The AI era will be chaotic, yet it's not an excuse for inaction
Shiv Singh
CMO | Advisor | Author | Public Board Member | LendingTree | Visa | PepsiCo | Expedia
Last Thursday marked an exceptional day in the realm of technology. Nvidia announced earnings which revealed a staggering 270% revenue increase from the previous year. In a historic event not seen since Apollo 17 in 1972, a US lunar vehicle landed on the moon, albeit on its side. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all experienced cell phone service outages, affecting customers in major cities nationwide. And to top it off, Google suspended its AI image generation engine, because users pointed out that it was treating race and ethnicity in historical images wrong, putting people of color in Nazi era uniforms.
Technological advancement is inherently chaotic, particularly with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence. Progress has not only quickened dramatically but has also become even more inconsistent. It is hard to believe that on the very day we landed a lunar module on the moon and a chip company announced blow out earnings, we suffered from cellular network outages and basic AI image generation deficiencies. As individuals, corporations, and nations vie for supremacy in the AI Era, the journey will be even more tumultuous. While AI advancements promise to stretch our imaginations, the erratic pace and complexities of progress will also baffle and frustrate us.
For business leaders and marketers, in particular, navigating the AI era, brace yourselves for a challenging journey. The urgency to incorporate AI technologies into your operations will be palpable, yet caution is paramount as the associated risks will grow, not diminish, over time. Opting out of integrating AI completely is not an option as that will be more detrimental. I wish there were some easy answers.
Photography without Cameras
OpenAI recently unveiled Sora, which has the ability to generate up to one minute of video from a mere two-line prompt. These videos feature richly detailed environments, sophisticated camera work and characters exhibiting nuanced emotions. But what implications does this technology hold for the creative industries? In a LinkedIn post, I discussed five significant shifts we should anticipate. Here, I have some more thoughts.
The prospect of watching Super Bowl commercials entirely crafted by Sora or similar technologies is not far off. And the idea of conceiving, directing, editing, and producing a feature-length film single-handedly is suddenly within reach too. We are indeed entering a creative renaissance.
Yet, it will also mean that we will see films with synthetic celebrities, some unauthorized and some sanctioned. It will be impossible to know the difference between the two. We will be entertained and provoked by even more AI influencers on social media, now with more realistic video content to manipulate us with. The ensuing copyright, intellectual property, and ethical dilemmas will be extremely complicated and far-reaching. And we will need to brace for an influx of low-quality, irrelevant video content flooding the internet.
As I noted in the Savvy AI newsletter at the end of last year, we are entering a new kind of DIY era, a trend that Sora will accelerate. ElevenLabs is already developing tools for generating music for these AI-produced videos, with dialogue incorporation on the horizon. This raises a fundamental question of our place in the world as creators when AI can produce just as good, cinema-quality images, video and sound. However, all is not lost, as human ingenuity will continue to drive what these AI tools do, at least for the near term. AI hasn’t caught up with us as yet.
Positives of Sora:
Negatives of Sora:
If you’re a marketer or a content creator, you probably don’t have access to Sora just yet. However, there are other tools that your team and you should start playing with. These include Synthesia, Lumen5, and RunwayML on the video side and ElevenLabs and Murf.ai for voices. Start with those immediately.
What comes next
I’m excited to share that I’ll be co-hosting an AI Trailblazers SXSW Dinner in partnership with The New York Times featuring an exclusive interview with Zach Seward, The New York Times Editorial Director of A.I. Initiatives. The New York Times has a $7 billion dollar market cap, 150 million monthly global audience and over 10 million paying subscribers.
Recommended by LinkedIn
But that’s not all. The evening will climax with an electrifying AI Showdown, showcasing groundbreaking AI startups poised to transform business. This is your chance to be at the forefront of the AI revolution, alongside a dynamic community of marketers, technologists, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. Reply to this email if you can join us. We’d love to have you.
And to give you a feel of AI Trailblazers, explore highlights from our AI Trailblazers CES Launch Dinner, where we welcomed a diverse group of marketers, technologists, venture capitalists, and startup founders. Notably, an attendee of that dinner, the CEO of Groq, an AI chip manufacturer, had a breakout moment soon after, when he demonstrated that AI LLMs running on his chips are exponentially faster than Nvidia’s. Groq has since been featured in the WSJ, Stratechery, Gizmodo, and the All-In podcast among others.
I will be speaking at the 2024 ANA AI for Marketers Conference on Tuesday, April 9th in Hollywood, Florida. I’ll be on stage speaking at the American Marketing Associations’ New York’s Marketing Hall of Fame event in New York in May, and in June I’ll be keynoting the American Advertising Federation Annual Conference.
I would welcome the opportunity to speak at your event or educate your business and marketing teams on succeeding in the AI Era. Email me to discuss further.
Where I’ve been
Last Thursday I spoke at a Future Proof Project Dinner. Started by the team over at Traction, The Future Proof Project is all about understanding new technologies and turning them into a competitive advantage. Attending were an eclectic mix of marketers, founders, academics and technologists.
Some of the themes that I covered in my hour long conversation with Adam Kleinberg of Traction included:
What I’m reading
Recent Savvy AI Articles
What I’m writing about this week
I'm in the process of writing my third book, centered on artificial intelligence in the realms of marketing. This week, I'm finalizing a chapter on A/B testing in the AI Era. Stay tuned for further updates and insights from the book.