of-content, therefore I am?
The philosophical and ethical considerations of the matter (which will be examined at length by experts) aside, diving in on the implications on subjectivity and ownership is necessary. Indeed, if generative AI tools are seen as collaborators, who is to take ownership of said content? Are we to advance towards the idea of an AI legal personhood (running the risk of utter AI anthropomorphization) or shall the intellectual property be attributed to the prompt writers? What about the tool developers and engineers? And the authors and creators of the content that trained the AI in the first place?
Those questions will undoubtedly bend people’s perception of the content they are exposed to on and offline. If we are to flag, moderate and/or restrict AIGC to only sponsored content usage for example, how glaring would the inconsistency with influencers’ organic copy and content be? Will we then see a larger sense of ad content fatigue and rejection?
Key takeaway: defining Chat GPT as either a collaborative tool or not will have a great impact on both audiences’ experience and perception of the content consumed beyond the current simpler organic vs paid distinction.
My POV: the infinite quest for audiences’ attention?
As we see more applications for Chat GPT and as its user pool grows, maybe the simpler question one can ask is whether or not audiences are able, rather than willing, to consume more content. This is especially true as greater volumes of “qualitatively sounding” assets (i.e. Chat GPT is not built to provide true answers to your prompt, but ones that appear to be perfectly written and logical-sounding) get thrown into an already saturated machine.
Indeed, one of marketers’ main goals is breaking through the noise with attention grasping narratives. This informs brand content and influencer strategies.
At Traackr, attention has always been at the heart of our approach to influencer program performance measurement. Our proprietary metric, VIT (stands for Visibility, Impact, Trust) is a comprehensive way to measure the ability of brands’ influencer content to gain audience attention. I believe we should pay closer attention to how tools like Chat GPT shift audiences’ perception of their own attention currency.
The fact that anyone can currently test out the tool for themselves accelerates people’s awareness and saliency of AIGC. Will it then result in the proliferation of closed personal networks to shield from mass(er) media? In that case, we might run a high risk of critical thinking, openness and inspiration shrinking, as entre-soi echo chambers of narratives and images rob us of one of the most intrinsically human experiences: inter-community and compassionate social learning.
And precisely because of our human nature, it’s most likely that we’ll value unprompted discourse and assets more, despite living in a world where content would have become a lower-effort output. In that new possible paradigm, trust will, more than ever, become the best catalyst for engagement.
This article was not written using Chat GPT.