Game Changer AI

Best Trends: Sebastian, will AI become a marketing game changer?

Sebastian Küpers: AI makes all important work processes in marketing conversational. In other words, human-machine interaction is being taken to the next level by human-like conversations: We brief, review, and provide feedback in dialogue with the AI.

In addition, the overall customer experience and interaction with brands will reach a new level of intelligence. Automation and personalisation are key factors in this. Marketing professionals can use AI tools to operate data-driven, personalised marketing communication, starting with data analysis, SEO optimisation, content creation and customer segmentation, and all the way to the use of chatbots in customer service.

Our entire knowledge management will also change, as AI tools will allow the knowledge of an entire organisation to be used, creating new competitive advantages.

Best Trends: Many people are unsettled by the use of AI. How do you assess the risks?

Sebastian Küpers: It is important to learn how to use AI and to be aware of its limitations. This is illustrated by the phenomenon of ‘AI hallucinations’ – i.e. when AIs generate plausible-sounding falsehoods, invent sources or misrepresent correlations. In principle, all AI-generated content must be critically checked by people! It is ethically questionable when it comes to biases, falsifications in the database that could, for example, lead to racist or sexist results. Many questions also remain unanswered when it comes to data protection, data security, the protection of intellectual property rights and infringements of copyright. 

The basic precondition for using AI is therefore the training and further education of our own employees. Taking them on the journey is the key to breaking down uncertainties and identifying opportunities. By automating processes, AI can, for instance, boost productivity by freeing us from the tedium of routine tasks.

Best Trends: It is said that people will not be replaced by AI, but rather by the people who use it. What are your three tips for working with AI?

Sebastian Küpers:

1. Ask yourself for which projects the use of AI makes good sense. Bad investments, for example in unsuitable tools, must be avoided in good time. There is also an urgent need to check which projects involve sensitive data: in such cases, the right framework conditions must be created to enable tools to work securely with the data.
   
   
2. Working with AI is a learning process. It takes time to learn how to work with AI tools, how to train them properly, how to give them relevant feedback and how to generate the best output. First of all, find small use cases with which you can test the benefits. Otherwise, you will soon fall prey to the reflex: I can do that better than AI.
   
   
3. There’s no time to waste! We must get to grips with generative AI NOW. Numerous new tools are crowding onto the market, and things are developing much too quickly for us to sit back and wait until someone comes up with a course.

Author: Sebastian Küpers is Chief Transformation Officer at Plan.Net Group. He is responsible for driving forward key transformation topics and is a member of the “AI Steering Committee”, which steers group-wide AI initiatives.