Dan Koren, Head of ADI at Wix.com, on how AI is creating a new market standard for web design.
Currently, artificial intelligence is mainly associated with robotics and self-driving cars. Nonetheless, major advances in AI technology have opened the door to many new ideas that were thought impossible a few years ago. Some of the latest AI developments have resulted in new products, particularly creative bots that can design, write stories or even compose music. However, AI developments get even more exciting when applied to digital data and design, since it benefits the creative community such as designers, illustrators, photographers and others. Particularly those planning to take advantage of the opportunities created by the growing freelance gig economy. Things get really exciting with the ability to add machine-learning algorithms into tasks that used to be resource and time consuming such as website building. Platforms like Wix.com have analysed the challenges of creating an online presence (time, design and content creation) and are now offering Artificial Design Intelligence, an opportunity to create a stunning personalised website tailored to their needs, instantly and for free.
With this new technology (ADI), it is possible to create a website, complete with text, images and videos. Simply by answering a few questions that point the machine in the right direction, it will create the site based on what it learns about each individual, their business and their own style and digital presence. This technology, powered by data gathered from the experiences of millions of users, blends artificial intelligence and human design sensibility, resulting in algorithms that ensure every website design is unique and stands out. This new technology created a new market standard for web design, making website creation accessible and easy for everyone. Additionally, the fact that ADI can help freelance creative community to easily and quickly create websites with a professional look and feel, will certainly contribute to market brands, raise trust, and provide an optimal user experience leading to a higher percentage of conversions. Artificial intelligence is not just the future of website design. By the end of this decade, AI will be part of our everyday life--whether it be to help build and manage an online business, predict the weather or live healthier lives. I am excited to see the innovation in this space, particularly those developments that will support the growth and efficiency of the creative community.
An interview with Tobias Wacker, Creative Director at Finnish-based creative agency, hasan & partners.
This might sound like a rather simple question, but what do you personally feel that AI has to offer the world of marketing that no other technology or platform can?
The answer is simple: intelligence. Marketing still has a long way to go before it masters intelligence and although marketers and advertisers make meaningful and insightful steps towards their campaign end goals, they consistently battle with the complex systems in the dominant, digital marketing domain. Automation in marketing is huge but there’s still a lack of intelligence. Systems in marketing exist and work but drastically lack an intelligent dimension. There’s a black box of a huge creative playground AI can offer in marketing that will personalise a marketing experience on a one-to-one level as well as offer a creative arm to campaigns that we have seen AR and VR do. hasan & partners went to SXSW in Austin last week and we were bowled over by the full extent of AI in every product corner of the world. The week-long technology infusion at SXSW gave insight and inspiration into our know-how of AI in marketing. Let's just say there is huge potential in this space.
What have your own personal experiences with AI been like? Can you remember the first time it really made sense for you?
I find AI fascinating considering the huge scope and potential it has. No matter if it's home automation with Alexa or potentially eradicating road deaths with self-driving cars. These products are opening the idea that AI could be. Still, those services are not functioning perfectly yet and there is so much more to do. In practice, I really understood the power of AI and IoT working on our latest creative campaign for global elevator company KONE. Quite simply we gave elevators a voice. KONE's elevators use sensors to transfer data between them in real time that were being analysed by the cloud and Watson IoT. If certain parameters are being understood outside of the normal scope, a technician is informed. We understood that those systems are having an intelligent dialogue with each other and we wanted to bring it to life. We created machine conversations, http://machineconversations.kone.com/, a site where people can tune in and listen to machines talk to each other in an intelligent way. It makes AI human with a tangible and understandable translation.
Do you think AI could play an important role in the creative process in the future and act as more of a tool than a crutch?
100%. It has been introduced in the creative space in a slow but steady process by making sense of big data, finding insights and targeting personalised content to individuals. In this context, AI is just a starting point for creativity, as it was in the KONE case. It's a fantastic tool for storytelling but there is so much more to offer. It’s impossible to predict the role but I can see AI being the pinnacle of marketing and creativity in the future.
Do you feel that Chatbots are a decent gateway or introduction into AI and its possibilities for brands and marketers in 2017?
The potential of personalising insights and services to each customer is obviously a great tool in marketing. It's where one-to-one content marketing is made easy, simple and scalable. The only thing I worry about is the lack of the human touch but if chatbots really do live up to their artificially intelligent reputations then it's just the beginning of this journey. Again, though there's still a lot of work to do with AI before it becomes humanly enough to provide the same service a human can.
Do you think there are any inherent dangers when it comes to AI? Or do you feel the "rise of the machines" naysayers are just paranoid and scared of change?
AI can evoke a range of dangers. There's obviously a societal issue in that AI services could end up doing jobs that people do today but the key here is to work with the emerging technology not against it, the same way we did in the rise of machinery and the industrial society. Then there are the bigger threats to human existence cited by Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking that we've also witnessed in the science-fiction movies but fundamentally, it's an incredibly exciting time to live on this planet. Development speed is massive and it is impossible to predict what will happen. But no-one will turn back time and it’s up to us to give things the most positive spin.
On the flip side, do you think AI could, potentially, help us solve some of the world’s biggest problems?
There are tremendous amounts of opportunities making human life easier, better, safer, you name it. Brand new technology can be expensive but as time goes on, the technology and resources get less expensive and more accessible for everyone in the world. AI has the potential to provide services, knowledge and information to every corner of the world. I’m sure AI will be able to solve challenging problems in a way we do not even understand today.
How ‘mainstream’ do you think AI will become over the next 12 months?
From a technology perspective it will dominate the next 12 months, and naturally, AI will become mainstream through our phones, cars, home automation systems and so on. It might become mainstream without us really noticing that we’re talking about AI. From a creative perspective, marketers and advertisers will recognise the potential and want to utilise AI to practise one-to-one, personalised messaging in their work. Like I said before, there is so much more to learn about AI but experimenting with it in the creative sphere is going to be fun.
Dr Sarah Fletcher of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors and Head of Industrial Psychology and Human Factors Group at Cranfield University, on the design and safe practice within human-machine working environments.
In any given human-machine working situation, human factors need to be taken into consideration in order to ensure the design of the workflow system is effective and that humans can integrate with automated systems with little or no errors. Humans often bear the brunt of responsibility when errors arise in robotic environments. Therefore, the application of Human Factors in design is vital to ensure we are creating robots that can effectively work and interact with people. For example, humans come in all shapes and sizes and, unlike machines, bring levels of unpredictability in their responses and behaviour. Human variability has been a traditional problem for manufacturing system design and performance prediction, but the progressive trend for more flexible and adaptable workforces means that differences between operators and their capabilities is being seen as more valuable in systems which require more frequent product and skills changes. So, as workforces become more mobile and diverse, Human Factors is needed to ensure inclusive design of robots and intelligent systems to improve their capability for interpreting and responding to human operator requirements.
Stephen Parker, CEO of Parker Software, on whether artificial intelligence is really all it’s cracked up to be.
One of the most notable applications of AI from the past few years is the creation of intelligent assistants. Intelligent assistants are interactive systems that can communicate with humans to help them access information or complete tasks. This is usually accomplished with speech recognition technology; think Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana or Amazon’s Alexa. Most of the intelligent assistants that we are familiar with today are consumer facing and are somewhat general in the tasks they can complete. However, these applications are now making their way into more advanced customer service settings. While there is certainly a space for these automated assistants in the enterprise realm, there is a debate as to whether this technology could fully replace a contact centre agent.
Automated processes are invaluable for speeding up laborious processes and completing monotonous customer service tasks. But as any customer service expert will tell you, the human touch is what elevates good service to an excellent experience for the customer. Simple tasks will no doubt be increasingly managed and completed using automation and AI-enabled agent support systems, whereas complex issues will still require the careful intervention of a human agent. During a TED Talk on artificial intelligence, philosopher and technologist Nick Bostrom claimed that “machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make.” However, contact centre agents needn’t hang up their headsets just yet. Artificial intelligence won’t be replacing the call centre agent any time soon. The only guarantee is that the role of a call centre agent will continue to evolve.
“Next Year's Best New Artist” by Graeme Asher and Zach Marley from Frog Design.
Sony CSL Research Laboratory recently synthesized thousands of pages of sheet music to produce “Daddy’s Car,” a song generated by AI and refined by a human composer. We’ve felt the effects of procedural generation in video games, too, from the randomized dungeon corridors of “Diablo” to the nearly infinite worlds of “No Man’s Sky.” “Sunspring,” a short sci-fi film written entirely by AI, premiered at a London film festival earlier this year. Sony’s Beatles-esque track is surely a pale imitation – impressive enough to draw YouTube views, but not burning up the charts. And “Sunspring” works as a surreal, bite-size experiment, but would be difficult to stretch to feature-length. So what happens when the song is a hit? When the film nets an Oscar? When your favorite artist is artificial? These imitative algorithms we find writing pop songs, short films, and generating first-person shooter levels will evolve to process broad and diverse inputs – cross-pollinating rhythms, language, and imagery from deep and unlikely corners of our physical and virtual worlds. This is our new creative frontier.
An interview with Gregor Pryor, Co-Chair of the Entertainment and Media Industry Group, Reed Smith.
How do you feel AI is currently being utilised?
The machines haven't taken over. Not yet at least. They are, however, making inroads into our lives – affecting how we live, work and entertain ourselves. From voice-powered personal assistants, to subtler technologies such as behavioural algorithms, suggestive searches and autonomously-powered self-driving vehicles boasting powerful predictive capabilities, there are several examples and applications of artificial intelligence in use today. This is only the beginning – our utilisation of AI’s current capabilities is only the tip of the iceberg.
Any predictions for the immediate future?
Our view is that AI will continue to be used as primarily a sub-ordinate tool, with human input still required to set the parameters, prompt the style, or polish the final product. However, AI will continue to develop from ‘weak’ AI (focusing on one or a small collection of tasks) to ‘strong’ AI (focusing on innumerable tasks). Of particular note in the marketing and advertising industry, image recognition programs are likely to continue to develop so that consumers can take pictures of products around them and instantly receive information on and access to such products on the web. Content generation through AI is also likely to develop – companies such as Automated Insights allow the user to upload sets of data which is summarised and collated into legible articles tailored to a specific audience. Note that law and regulation is a long way from catching up on the impact of some of these technological developments. Expect to see interesting legal and ethical questions being raised in the coming years in relation to AI.
Whether you are for or against the use of AI in marketing and advertising?
The proliferation of AI in marketing and advertising has seen a paradigm shift toward targeted ads. One inherent problem is that they create a stream of content almost exclusively curated to your perceived taste, preventing incidental exposure to other products and services that may otherwise have been of interest. If you are of a particular demographic and your internet activities and searches are broadly restricted to a selection of core categories, AI will prevent your exposure to a wide range of advertisement. While targeted advertising is now perceived as potent and cost-effective, advertisers looking to widen their target market may suffer; AI will not always provide the perfect solution.
What do you personally feel AI has to offer that no other technology or platform can?
AI provides the unique potential for deep interaction with humans. Able now to determine emotions by analysing facial expressions and tone of voice, compounded with the ability to strategically reason with imperfect information, AI could have a huge impact on the way we do business. If (or perhaps when) tools based on deep-learning are applied to legal processes, AI may in time start to replace the services that lawyers currently provide.
Do you think there are any inherent dangers when it comes to AI? Or do you feel the "rise of the machines" naysayers are just paranoid and scared of change?
Although AI will bring about a seismic shift in human productivity and efficiency, the power and scope of its potential application concurrently poses very serious risks. Many highly-regarded experts and commentators have expressed deep reservations about an unbridled adoption of AI. By way of example, AI will continue to collect, analyse and make decisions based on an ever-growing quantity of our personal data – posing well-founded privacy law concerns. This is not only an issue for the data subjects themselves, but also those responsible for the implementation of the AI, who risk the imposition of significant legal sanctions (due soon to run into the tens of millions of Euro) for misuse of personal data.
David Attard, Product Manager at Switch Digital, on the AI revolution that needs to penetrate the "less techy industries" if it wants to make a real impact.
I strongly believe that AI and machine learning has revolutionised certain tech industries, but we are still waiting for more revolutions in less techy industry. The problem is that. so far, AI has been applied to industries where the engineers understand AI and are able to apply machine learning to their problem, whilst potentially the expertise is still missing in other industries. I do feel strongly that it is time to have an AI-as-a-Service kind of offering, whereby abstracting the complexity of the underlying technology, every-day industries can start taking advantage of this. I'm sure it will be any day now when this will happen and we will immediately see a huge boom in the adoption of AI at that point, because AI will literally give those industries an unfair advantage over their competitors who are not using it.
Clemi Hardie, Founder of event tech company Noodle Live, on the next frontier of collaborative AI.
In January this year we saw loads of products incorporating AI at the Las Vegas tech show CES. Google’s Alexa seemed to be the AI of choice, partly because it can easily be embedded into other tech. Alexa was talking back to us from cars, fridges, lamps and baby monitors. CES is a great time to preview tech products that are going to be important in the months to come, so this was a huge indicator of the growing importance of AI. I think the rise of AI will start to fuel the resurgence of robotic technology. After all, Artificial Intelligence needs a body to live in. Robot technology is evolving quickly. Over the next 12 months we are likely to see plenty of innovation and growth in this area. But robots will need to get a lot more functional and affordable before they become part of an everyday event tech package. Artificial intelligence will need to mesh seamlessly with great functionality and reliability. Nobody’s really managed to combine all of those elements – yet.
In Japan a robot staffed hotel called Henn-Na boasts a workforce of 90% robotics, but they had some serious teething problems just after they launched, which indicates that we still have a way to go. With robots and artificial-intelligence enabled devices becoming increasingly popular and mainstream, we will likely see a similar rush for the law to catch up as we did with social media. Governments will struggle to stay ahead of rapid advances in connected technologies and all of the data breaches and privacy issues that can raise. Governments are also likely to come under increasing pressure to safeguard jobs against the coming ‘rise of the robot’.
In my opinion, collaborative AI is likely to be the next frontier. It won’t be good enough for an AI device to operate in isolation, all of our tech devices will need to talk to each other and our artificial companions could be great hubs from which we can co-ordinate all of them. Our Amazon Echo or our Smartphone could become the hub device from which we talk to our fridge, our heating systems, our baby monitors, our cars and all of our other connected devices. This is the so-called ‘internet of things’ that has been predicted for years. As more of our ‘things’ begin to connect to the internet, AI will step into the role of ‘office manager’ for all of our different devices.
Daniel Hegarty, CEO and founder of digital mortgage broker habito on how AI chatbots will put consumers back in control.
Next year we’ll see chatbots move from testing-ground to mainstream. Expect them to become more polished and human-like, and even more ingrained in the fabric of our daily lives – whether you’re ordering groceries from across the kitchen using Amazon’s Alexa or transferring money to a family member using a Facebook chatbot. We’re coming to understand that users do not want more interaction, they want less - bots offer a comfortable conversational paradigm that allow us to get directly to what we need, yet still allow us to interact with them passively. While there’s still some hesitation around AI amongst consumers, there is a natural adoption curve of all new technologies. However, we’ve witnessed first-hand, that even when it comes to mortgages (the biggest financial commitment we’ll ever likely make) people trust AI if it’s delivering a service that meets their needs and promises the most precious commodity of all; Time.
Paul Jarrett, Founder and Director at Sonin, on how is AI currently being used by marketers and how it could be used in the foreseeable future.
AI has been in use for many years now, often without us realising, through number plate recognition in car parks to credit card fraud detection. Because AI consists of so many elements, it's easy to look past these small applications that we already have in our day to day life. However we've seen a large shift in the last year where brands and businesses have started to explore new use cases for the technology. With the release of Google Assistant and the ability to integrate Siri into apps, we're seeing more brands utilise speech recognition and chat bots. Businesses have begun integrating intelligent machines into their systems to help predict cash flow and monitor the security of their data. And we've even seen company strategies evolve to focus directly on AI, Such as Netflix, where intelligent algorithms accurately predict what you would like to watch. Predictions for immediate future: As brands and businesses continue to personalise and streamline the user experience, we'll see AI integrate itself further into our lives. Driverless cars are already appearing on test tracks across the country, and rumours of Amazon physical grocery stores have caused a lot of buzz within the industry.
I often talk about the blurring line between the physical and digital world, AI is very much an enabler in bridging this gap, and using technology to further support our daily activities. This means there will be a bigger focus from brands on creating a seamless experience, where a user's digital history and behaviour transfers through to the physical store. So when we go into a car showroom to buy a new car, the sales person can use our online username to understand the research and engagement we've already had with that brand. Use of AI in marketing: As consumers we want to complete tasks quickly and easily as possible, and we want personalised experiences. AI will support both brands and businesses to improve their relationships with their consumers, by understanding large amounts of data, moving it seamlessly and allowing intelligent predictions of the users next move. It gives the marketing and advertising industry huge opportunities to process user profiles quickly and segment into much more detailed personas for better targeting. It won't be long until we see interactive billboards that give personalised messages and instantaneously change dependant on your facial expression.
Matt Klippel, Technical Director at STACK, on AI as the 'buzzword' of 2017 and the need for greater monitoring.
SXSW felt like every other session was about artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) in one way or another. Whether the presenters of those sessions were genuinely using AI or ML or just general, clever computational techniques, it was definitely the buzzword that attracted attention. Progress over the last two or three years in AI and ML has been incredible and the rate of improvement feels exponential. The availability of AI as a service via IBM Watson, Azure, AWS and numerous other cloud based platforms and providers has made it a tool we can consider in almost every element of what we do - whether part of a creative solution; as a means to communicate with customers in a more natural, conversational way; or to improve our analytics, targeting and personalisation. Real time predictive analytics is particularly exciting and can iteratively improve the customer relationship for both brand and customer with better and timelier content, customer service and experience. As with any tool or technique, monitoring is critical and we need to be aware of any potential risk for unintended consequences (Microsoft’s Tay, was an extreme example of this), but I’m massively excited for what we’re going to see and be able to do with AI and ML in the near future.
Varun Bhanot, Head of PR and Partnerships at Hubble (the largest online marketplace for finding and renting office space in London) on what AI has to offer the property industry that no other technology can and its potential dangers.
AI offers a speed, accuracy and level of insight that no other platform, technology or human can match. At Hubble, our team is launching a system that will allow AI-enabled searches to deliver within 30 seconds what a traditional property broker would need around three days to research and collate. For example, if someone from a creative agency came onto the Hubble site and entered their work email, our AI device would instantly know where your current office is, how big your company is, whether you're creative, where you’ve moved over the past five years, and would automatically start making advanced recommendations for potential new workspace in moments. This means we can offer creative agencies and all our clients instant results that are perfectly tailored to their needs. Better still, it means our clients in turn don’t need to dedicate tonnes of time to finding the perfect workspace, and can focus on their own client work and growth, whether this is in the creative sector or any other industry. In this respect, I see AI as a great enabler, which could help all industries speed up their processes, and take over more boring tasks, so we can all focus on higher value and more interesting work.
Concerning the potential dangers of AI for the property industry, however. Traditionally the property industry has been opposed to new technology and slow to use it. With AI in particular, there's a real fear it will try and replace jobs and do a poor job of it. But if you look at the introduction of new technologies historically, it has improved industries by creating more jobs, accelerating industry growth and enhancing customer experience. I believe artificial intelligence will do the same for the property sector and across industries. Of course AI will be able to displace certain job functions, and in the example of the property sector, could replace the traditional property agent role in its current state entirely. But that doesn’t mean 'the machines’ will replace jobs completely, more that our jobs will evolve and new skills will be needed. For example, in the property industry, which deals with large, important transactions, clients will always need a human advisor to build trust with and hold accountable if something goes wrong. Equally more people will be needed to intelligently work with AI and apply the new technology. I think the real danger with AI comes from ignoring it, as those who can adapt and embrace AI will gain the most customers, grow the fastest, and will be able to re-skill and take on employees to use and apply this new technology. Those who bury their head in the sand are likely to get left behind, as customers leave for more efficient practices and key talent goes after new work.
Jon Buss, Managing Director at big tech brand Yext, on how AI is making search smarter and the impact on advertisers.
As we move from mobile-first to what Google chief executive Sundar Pichai termed an “AI-first world,” businesses must thrive in an environment where technology is making more and more decisions about the business before the consumer even sees it. Voice search, once a novelty, is quickly seizing a high share of search volume – 20%, according to Google. Its growing importance is changing search strategies for businesses in several ways. The most fundamental difference is that voice search only returns one result for most queries. Its value proposition is convenience, and part of that convenience is honing in on the user’s intent and providing one (hopefully) relevant and customised response.
The more information on products you promote, the more highly you will rank for tailored searches such as “Where can I buy a vacuum cleaner?” Making artificial intelligence (AI) work for, instead of against, a business requires rich and precisely structured data about businesses individual locations, so that queries such as “Where’s a good supermarket near me?” drive customers to your business instead of the competition. Google data shows that 30% of mobile searches relate to location. Not optimising for local search (including voice), jeopardises a huge revenue stream.
Feeding a wide array of high-quality location data into search will be a crucial part of any businesses customer acquisition strategy in 2017. Pieces of information such as address, phone number, opening hours, products offered, special Sales, and location-specific reviews are all increasingly influential in signalling to voice search AI that your location fulfils the needs of the user. It’s no longer enough to have a list of locations on your corporate website – each location now needs a vibrant and active presence across all major web publishers.
Location reviews are an often-overlooked opportunity in the competition for search rank and cannot be ignored in voice search. Google recently updated its algorithms to take reviews into account in the order of search results. The tricky thing is that it’s usually customers on the fringes who take it upon themselves to review your business. Since winning customers with voice search means a business needs to be the top result, retailers need to generate numerous high-quality reviews from their customers in order to compete.
Javier Diez-Aguirre, CMO at Ricoh Europe, on the "transformational" potential of AI in marketing.
The advertising and marketing world continues to evolve alongside the impacts of technology, especially as consumers shift towards online services for a more immediate and creative experience. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another technology-driven concept that brands can harness to provide better experiences for customers, although working examples are in relative infancy as it stands. Despite this, customers are craving more and more bespoke, personalised ads and brands can turn to AI to meet the demands of modern day audiences. The term ‘transformational’ is far too frequently used when it comes to new technological changes but in my view AI is exempt from this, and is set to really change marketing.
In marketing, brands often do not have the capacity to analyse and fully understand the customer’s data but the information tends to be easily accessible. This is where AI can help; think of data like a segment of DNA, a spiral of information if you like. AI can efficiently crunch all the data, turn it into information and understand how particular customers prefer to interact with brands. It can also unpick the context and identify where the best placed interactions are for each individual customer. This is incredibly valuable, as Ricoh research has made clear that customers are willing to move away from brands that fail to communicate effectively with them – the research reveals 57% of respondents would do this.
Using AI can unlock huge opportunity for brands and provide better experiences for audiences. At Ricoh, we’re currently using AI to inform one of our advertising campaigns targeting businesses, and we expect it to help us reach new audiences as well as existing customers with relevant and useful information. In a world of constant disruption and data proliferation, AI might well prove to be a key differentiator in effective customer communications across industries.
Thomas Prommer, Managing Director, of Technology at Huge, on the promise of AI and how “great power comes with great responsibility.”
The promise I see lies within the very definition of how we identify AI technology and platforms. While academia, the industry, and media have used the term AI with varying degrees of interpretation, we classify technology as AI when it has an ability to learn and continuously evolve an "artificial intelligence" that would not be able to be developed purely through human cognitive capabilities. That hypothesis should hold true independent if one puts one human or thousand humans behind the task. In other words, AI technologies allow us to apply a degree of intelligent behavior to problems that is not accessible through purely the human mind even at scale.
In the context of brands and marketers, there is a wide range of impactful promise: one example of the application of AI is to have a system learn a sophisticated multi-dimensional pricing strategy for an e-commerce website in a purely unsupervised manner. Dimensions could include time of day, location of the user, and the device they are shopping with, which would impact the product price based on the continuously measured probability of conversion. Another example includes an organization being able to recognize their products automatically in the big data context of user-generated social channels such as Instagram or Pinterest through vision-processing technologies mapped with learning algorithms. Lastly, an AI application we are particularly excited about at Huge is Anticipatory Design; predicting user behavior on an individual basis on their past interactions with a digital product and known preferences has great potential to further streamline user experiences and delight the user by making their lives easier through predictive user modeling. As an example to the contrary, developing a chatbot application on Facebook should not be considered the application of Artificial intelligence. While it requires the use of natural language techniques and can create a significant scale of operational efficiency, an actual human being is expected to still be better at communicating with a customer.
Just like with the application of any impactful technology, however (i.e. nuclear power or genetic engineering), great power comes with great responsibility. There is no question that AI technology can be used in ways that can be considered unethical and abusive if we do not develop an appropriate framework of regulation and governance to protect consumer rights and privacy. As an example in the past, technologically it is more than feasible for Facebook to use AI to offer functionality that allows you to process any snapshot of an unknown individual, e.g. taken through a store camera or your cell phone, and match it to a concrete individual within their 2 billion worldwide users based on their profile and other shared images. The endless opportunities for real-time personalization and targeting are obvious. However, when Facebook first introduced such functionality in form of their face recognition feature expanding beyond your friend's circle, they received a strong backlash from privacy advocates and consumer protection authorities and quickly removed the functionality. Are we at a point of pivot of machines taking over control? Certainly not. In fact the most successful applications in today's world are the ones that combine unsupervised learning algorithms with manual supervision, interpretation, and tweaking.
Chris Gorell Barnes, CEO & Founder at content agency Adjust Your Set, on the huge role AI will have in marketing going forward.
Like it or not, AI will have a huge role in marketing. As demonstrated by Cosabella’s use of AI to triple ROI and increase its customer base by 30%, AI will be particularly useful when it comes to driving the performance element of content marketing. The common knee-jerk reaction is to misinterpret this as robots taking creative control. But there’s an optimal human/robot synergy where humans lead on the core creative idea and AI uses its analytical superpowers to transform consumer data into razor-sharp targeting strategies. This synergy creates a situation where the overall editorial thought is still very much in place, but it’s tailored to each consumer’s individual preferences.
So rather than killing human creativity, AI will help augment creative into something that has pinpoint accuracy when it comes personalisation. This isn’t just a win for the brand that wants to reach a particular type of consumer in an agile way. It’s also a bonus for those on the receiving end. They will get messaging that’s able to draw on data – everything from a person’s Facebook likes through to realtime weather updates – to create content that’s so much more relevant and, therefore, so much more appreciated. Content marketing becomes an even more powerful medium when it’s developed at speed. AI’s lightning fast processing gives us this much-needed speed. So, providing a brand’s purpose and humanity remain fundamental to the core creative idea, AI – in the context of content marketing, at least – can only be a good thing.
Neill Horie, Head of Artificial Intelligence Optimisation at The Home Agency, on what AI means to different people and its true power.
AI means different things to so many people. Typically, they think of it as Skynet from Terminator – something far away, very techy and definitely removed from their daily life. Without people realising it, though, weak AI has already become prevalent throughout our daily life. At a very basic level, search engines which we take for granted (like Google), have arguably been AI for some time now.
The difference now is the scale of its capabilities – like the difference between data and Big Data. It’s the same kind of shift when you realise that, suddenly, our iPads are more advanced than its equivalent in Star Trek.
The true power of AI is the ability to bring immense processing right to the user, in a friendly way.
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It can understand natural language – it knows the objects and subjects of sentences (particularly with advances like Google’s syntax parser, Parsey McParseFace (yes, that’s really its name)), coupled with voice recognition.
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It has a massive database of data and information which it can connect together in a myriad of ways, allowing it to answer our questions.
If you consider intelligence as being able to learn and apply skills and knowledge, it’s not hard to see why Alexa and Google seem to fit the bill – even in their current state.
On top of that, the behind-the-scenes power of this is similarly overwhelming, as it can work out trends and patterns amongst people like never before, like using Twitter to predict Norovirus.
The immediate risks of that are many-fold:-
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Using AI assistants and the like requires relinquishing some control, potentially allowing for expensive mistakes if they do the wrong thing.
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We trust AI, even though they don’t always tell us the truth. If we come to rely on them exclusively, it opens us up to mass dissemination of giant mistakes – let alone deceit.
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The amount of data available allows for social manipulation to an unprecedented scale, as can be seen with the use of social data in elections.
Key amongst this is that this is what we can do right now, and we are already exceeding some (dated) sci-fi, without much consideration of how this could affect our society. Even without thinking of truly sentient AI, we could be on the brink of a social change greater than anything seen in our lifetimes.
Stephen Upstone, Founder and CEO at LoopMe, on why we shouldn't be afraid of AI and how it can close the feedback loop.
Vast amounts of data are now on offer to marketers, but the only way to make sense of that data, and use it correctly is to employ artificial intelligence. AI can distinguish links, correlating and contributing factors and exceptions to an extent that is utterly impossible for the human brain, and it can do that in under 5 milliseconds. AI gives us the opportunity to close the feedback loop, to take feedback directly from users (if they chose to watch an advert or not for example) and use that feedback to instantly improve advertising for future users. For example, a brand could run two types of creative, one funny and one sad. AI can be used to deliver each creative to the people who are most likely to be responsive, going far beyond their age or gender, but based on their unique preferences as an individual. By using artificial intelligence on a recent campaign, the completion rate of a native video ad rose from around 15% to 67%, simply by showing the ad to users who were most likely to engage – there is no other technology capable of improving advertising to this extent.
The use of artificial intelligence will transform the industry, it is already happening from a delivery and data analytics perspective. However, we shouldn’t be afraid to use AI in marketing, it does not replace people, instead it enhances them. For example, AI allows ad ops professionals to spend less time on manual optimization and more time building out insights and adding value to a client. For creative teams it can deliver data on what their audience responds to, providing a brief that is accurate and comprehensive and based on fact, not assumption. Artificial intelligence will remove layers of manual work and leave people freer to do the creative and relationship-building work humans excel at.
Karl O’Doherty, Senior Account Manager at Ketchum London, on how worries concerning AI are justified, and how human creativity wil save us.
There are legitimate and worrisome concerns that an AI powered system will tear apart the professional communication industry. The technology is impressive, opaque for a large percentage of onlookers and an AI system’s power to think, reason and execute with near autonomy (once instructed) is a real threat to many parts of a marcomms job. However, the crucial element to what makes a human good at their job in a creative or communicative profession is creativity at any magnitude, and it’s the application of that creativity to redefine our own jobs that will ultimately save us.
Forget the threat an AI can have to junior staff’s hours compiling lists and coverage books, leave that to the machine and harness their creativity and (in most cases) youth for a project and client’s benefit (and investing time in actually getting to know the media, weaning our industry off lists and databases). Utilise the power of parsing thousands of pieces of text, hours of video and other content to pull out defining themes and create something that becomes truly representative of what you are communicating (as an example, have a look at how IBM used its Watson system to create a Gaudi inspired sculpture for a conference in Barcelona). AI is a threat to some elements of the job, yes. However, shifting our viewpoint from seeing it as a threat to seeing it as a tool, and harnessing its power as an aid to creativity and insight is the simple key to working with this complex technology.
An interview with Michelle Huff, CMO of Act-On; a marketing automation platform.
This might sound like a rather simple question, but what do you personally feel that AI has to offer that no other technology or platform can?
I think AI, in particular machine learning, added to a platform has the potential to transform our customers’ lives online. This combination will enable technology solutions to adapt to changing tastes and preferences, in real-time, in ways other technologies alone simply have a hard time doing. To date, many of the platforms we use are designed for specific use cases, responses, and workflows. These newer solutions will continuously learn - providing more authentic and tailored customer experiences.
Do you think AI could play an important role in the creative process in the future and act as more of a tool than a crutch?
There are certain marketing functions that AI can replicate, but creative tasks are hard to generate and replace. I believe marketing strategy and creative direction will always be human led, but the many manual, repetitive tasks that burden marketers today could be replaced. Tasks such as analysing multiple data sets and outcomes, testing different messages and offers, making decisions related to targeting, optimal engagement times and preferred channels.
Do you feel that Chatbots are a decent gateway or introduction into AI and its possibilities for brands and marketers in 2017?
Chatbots are interesting and often times the most visible way to think about artificial intelligence and marketing. However, these technologies may also run into some of the most vocal objections by customers and will more than likely follow a traditional adoption curve as the bots improve over time. I do think more subtle introductions to AI will start to appear as new features in marketing products and tools that will help us make better decisions. Which message should I send? When should I send it? What channel should I choose? Soon we will see AI helping marketers make these decisions and adapt to the changing needs of the buyers over time. Customers may not even notice that AI was working in the background to create the experience.
Do you think there are any inherent dangers when it comes to AI? Or do you feel the "rise of the machines" naysayers are just paranoid and scared of change?
Danger only arises, I think, when AI is taken to be the answer for everything - instead of a complementary part of a larger strategy and set of tools. I do think it’s worth always asking yourself what could go wrong when implementing a solution, and then occasionally testing and verifying along the way. Many of us in marketing know that all is well...if things are going well. But once we hit a roadblock, if the answers are a black box and no one understands the strategy, how it works, and what could possibly go wrong - we are ultimately held accountable. Yet, these new technologies can be a great time-saving measure that can streamline and simplify processes. Man and machine ought to be able to coexist peacefully.
On the flip side, do you think AI could, potentially, help us solve some of the world’s biggest problems?
I’d argue AI has already started to solve some of our most pressing problems, actually! Researchers at Stanford, for instance, recently developed a pioneering algorithm able to detect melanomas and carcinomas in their earliest stages, simply by scanning a database of some 130k different images of skin cancers at various stages. Early diagnosis and prevention at the simple touch of a Smartphone button. It’s amazing!
How ‘mainstream’ do you think AI will become over the next 12 months.
I don’t think mainstream would be the right word to use for AI adoption over the next 12 months. If we look at the technology adoption lifecycle, AI adoption is still in the first stage - innovators. The marketers using AI today are from larger enterprises with the resources and expertise to implement and trial these types of innovations. AI usage in marketing is still in its infancy and being tested to see how it can supplement or optimise what marketers are already doing. And as far as machine learning goes, the more data points it gathers, behaviours it connects, and actions it tracks, the smarter it will get over time.
What have your own personal experiences with AI been like? Can you remember the first time it really made sense for you?
The first time it clicked, I have to say, was using Google Maps and then eventually Waze. In the palm of my hand, I had a tool that could take an enormous amount of data, understand where I was in my journey, and apply intelligence to everyday decisions I was making on the road - ultimately learning my behaviour, commuting hours and preferred routes. I essentially had a co-pilot at my disposal providing recommendations and course correcting in real time. It was the first real customer experience that I saw unfold on an individual customer’s terms rather than a brand’s, and it helped me realise how rare that truly is - a customer experience that’s adaptive, rather than pre-defined or reactive.
Trevor Hardy, CEO at The Future Laboratory, on his overwhelming support for AI.
As AI and devices develop and begin to actively take over the running of households, they will increasingly be responsible for purchasing decisions.
"For providers of home goods and services, this means that bots will increasingly become customers – or at least important intermediaries between a selling business and a human purchaser," says McKinsey partner Jean-Baptiste Coumau.
Marketers will have to learn what metrics make certain undifferentiated products appealing not only to consumers, but also to their artificially intelligent helpers.
I overwhelmingly support the use of, and experimentation with, AI in marketing and advertising, as this is the only choice we have. Whether you think it should or shouldn’t be used, it’s inevitable that it will be. When it’s applications become more mainstream we will most certainly have a more complex lexicon to describe it but, in the short-term, we need to ensure that AI is positive for business, as well as consumers and the building of trust. We must also focus attention on making sure that tech innovation is a force for good; making a better future for man+machine, rather than diluting our humanity.
Richard Southon, Managing Director of Communicator on his perspective on the immediate future of AI.
Technology is developing at an inhuman speed, creating a future marketplace that will be automated, disruptive, and highly personalised. But as the world becomes increasingly automated, marketers must ensure that the human specialty of creativity and connection is not compromised.
Whether it’s machines learning, disrupting the design and delivery of creative content, or brands investing in chatbots to speed up efficiency and service ratings, advanced technology is shifting consumer expectations and how we live our lives on a daily basis. In this landscape, it is all too easy to focus on technology for technology’s sake. AI can certainly be a valuable asset to personalisation, but the recent Google scandal that saw ads from major brands misplaced within extremist content is just one example of why human rationality and sensibility still matters. Last week Facebook reported that it is pulling back from chatbots for brands as they’ve reported a 70% failure rate. There is significant risk of mechanised mistakes when relying on technology that cannot think and feel like us. We believe that smart brands of the future can meet enhanced consumer expectations by creating a highly individual brand personality that can interact with the consumer on a human level. Marketers need to go far beyond selling a simple product or even a lifestyle. Instead, they need to make emotional, human connections with their customers.
Whilst AI is a valuable asset to any marketer, and a vital part of the modern consumer journey, it’s not the hardware that shifts culture or society, it’s humanity. It cannot hack the human brain at its most innate level. AI cannot yet take into account many of the things that make consumers fall in love with brands – emotion and relationships being a case in point. Add in other human values like enjoyment, trust, honesty, creativity, and you have a powerful set of connections that might get lost if brands think robot, not human. We believe that thinking about what matters to individual human beings should be a lens through which creative thinking can be validated and driven and should underpin all brand behaviour and communication.
An interview with Tom Lovegrove, business director at Wasserman.
This might sound like a rather simple question, but what do you personally feel that AI has to offer that no other technology or platform can?
AI offers a multitude of opportunities, some that are obvious such as Siri, Cortana and Alexa, and others that are less so. From a marketing perspective, AI already allows us to create personalised communications between brands and consumers. Similar systems will enable brands to provide personalised experiences in the real world; from playing a person’s favourite music at an event based on their listening habits, to crafting personalised drinks based on their taste preferences. This highly advanced level of personalisation has never been seen before and will help brands develop deeper more meaningful relationships with their customers.
What have your own personal experiences with AI been like? Can you remember the first time it really made sense for you?
Nowadays we interact with AI on a daily basis often without realising. Targeted ads, online customer service, entertainment recommendations are all seamlessly integrated into our lives now. In my experience it’s a conscious effort to stop and think just how much we interact with AI. One of the first AI technologies we used was facial recognition, specifically emotional recognition, for one of our campaigns. When you see a piece of software that’s able to recognise and respond to people’s emotions you start to see the beginnings of how humans and machines may one day communicate as equals.
Do you think AI could play an important role in the creative process in the future and act as more of a tool than a crutch?
It’s important here to firstly note that creative should lead the tech but AI will play an important part in creativity. Firstly, it will help us to select the best creative idea from a range of options by analysing data from previous campaigns. AI can look at the reasons for the success or failure of previous campaigns and help judge creative effectiveness. AI can also be creative in its own right. M&C Saatchi used facial recognition technology to judge people’s reaction to a digital ad displayed at a bus stop. It evolved and adapted the creative of the ad in direct response to positive or negative reactions and ‘learned’ to create the most impactful ad possible.
Do you think there are any inherent dangers when it comes to AI? Or do you feel the "rise of the machines" naysayers are just paranoid and scared of change?
There is nothing inherently dangerous about AI any more than any other tool. The danger comes in how it’s applied. A big issue now is how the vast amount of data that people share can be used by sophisticated AI systems to manipulate and influence public opinion. AI has been at the centre of recent stories surrounding Brexit and the US Presidential election. Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis company employed by the Trump campaign, claims to have psychological profiles of 220 million American voters. This data was used to create strategically tailored ads and content that targeted individuals to influence their vote in the Presidential election.
On the flip side, do you think AI could, potentially, help us solve some of the world’s biggest problems?
It absolutely can. AI can help solve the biggest challenges that face us by developing technologies to combat climate change, improving safety in transport or to use a recent example applying IBM’s AI Watson to help innovate in healthcare. Originally just collating doctors’ specific expertise in rare forms of cancer Watson role is now expanding to include personalised care, patient engagement, imaging review, and drug discovery. Ultimately, AI could cure disease, keep us safe and even free us from work leaving us free to live a life that we choose for ourselves rather than one imposed upon us.
How ‘mainstream’ do you think AI will become over the next 12 months?
Whether we like it or not AI is already mainstream. It’s in our phones, online shopping baskets, TVs and even in the advertising we see day-to-day. What’s interesting is how often a new AI system is only regarded as AI until it becomes familiar, then it just becomes technology.
Tink Taylor, the founder & president of dotmailer on the revolutionary potential of AI.
AI can revolutionise the way in which a business manages its customer relations, and provide quicker, insight based instant communication. But the majority of businesses are simply not equipped to start even contemplating how to use it as they first need to get their basic marketing processes working better.
Whilst not wishing to dampen marketers’ enthusiasm and creative energy for all things new and shiny, our message is simple: Take stock of your current marketing methods and get the basics right first.
From our work helping marketers to create precise, personal and impactful communications, we are always staggered at how many small to medium sized businesses haven’t got the right basic tools in place, such as email automation. Surprisingly, many brands are not including a welcome message when new customers’ sign-up to their e-newsletters.
Many large organisations, such as Google with their RankBrain system which processes search queries, have successfully implemented AI to benefit their customers and make life better. They’ve also worked out, better than most businesses, what their customers want, when and how. The challenge for smaller businesses with more limited resources is to focus on their priorities, and review just how brilliantly they are performing in the eyes of their customers before innovating with new toys such as AI.
Dan Taylor, head of systems at Fletchers Solicitors, the UK’s leading medical negligence and serious injury law firm, on how AI is affecting the legal sector.
Change or innovation aren’t terms we usually associate with the legal sector – traditional or long-established better reflect how the industry has operated over the past decades. For many firms, the ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ approach has worked well, and up until a few years ago, the industry was able to remain profitable and successful without a focus on innovation. However, the sector is now experiencing a significant shake-up. The pace of technological change in our society has never been so dramatic. At the same time, seismic regulatory shifts in the legal sector are also forcing firms to rethink how they service their clients. Now, we have reached a point where it’s critical, if not acutely necessary, that our industry sits up and takes notice.
This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to play a huge role. Having made waves in medical diagnosis and financial services, AI is becoming a more recognised way to reduce human input in favour of greater efficiency and improved accuracy in business analytics and decision making. And now AI is gaining a lot of attention in the legal world – some forward-thinking firms are starting to pour serious amounts of investment in developing AI systems that can automate research and admin tasks, which have traditionally been undertaken by junior lawyers.
There are numerous possibilities for the use of AI in the legal sector. For instance, it could assist lawyers with reviewing large volumes of current and past case work at a much faster pace. This could significantly reduce research time and help lawyers make quicker, more accurate decisions. This frees up more of their time to spend on complex tasks like core legal analysis and providing a better quality of service to clients. This will also allow them to become more efficient and save money – benefits that speak volumes to those firms that are battling with profit cuts caused by fixed fee restrictions and new regulations.
But there is one question that keeps cropping up – will the ‘rise of machines’ spell the end for the human lawyer by making them “roadkill on the information superhighway”? The simple answer is no. Rather than replacing traditional lawyers, it’s highly likely that AI will be used to support and assist them, automating time-consuming data research and suggesting relevant case law and statute. In the future, these systems may well be able to suggest potential judgments based upon automated legal reasoning tasks and provide options for advice on a particular client matter, but that is quite some way off. In the meantime, the human element and legal expertise provided by a lawyer is unlikely to be replaced by a machine. It’s likely innovation will spread throughout the legal sector at an astounding rate, with AI rapidly becoming the solution to greater efficiency and quality of service. Now’s the time to get on board, we can’t afford to ignore the changing marketplace and continue with ‘business as usual’. We must move with the times or risk being left behind.
Dr Anton Grashion, Managing Director of security practice at Cylance, on AI and virus protection.
Conventional virus protection relies on a couple of things that actually mitigates against being effective against today’s increasingly complex threat landscape. Firstly, it relies on there being a patient zero – to write a signature for malware traditional AV needs to have already seen it. Secondly it relies of human experts – slowing down the response to new attacks. Compare that to an AI approach (note – not just machine learning) and by determining what malware’s DNA looks like we can confidently predict not only today’s malware but tomorrow’s and next year’s etc etc. Machines don’t forget, don’t rely of having seen a particular variant before and can be operated even with no connection to the internet. No massive signature files need to be pushed on to the endpoint and the liberation of system resources can make you feel like you have a new machine. Potential drawbacks? Not compared to the losing battle that traditional AV is facing as you are always behind the execution of new malware.
An interview with Vince Lynch, CEO of IV.AI, one of the world’s first Artificial Intelligence agencies, with offices in the US and UK.
This might sound like a rather simple question, but what do you personally feel that AI has to offer that no other technology or platform can?
AI covers a number of different technologies and capabilities, but the opportunity for AI to benefit businesses and brands depends on the vertical. It has the ability to simplify processes and follow rules, which means it can provide incredibly valuable utility. Given the right data and environment, it can keep improving and keep getting better at the jobs assigned to it.
What have your own personal experiences with AI been like? Can you remember the first time it really made sense for you?
As with most things, AI needs examples and personal use for it to come to life, but when I was at Amazon and got early exposure to Amazon Alexa, that was quite a defining moment. Most recently, IV.AI built an artificial intelligence version of The Red Queen for Sony Pictures in anticipation of the worldwide release of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, allowing fans to experience a genuine interaction with the film character that they know and love. It was a new way of approaching entertainment via social media, using AI at the beginning to build character traits and a package of animation using image recognition to make the journey visually stimulating.
Do you think AI could play an important role in the creative process in the future and act as more of a tool than a crutch?
AI works best when complementing human expertise, and I expect there to be creative tools that take on some of the heavy lifting in the future creative process. They will save time and mean that work can be done quicker but to the same standard, meaning even more efficiency for brands and businesses.
Do you feel that Chatbots are a decent gateway or introduction into AI and its possibilities for brands and marketers in 2017?
Chatbots provide a tangible and easy-to-understand first step for clients and brands. A lot of our conversations begin with chatbots, but end somewhere else once we are able to work through how the technology can benefit brands in different ways.
Do you think there are any inherent dangers when it comes to AI? Or do you feel the "rise of the machines" naysayers are just paranoid and scared of change?
AI will change the way that people work, but I believe this is largely positive. We will however start to see job losses due to the efficiencies that AI drives. Budweiser recently shipped 50,000 cans of beer over 120 miles in an autonomous truck. Everyday, we are seeing real impact with our customer service clients. AI is driving 12x efficiency with some models, equating to 40% headcount savings. We should expect to see job losses for hard skills where machines add efficiencies and therefore diminish the demand for a human brain to manage the task. The practical impact we've seen often registers as positive with staff that appreciate skipping structured, mundane tasks to focus on personable, intuitive interaction with customers. The Obama White House released a report on the state of the industry that concluded that AI will ultimately lead to higher average wages and fewer work hours, thus supporting the benefit of AI in the workforce.
How ‘mainstream’ do you think AI will become over the next 12
The hype of AI will fizzle out and the real work of problem solving will begin. The mainstream’s first instinct was to allow their imaginations to run wild with the promise of ‘new intelligence accessible by all’. Now that expectations have been managed, we can get down to the real deal of bettering business with the help of augmented intelligence - the AI of the hour, because a hybrid approach that couples machine learning and human input is driving initial results for new adopters. We are in an exciting new position where new minds are getting excited about AI and trying to figure out how they can find a use case for their daily activities. As more businesses use AI to solve their problems, whether apparent to consumers or not, there will continue to be rapid growth in the area for the foreseeable future.
Simon Peck, Managing Director at Engine UK, on the AI explosion.
The use of Artificial Intelligence has exploded over the past year. To the end consumer this may not even be obvious – but that’s the beauty of AI. It works behind the scenes to make ads even more impactful and engaging. AI is no longer the realm of science fiction. An increasing amount of data is collected and processed, machine learning can be used to identify patterns in our data and make predictions and recommendations. This has huge potential for those targeting millennial consumers who increasingly want personalised brand experiences.
From Siri to Alexa, voice and visual search are giving brands a new way to interact with their customers. Brands need to move towards this kind of AI driven interaction to match consumer behavior and expectations. Marketing is one of the areas where AI can have the biggest impact, as ads, social media and other marketing content are the real touchpoints between brands and consumers. Better, more targeted and intelligent marketing is never a bad thing.
Giovanni Strocchi, CEO at ADmantX, on and upsides and downsides of AI and programmatic advertising.
The first and most important element of AI within digital advertising and marketing is how the technology can empower the first-party data owned by brands. Learning from real-time customer interactions, marketers are able to use AI to filter through rich first-party data sources to build advanced audience profiles. The online customer behaviour extracted from online communications acts as the initial basis for this, and enables 360 degree and propensity profiles to analyse and predict customers’ needs and behaviour. The old marketing approach of using static clusters of customers is being substituted with propensity models belonging to the brand to drive real-time marketing activities and interaction. After initial investment in basic ‘big data technologies’ such as DMPs, brands will increasingly invest in AI modelling and profiling for their campaigns.
However, there is a downside – the very nature and beauty of programmatic advertising display - its speed and ad placement at scale - can jeopardise a brand’s image in an instant, with the risk of placing ads with undesirable or inappropriate content. AI semantic technologies such as Natural Language Processing (NLP) can enable marketers to protect themselves against potential brand safety breaches. By analysing content at granular page level, and looking beyond simple keyword classifications, NLP reminds marketers that context still holds court outside of traditional media - placing ads based on the meaning and sentiment of the content, ensuring brands are aligned within the correct environment.
Many may fear that such advanced intelligence will eventually lead to robotics taking over the workplace - but with all technology, the human touch remains paramount. Technology exists to complement human processes - it is only through a holistic approach, and the combination of technological and human systems, that the full benefits of Artificial Intelligence can be realised within the digital ecosystem.
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and struggling musician from Kidderminster in the UK. For more on AI, check out our recent insight into How AI is Changing the Fashion Industry and the Creative Opinions on AI companion piece; Tech Trends: AI in 2017.