Human vs. AI: Why Authenticity Still Rules in Marketing

Is the explosion of AI affecting what content we see is real versus what’s been simply generated by a bot? The marketing and business game is changing wildly, and AI tools are at the forefront, especially when ChatGPT burst onto the scene. But there’s more beneath the surface. More tools and software are turning even ChatGPT on its head. What else is being faked and generated by a bot? Is today’s podcast recording real or generated by AI?

My name is Jordan McFadyen, and welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. This podcast is designed to help you navigate the cluttered world of marketing and challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning an intentional marketing strategy.

And in today’s podcast, what I really want to delve into is this cluttered world of AI and AI-driven technology. In my humble opinion, we are starting to see a shift in AI conversations. People are starting to become more and more aware of the limitations of AI technology, especially in writing content and having those words convey and generate genuine human emotion that also supports decisions. However, these tools are developing fast, and they now allow you to generate video and audio using clones of your image, video and voice. So this is where I see the challenge, but also the opportunity.

So let’s get real. To demonstrate how the technology is moving, I’ve used an AI clone of my voice. And this has been an AI voice so far in this podcast episode. This isn’t me talking. It’s an AI tool. A few months ago, I provided a software company with 10 hours of my podcast recordings as clean audio. And from that sample, they were able to create an AI clone of my voice. The software creates lifelike voiceovers for your content using an AI voice generator as an easy-to-use text reader. So let’s compare the AI version.

And now we’re back to the real me, I guess, not the AI version that we’ve produced. And obviously, the people that I’ve played this to so far, they can tell the difference between the AI version of me versus the actual me, the person you’re hearing right now. And I guess it has been a really interesting test in terms of AI and terms of the technology, and just how powerful it really is. And that’s why I wanted to do this challenge in the first place.

It always kind of started as well, just a bit of background, from a LinkedIn post that I saw. And it kind of went a bit viral and a bit wild across a lot of different platforms. And it was around an AI salesperson. And it was an AI salesperson for Tesla. Essentially, what the video showed was this AI salesperson having a real-life conversation with an actual customer. And the end result being that the customer then actually booked in a consultation to go and try out a Tesla car.

And yeah, great. It was a fantastic result. And they got the conversion at the end of the day. But I was still just a little bit hesitant on it all, to be fair. The question asking: can AI truly take over a sales call? Can AI truly understand the customer’s inflections? Can AI understand their intent, their hesitations? And understand, truly understand, their pain points? And the technology may be moving fast. But the question is, is that also what we are wanting as consumers at the end of the day as well?

I’ve seen software that is going to potentially allow you to run AI-driven things like Zoom meetings, onboarding videos with clients, voice calls, is that Tesla example that I was chatting about, which sounds like a massive time saver, really, doesn’t it? But the other question you’ve got to ask yourself: is it actually safe for your brand, for building your brand, for building customer loyalty, for building customer trust and authenticity?

So here’s the challenge I see here, or the opportunity, as I see it currently as well. That if AI develops with the type of software that I’ve even demonstrated here today, does that mean that consumers, customers and leads eventually will become more and more sceptical of video and audio content that’s being released online? Will consumers start to actually wonder if they’re talking to an AI version or a person on a Zoom sales call?

ChatGPT has really, over the past few months, caused a lot of chat around inauthentic content, inauthentic written content. People are starting to pick up and starting to see signs, and you can kind of get a good feeling for it when you’re searching through LinkedIn or websites or anything like that, about what’s potentially written from AI versus what’s actually written by a human.

So, I’m starting to think that the future of technology, will that cement the scepticism? Will consumers start to not trust content that they’re actually starting to see online? Where is the line in between generating a whole heap of fake content, versus then actually creating a smaller amount of content but making more genuine, emotive type content that is truly written and delivered from you or your business, and is truly written and delivered to your customer persona at the end of the day?

It’s a challenge, but also I see it as a great opportunity as well for businesses and organisations. It’s time now, I think, that we need to start thinking outside the box about how we can start to build a truly authentic and human brand, whether that’s through your business or whether that’s through personal branding, and showing that you are truly human and that you will truly talk to your customers and consumers, or your team will talk to your customers. It’s about trying to get across that real human-to-human interaction.

So, these would be the questions that I’m now asking myself in terms of the technology, in terms of business, and in terms of marketing as well. The first question is, how can you show and convey that you are the true expert, that you are the true authority in your niche, and that you and your business should actually be trusted in the first place? How can you do this in a truly authentic way that is going to clearly demonstrate who your brand is, what your story is, and also it’s told through your business or brand voice? So, I think that’s the real clear thing that we’re going to get across, because that’s something that AI will never be able to do.

AI is never going to understand exactly your brand or exactly your target persona. It’s not going to ever understand your story as you’ve seen and experienced it. And it’s not going to be able to tell that story in your business voice as well. So, those would be the questions that I’d start asking myself.

It is really tempting to create an AI piece of content, upload it to something like this text-to-speech software that we’ve demonstrated here today, and then just release it. That’s easy. But we need to think about one step further. What’s the actual goal here? What’s the actual point in terms of building long-term branding opportunities and building a long-term business?

If you’re after quick wins, sure, it might be the way to go. But if you’re actually looking to build a true business that’s actually going to service a certain amount of clientele and customers, and actually build a brand over time, I just think that the quick wins aren’t going to work, because I truly believe that consumers and customers are going to start to get really sceptical and really start to look as to what’s real and what’s fake online.

And I don’t want you to think here from this podcast that I’m suddenly going all anti-AI, because honestly, it’s not the case. I still use AI now and I get a lot out of the tools. And I honestly believe that AI tools can make businesses function so much faster, so much better, so much cleaner, cheaper. There’s so many great ways that you can do it. Fantastic tools that we have spoke about so many times on this podcast as well in the past. Tools that are going to help us get out of writer’s block. It’s going to help us craft difficult emails and difficult conversations.

So look, the big takeaway I want you to get from this podcast is really just a reminder to you to remain a human brand. Try and be human-centric. Share your stories. Share your brand. Share your voice. And then use your human brand to make sure that you can then stand out in an AI world. Because like I said, I think it’s going to be a bit of a challenge. We’re going to get sceptical. We’re going to look at the internet and content, videos and audios and podcasts with a different lens over time, because we’ll start to see all these different softwares and tools become more known and become more used.

The big key here is thinking now, starting to plan, how can you become more human in that AI world? And I think then if you can start to adopt some of those techniques, you’re going to stand out really nicely there as well. And look, a lot of this also comes down to actually having a strategy, and actually making sure that you’re planning ahead for the future, and making sure that you’re actually always moving towards your goals.

Marketing strategies happens to also be one of the core things that we do here at Done By Nine. So if you do want to chat to us about some of these topics that we’ve discussed here today, some of the topics around building a real human brand, please do get in touch. You can go along to our website, donebynine.com. You can find all the details about how we work, why we do what we do, starting with strategy first, moving your way from cluttered marketing, essentially. And also when you go to our website, you can get all the other details and all the other podcasts and articles that we’ve written over the time.

Just click the little podcast tab at the top of the page and it’ll direct you to all our other content, all our other episodes, and you can have a listen to some of the other content and hopefully learn a thing or two as well. And look, hopefully this demonstration here today of AI and how it is moving has been helpful for you. Just to remind you about what’s potentially on the horizon, and how you need to be thinking in terms of being able to use tools like this but to enhance your work, but also not falling into the trap of running your whole business from an AI type business, and thinking around trying to build that human connection at the end of the day as well.

So hopefully you’ve been able to spark a few ideas, got you thinking around the future of AI, and we look forward to chatting to you again next week on the Marketing Mindset podcast. Thank you.