GENERATIVE AI – THE GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE!

The storm of comment about Generative AI shows no sign of abating, but whether you’re for it or against it – it’s here to stay.

As tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E become ever more mainstream, we are preparing to answer any client who wants to know what our AI policy is, and if in fact, we are using it to generate content for them. At some stage the question will doubtless arise, as to what is our role and value in the context of AI and why do we need you at all?

Fair questions for any communications firm like Priority. We take them seriously and our thinking is summarised in our Generative AI Policy, which you can read here.

This Policy is designed to assure clients that as and when Priority Consultants uses Generative AI solutions, it will be done in a transparent and ethical way, with our clients’ best interests top of mind.

Test Drives Tell the Truth

Having said all that, it wouldn’t be fair to judge ChatGPT without taking it for a test drive – several test drives. Safe-guarding confidentiality, we posed a variety of questions – some related to clients and others more general. “Write a blog post on this topic.” “Provide a media list for this announcement.” “Write an interview briefing book.” Without exception, responses were instructive – lightning fast, no grammar or spelling mistakes and easy to read. Similarly, they all lacked depth and missed the “hooks” that would catch an editor’s or interviewer’s interest.

Across the region, the team use it to edit text for fluency which is especially useful in the non-English language countries. Others role-play questions and answers for alternative media perspectives which is helpful across multiple industry sectors and it can provide very specific background and context. As with any new technology, we expect ingenuity and creativity from the team as they adopt and adapt ChatGPT but most importantly, the value will be in freeing up more time to build real-world relationships.

AI versus Essential Human Skills

One of the biggest -and best-known – drawbacks is that ChatGPT has been trained on content up to 2021, so in addition to being bland, output is dated and not to be trusted for accuracy. On the plus side, it was abundantly clear that ChatGPT provides a helpful starting point for a piece of work, but our human skills, the experience and the nuance we bring are absolutely vital. These are embodied in Priority’s Three Pillars – domain expertise, local knowledge and proven methodology.

Accept No Substitutes

There is no substitute for the deep understanding of client technologies that our team have developed, not only of the proprietary technologies themselves but also of the business ecosystems they support.  AI will regurgitate “brochure-speak” but only our account managers are able to deliver the real-world insights on what keeps business leaders awake at night.

Similarly, our in-country staff – speaking more than 14 languages, based in 12 cities in 8 countries – are attuned to the nuances of local events, national agendas and industry trends.  They read between the lines, peek behind the curtain and interpret the developments that give our clients the edge, in a way that is not possible for an AI.

Again, our methodology is comprehensive in the way it governs how we work, and one key attribute is professional scepticism.  Our content writers would never automatically trust references in a document generated by ChatGPT; we go back to primary sources for verification.  This is another reason why our media friends and partners trust the content we deliver.

ChatGPT is just a Tool

So to answer the question – does the Priority Consultants Group of companies use ChatGPT and its cousins?  We would be silly not to. We use it to simplify mundane, repetitive tasks. It helps us speed up research, format outlines for long-form content, and produce rough drafts of routine news releases, blog posts and e-mails.

What we will never do is use ChatGPT as a substitute for the rigorous analysis of issues, insightful programme planning and superlative original writing skills that our clients expect, and that only our human team members can produce.