ChatGPT isn’t a replacement for your marketing team

Driven by the rise of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) has been the talk of the marketing world and beyond for the past few weeks—seriously, #ChatGPT has over 84,000 followers on LinkedIn. It’s understandable, too. With its ability to craft content with great efficiency, AI can be an amazing tool for your marketing.  

However, I’m not quite ready to bow down to our new robot overlords just yet, and you shouldn’t be either.   

Here’s why: ChatGPT and other AI can’t do everything, and they certainly aren’t a replacement for your business’ internal or external marketing team.  

What is ChatGPT? How did we get here?  

Without getting too deep into the technical stuff, ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, a startup based out of San Fransisco. The program runs on a large language model, meaning it can understand human language and generates responses based on gathered data. 

The technical side of it can be a lot, especially for those of us that don’t work in tech, but the important thing to know is that ChatGPT is a powerful AI chatbot that can generate content efficiently.   

Quickly surpassing 100 million users, ChatGPT’s popularity has grown exponentially since its inception. A large part of what drives its popularity is its accessibility. Much like other online platforms and tools that experience a meteoric rise, ChatGPT’s basic account remains free and accessible to users across industries—plus, OpenAI is backed by Microsoft, enhancing the reach, technical capabilities, and validity of its products.  

With so many active users, it seems that ChatGPT is here to stay. Its popularity has fueled developments and interest in AI, with Google and other software companies touting their own AI chatbots and associated capabilities.   

How can ChatGPT be used?  

Imagine, for a moment, you’re building a house. You’re so excited to build this new home, but when you show up at the job site, you realize you’ve only brought a hammer. Sure, the hammer is necessary, but it isn’t the only tool you need to build the house.  

Your small business’ marketing is the house, and ChatGPT may be the hammer—an important tool, no doubt—but nothing without nails, wood, blueprints and someone to guide it along.  

Much like the hammer, ChatGPT and other AI have a throng of uses, especially when it comes to the world of marketing your small business.  But just like other great tools, such as Canva for design and Facebook for advertising, it can’t be the only one you use.  

ChatGPT is a great platform for creating and developing content ideas, finding research for blogs, writing social copy and helping with other marketing-related activities. However, it does have its limitations, and you must make a note of these if you plan to incorporate ChatGPT and other AI content generators into your marketing plans.  

So, what are the limitations?  

AI content creation is sort of a double-edged sword—its biggest strengths are also its largest limitations. For instance, ChatGPT can create content with hyper efficiency and unreal speeds, but that content can also have some gaps in knowledge.  

Despite the massive amount of data and constant learning that goes into ChatGPT, the data it pulls from is currently limited to 2021, which can become dated very quickly, as we’ve learned over the course of the pandemic and post-pandemic years.  

Plus, there’s a potentially larger issue at hand than knowledge gaps. When you automate creativity, you lose what makes it special—humanity.   

AI content, although efficient and technically correct, can potentially sound robotic and lack the depths that human-created content delivers. Ultimately, there is a level of emotional understanding and reasoning that AI simply cannot recreate and shouldn’t be lost, especially when it comes to something your small, local business is passionate about. 

AI is a great addition to your marketing efforts, but it can’t be the whole thing. Don’t bring only a hammer to build your digital home.  

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Navigating the world of marketing and AI is a difficult undertaking, especially when trying to focus on the day-to-day realities of running your small business. That’s where our team at Rooted Web comes into play. We’ve been making local marketing easier for years by building and delivering digital solutions that reflect your unique placement within Southeast Missouri. Reach out to our team—we’ll bring the hammer, the blueprints and the support you need to fully build your digital home.