Is the theme of I, Robot starting to come true? Will AI replace marketers?
When it comes to artificial intelligence, it always reminds me those robot uprising movies, such as I, Robot, The Matrix and The Terminator, which presented human’s deepest fear about robots turning into our enemies and trying to conquer the world.
Human never stop the concern about robot takeover since the growing popularity of AI. Is it really happening? Well, I won’t say robots will take over the world soon, but they did have a great influence to our life, in both good and bad ways. According to sources, robots are expected to replace five million jobs by 2020, such as Astronauts, drivers, babysitters and store clerks. Will the people who work in marketing industry be in danger?
Some people think AI may replace marketers in the future. Last year, an AI Company, Cortex, provided marketers with AI based tools for learning and optimizing their social media marketing efforts. The evidence shows its service has improved customer engagement by 400 percent. For example, it can automatically tagging faces by facial recognition or determining which stories appear in a News Feed on Facebook. It also greatly enhanced the efficiency on research methods, such as increasing brand sophistication by data collecting and analysing consumer information.
However, there are other voices claimed that AI can’t beat human brain in marketing field. They believe the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customers, which is the goal that AI can’t accomplish. Uses and gratifications theory (UGT) demonstrated the importance of understanding why and how consumer use media specific media to satisfy specific needs. By doing this, marketers can design the comprehensive marketing strategy by assess consumers’ insights, motives and the consequences of media use.
Is it possible that AI can replace marketers? I don’t think so. For me, AI is like an assistant to marketers for doing those tasks which are time consuming and complicated. AI can provide the information about consumers’ media usage, geographical locations and other secondary data, however, it can not truly understand consumers’ insights. An effective marketing strategy still mainly depends on human brain for justification and analysis.
Now we know the marketers’ jobs are safe (for now), but it doesn’t mean marketers should be unaware of the impact of the progressing AI technology. There are two things for marketers to keep in mind:
- Keeping eyes on marketing environment. We should embrace the development and the beneficial purposes of AI.
- Knowing your audiences is important. It is crucial to future marketing efforts to implement and cater to AI effectively in order to understand consumers.
What do you think?
I am not AI, I am a real human. Of course I understand why you’re reading my blog, want more marketing article? No problem, stay tuned, “I’ll be back”. J
