The October issue of The Krehbiel Letter
Greg Krehbiel
With a focus on Customer Data Platforms, I help publishers and other businesses optimize their marketing, technology, operations and fulfillment functions. If you have a technology problem, contact me.
Dear Publishing Professional,
To get ready for Halloween, what spooks publishers more than artificial intelligence? That’s the focus of this issue.
How I use ChatGPT and Midjourney for content
ChatGPT and Midjourney are useful tools that can make your content creation more efficient. Here’s what I do.
Image creation
I write an article most weekdays, and it’s nice to have an image to go along with the article. It can be an interesting exercise because you have to convert the concept of your article into something visual.
For example, how do you convert the concept of an AI agent into a picture? The reality would probably be somebody talking into a headset, but that would just look like a phone call. To make it seem like an AI agent, I created an image of someone speaking to a small robot.
Sometimes that process of converting the text into an image can provide ideas for the article. I wrote an article on “fine lines” in business. What does that look like? I opted for a hiker on a narrow path with a steep drop on each side. That reinforces the idea of the potential peril of straying from the middle way.
I use Midjourney for most of my images, and I’m mostly satisfied with it. Sometimes it’s hard to convince it to do what I like, but usually it works pretty well.
Here are some tips for Midjourney prompts.
To get summaries
I think it’s a good service to the reader to give a brief description of an article at the top. Some studies have shown that this increases engagement with an article, which is a little counter-intuitive. You might expect that some people would think “Ah, the summary is all I needed, thanks.” But I think that’s outweighed by the number of people who aren’t sold by the title, and need a little more information.
In any event, I ask ChatGPT to write a 30 or so word summary of an article. I almost never use that summary verbatim, but it helps with the process and saves me some time.
To make sure I didn’t miss something important
An article idea is often a kind of generalization of a particular situation. The particular situation might be one magazine that, after a lengthy absence, went back into print. The more general idea is how print might or might not fit in the modern publishing mix.
Sometimes it’s hard to get past the specifics of my particular focus, so when I write an article like that I’ll upload it to ChatGPT and ask what topics I might have missed.
By the way, I do not recommend uploading content to ChatGPT. I do it because I'm not worried about them stealing my stuff, or using it to train their models. You should be. So if you want to pursue this idea, find a large language model that will not use the content you upload. Or build your own.
To get ideas
I write a lot, and I usually don’t have any trouble coming up with ideas. Sometimes I do, and in those cases I might upload a series of articles and ask ChatGPT what other topics would fit in the general theme of what I’ve written before.
The results aren’t great, but they can be helpful and they can give me a spark of an idea that I can pursue further.
To refine a sentence
It can be helpful to think of ChatGPT like an extended thesaurus. You use a thesaurus when you have a decent word but suspect there's a better one available. In the same way, a sentence might not seem quite right. You can upload the sentence, tell ChatGPT what doesn’t seem right about it, and it can give alternatives.
To create an outline
If I have to give a presentation, or create a longer chunk of content, I’ll start by listing everything I can think of that’s relevant to that topic. I’ll work on my list for a while, but then comes the hard task of putting it in order. ChatGPT does a decent job at that.
For example, let’s say I want to do a presentation on digital marketing. I can upload all the articles I’ve written on digital marketing and ask ChatGPT to create a table of contents.
I don’t let ChatGPT write for me. I do let it organize, summarize, and find gaps. With supervision.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Other ideas
There are a lot of other ways to use AI that don’t apply to what I do. I’ll list a few of them here in case they spark some ideas on your end.
When AI agents take over
AI agents will revolutionize the entire content industry by allowing users to customize and access content in their preferred format — whether text, audio, or video. AI will also manage complex licensing agreements, which means that publishers must adapt to protect and monetize their content in this new landscape.
What is an AI agent?
Think back to those old news feeds – like the Yahoo homepage – where you could pick from a menu of topics and organize how they appeared on your page. You might have sports on top, then art, then local news, then lifestyle, and so on.
Take that concept, move it to your phone, make it voice activated, and multiply it by 100. In your sports section, you’ll be able to say which sports, which teams, which players, and which writers you want to follow. The AI will also observe your behavior and find things you’re likely to value.
Your personalized agent will be able to transform content from an article to five bullet points, or a summary, or convert it into audio, and soon, video. Or the other way around. After you listen to a podcast, your AI agent will be able to give you a transcript, or a summary of the key points. You’ll be able to listen to an opinion piece and ask what the other side has to say on that topic.
You won’t need ABC news to “fact check” a politician. Your AI agent will do it for you – from whatever point of view you prefer.
That’s just scratching the surface of what’s possible. Just as Spotify and Netflix give you suggestions on songs and shows, your AI agent will be able to recommend other sources and services. It won’t be limited to news, or articles from websites. It will have access to social media, videos, articles, books, magazines, podcasts … and it will be able to scour all that material, find what you want, and present it in the style and format you prefer.
If you want Bilbo Baggins to summarize and explain what’s going on with Amazon’s Rings of Power, your AI will do that for you.
How will copyright fit in?
I mentioned Bilbo Baggins to bring in the concept of copyright.
Somebody owns the rights to Bilbo Baggins’ voice, likeness, etc. If I want to use him, I’ll have to pay for the privilege.
How would that work with an AI agent?
Maybe like this. I tell my AI that I want to watch Bilbo give me summaries of what’s going on in Rings of Power, and to present important background details from Tolkien’s works. To do this, the AI would need a license to use Bilbo’s image, access to Rings of Power footage, and access to Tolkien’s collected works. My AI would then contact the people who own those rights, negotiate a payment, and present me with a solution. All in microseconds.
Whoever owns these rights would have a fee structure, maybe …
Access to the text costs $20. A license to summarize or explain the text is another $20. The use of Bilbo’s image and voice costs 10 cents per minute of video footage, or 5 cents per minute of audio.
This means that publishers are going to have to start thinking about how to license their content to AI agents. Content will no longer be left sitting out there in the open, on a web page, where pirates and “content should be free” rapscallions mistakenly and unlawfully use it without paying you. The content will be protected and doled out by permission.
AI agents will open up amazing possibilities for consumers. For myself, I can imagine going on a walk and asking my agent to summarize John Vervake’s works on Neoplatonism. Then I’ll pick one area I want to delve into a little deeper and ask it to create a video that I can watch that evening.
It will be a whole new world. Content creators need to start thinking and planning now.
Sincerely,
Greg Krehbiel
P.S. – I recently published a short book on Customer Data Platforms. You can get the e-book from my website, or you can buy the paperback on Amazon. Please use the links below.
P.P.S. – Keep an eye out for my upcoming article on Martech.org about privacy by design.