What you need to know:

• The Generative AI cat is out and brands are moving fast but remain wary of the risks.
• Job losses, regulation and fears of a consumer backlash if it goes wrong are all broader concerns.
• Telstra uses Gen AI for various reasons, but primarily to improve the customer experience (CX) – a major focal point for Digital Channels Executive and former CMO Jeremy Nicholas.
• But marketers see big upside in efficiencies and process being automated so teams do less of the menial. 
• UNSW is using Gen AI to personalise at scale for students - and wooing new students - by becoming a “content powerhouse” that serves content, messages and course recommendations not possible with current teams and technology, says UNSW Head of Marketing and Campaigns, Carmen Michael.
• Michael is running a "supply chain pilot" using AI to connect UNSW's “creative agencies with our media and our digital channels in one end-to-end loop”.
• Adobe and Salesforce research shows marketers are on board with the benefits of Gen AI, but cautious to dive in blindfolded, as some did during the social media gold rush of the 2010s.

Menial is over

UNSW is a hot spot for AI professors and researchers, which has the university’s Head of Marketing, Carmen Michael, convinced the machines are going to liberate marketing teams from the mundane and menial and eradicate the sameness of messaging, content and  CX among Australia’s universities. Michael is in the midst of a “supply chain pilot" using AI to connect its “creative agencies with our media and our digital channels in one end-to-end loop”.

Like her fellow panelists from Telstra, Helium and Adobe on an AI forum staged by Adobe last week, Michael is cautiously upbeat about unleashing AI on content and personalisation at real scale, which until now has been limited by human resource. 

“From a CMO point of view, we can't deny that some of us have got teams working on a lot of really menial work, moving content between systems and things like that. We can use Gen AI for those purposes,” she told the media briefing.

“We have many companies and organisations, hundreds of products, so how do you get that content at scale and also at speed. It's really where we see real value in AI.”

It seems Michael is not alone if two surveys of marketers and their embrace of AI is any guide. Arch rivals Adobe and Salesforce both released marketer polls in the past two weeks with broadly similar takeouts – marketers see productivity and efficiency gains from the machines doing vast volumes of menial and process work and drive better experiences from personalisation. 

Telstra’s former CMO Jeremy Nicholas, now head of digital channels which account for about 70 per cent of all sales and service volumes for the telco, says customer experience becomes central in framing perceptions of a company and brand. 

“If I look back to my marketing experience, as well as the digital experience, more and more you see that the digital experiences a company creates defines the brand, and the company's reputation,” he said.

In the Adobe’s State of Digital Experience report, which polled 1,010 consumers and 291 marketing and customer experience professionals in Australia and New Zealand, less than half of those polled (46%) say Gen AI is helpful in their work, despite eight in 10 optimistic emerging generative AI tech can help: improve work product quality and volume (85%), creativity (82%) and customer acquisition (85%). Customer services executives can see upsides in personalising CX (85%) and identifying new audiences and customer journeys (88%).

A Salesforce survey of 342 Australian marketers found 71% are currently using it and 14% plan to soon. Its use, according to respondents, targets the basics, like content creation (74%) and copywriting copy (73%), but many see a wholesale overhaul of their work on the horizon, with 66% saying generative AI is a "game changer". The perceived benefits are that Gen AI will eliminate busy work (85%) and allow marketers to focus on strategic work (87%). 

Losses vs gains

A major concern about the march towards Gen AI is whether the technology will replace jobs. A recent Forrester’s report, The Agency AI-Powered Workforce Forecast, found that by 2030 7.5% of the US agency workforce – some 32,000 workers, will be lost to automation due to the growing use of machine learning and Gen AI, with the later account for nearly a third of automated advertising roles.

The investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts Gen AI could eventually replace 300m jobs globally.

UNSW’s Michael said that although Gen AI would pick up a lot of the menial workload off her team, she does not believe it will have a negative impact on headcount, quite the contrary.

“I don't see any reduction in the numbers of people who work within the marketing and content and campaigns team; If anything, we need more and more skilled people, and those who really understand the technology and how to use it,” she said.

“We also need creative and original people that can actually mark out the university as something different to all the other universities. If look at the university campaigns, everyone's feels a little bit samey, and that's probably because of this flattening of content that's happened with tech.”

Nicholas doesn’t see wholesale carnage for jobs, and nor do Gen AI software vendors, who march to a similar beat.

Duncan Egan, Vice President of DX Marketing, APAC and Japan at Adobe, describes Gen AI tools as a “co-pilot” that highly skilled people would need to work alongside it, as you might find on an automotive production line.

“It's not that we're trying to reduce humans, Gen AI will enable you to do more, because in reality it creates personalisation at scale,” he said.

Egan and his counter at Salesforce,  APAC VP and CMO Leandro Perez are aligned at least here. Perez argues that Gen AI unlocks what he describes as “productivity drainers”. His own marketing team are already seeing that potential. When asked about the likelihood of cuts to his headcount he says: “I don’t see that at all. I really do see a shift in maybe what they do and the make-up of their job.

“We have a lot of things that drain the team and slow us down. It means that people are doing work at the edges…[and don’t have] time to be creative. It may mean a shift in the makeup of their job…and skill set.

“If you think about the early days of marketing, and how marketing started, it was about being creative. And what's happened in this pivot to digital, we've given ourselves all these roles of creating 10 variations of email copy, because we want to personalise it on the backend. So the way that we are thinking about it is that it will unlock that productivity to go to more creative areas, which is really where true value generation for a business happens. That's where I want my team coming up with new products, new innovations, new trends in society, new consumer demands, how are we going to address that, and that's where the creativity works. I feel this is going to allow more of that, which not only unleashes their creativity, it creates more fulfilling roles. And then there's a bunch of other team members that actually need to manage these systems with roles that didn't exist.” 

Alan Trefler, CEO of automation software company Pega, said there is no doubt some organisations will be eyeing AI as an efficiency play. 

“The most highly valuable [uses] probably fall into either cost optimisation and service optimisation. Cost optimisation is figuring out how to get things straight through as much as possible and bringing the idea of the autonomous enterprise where you're really running on autopilot, except when you need to [intervene], there's a lot of money to be saved,“ he said.

“Service and selling experiences are horrible. They're just not good. Generally, they don't use in the correct information.”

Telstra case study

Telstra has been at the cutting edge of AI applications in Australia and uses generative AI on several fronts -  some not so sexy. For identify fraud, for instance,  it weeds out the “bad” customers from “good” on its e-commerce platform and has resulted in a sales uplift of two percent.

Nicholas said the telco also uses Gen AI to refine its customer experience at call centres. An example is allowing Telstra agents to generate summaries of live chat and messaging services in real time that can be played back to customers to ensure complex issues are recorded and resolved more efficiently.

“They're being able to use that information to then personalise their experience in the digital channel, when that customer shows up next time - we'll reinforce some of those things,” Nicholas said.

“And on our site search, there's opportunities to improve the customer experience. So rather than searching [a generic term like] ‘phone cases’, you can type ‘I would like to buy a birthday present for a 55 year old woman who loves dogs and the colour pink’  and it would refine all of our products that meet that criteria.”

Telstra also uses Gen AI to aggregate and analyse the volumes of feedback it receives through its various digital touchpoints – apps, website, NPS surveys and so on – which is then turned into data that can enhance the customer experience.

Improving customer service is one area Gen AI can make a real difference, per Nicholas, especially as consumers “have growing expectations” about a brand’s CX, which they will compare to “every experience they are having in their life”.

“If I look back to my marketing experience, as well as the digital experience, more and more you can see that the digital experiences a company creates defines the brand, and the company's reputation,” he said.

“And it's not just the advertising, it’s the moments you create for people. A lot of the time it is how they interact with you through digital environments and physical environments, you have to bring those things together.”

Regulation clouds & Musk

Nonetheless, Marketers are faced with a conundrum when it comes to rolling out generative AI. Although a majority have ­– or intend to – jump on the AI bandwagon, regulatory headwinds and the potential for a consumer backlash have left some “apprehensive” about diving in headfirst and too deep.

Consumers that responded to Adobe’s study realise the potential for businesses using AI to enhance customer experience (63%) and product quality (66 per cent). The caveat is that consumers expect businesses to use the technology responsibly, prioritising customer and employee experiences (47%) and ethical considerations (37 per cent).  

A separate study by Pegasystems found three-quarters of Australian consumers reckon businesses are obliged to do what is morally right and a similar proportion think AI is programmed to behave amorally.

It’s not just consumers that are worried about rapid advances in AI: Tesla and SpaceX CEO  Elon Musk warned again last week of a potential “catastrophic outcome” and a “real danger for a digital super intelligence having negative consequences”.

Against this backdrop, marketers are a little nervous, even if they can see the upside of Gen AI.

Nicholas said there is underlying apprehension about adopting the technology too quickly and getting it wrong but might prove counterproductive. 

“One of the interesting things to consider is if you are so apprehensive about doing the wrong thing ethically, or getting it wrong, because it's at the bleeding edge of technology, you step back from it. And then it is not only your company that will miss out on value but also the customers miss out on that enhanced experience.”

Nicholas said the days of marketers “charging into a bright future” because “no technology company could do wrong” – referring to the industry’s romp with social media platforms in the 2010s which triggered unexpected societal, mental, health and social downsides along with brand safety, measurement and ethical scandals.

“We are having an ongoing conversation with regulators and government about AI. There is a lot of caution because companies and CMOs know that their livelihoods are on the line if they get this wrong.”

A cautious approach may be warranted, especially until regulation catches up with technology.

Pega’s Trefler points out the process is complex because regulatory approaches required for the different types of AI ( such as for process, predictive and generative) will need to vary.

“This then begs the question: will there be enough understanding for people to figure out? I mean, some of this stuff, like we should do a moratorium for six months. Right? You know, that's not going to happen. It's a little scary, actually. Because the we are not the only set of countries in the world who are working on this. And some of them may not care that it can be used for evil, some of them may think that that's a good thing. And we better understand what that's going to look like. Do you think North Korea is working on a large language model?”

North Korean plans may be far from the minds of marketers closer to home but it is clear is that Gen AI is out. Brands must now work out how to tap it while navigating a minefield of regulation, consumer backlash and ethical fears. 

Adobe's global study: How will Gen AI help you in your role?