The beauty of large language models of artificial intelligence (LLMs), or generative AI, is that they can rapidly assimilate and review the totality of the information on a subject.  

Then they can compile the argument, write it up and put a bow on it.  They’ll even write in the style of Ernest Hemingway, if you like.  All within seconds, saving hours of human labour, and ingenuity. 

A few taps of the keyboard, and we’re all experts.  LinkedIn is going gangbusters on it, encouraging members to use its AI tool to generate their own points of view posts (“start a post, try writing with AI”).  Everyone’s got a voice in the debate, even if it’s a tad robotic.

And there’s the issue.  What generative AI does so well is find the average of what’s being said on any given topic.  It finds the average and then adds to it.  And the average gets, well, more average, and bigger.

Think of it as a bell curve.  Each AI contribution adds more to the middle of the bell curve.  It’s creating the content that future AI will harvest and rehash.  That will make the middle of the bell curve bigger still, and the good stuff to the right harder to find.

And this is becoming the future of marketing.  It’s what’s clogging up the internet.  An arms race of average.  Volume, and noise, becoming the substitute for expertise and ideas.

As AML Group’s CEO, Ian Henderson, has said: “AI can make shit marketers look mediocre”.  That’s great news for people aspiring to mediocrity.  But it’s less good news for good marketers.  An over-reliance on AI will make the good ones look mediocre too.

That’s not to say that developments in AI won’t revolutionise how PR and marketing people do ever-greater work for their clients.  But it won’t come by taking shortcuts or lazily churning out average work.

And clients who think they can use AI instead of the traditional skills to articulate why customers should come to them?  They’re selling themselves short.  Quantity is not a substitute for quality. Stating a message isn’t the same as landing it.

Content creation in the bid to win over potential customers is not enough.  The content needs to be smart.  Attention is won by quality not quantity.  By new ways to solve stubborn problems.  It’s ideas that change minds and shape futures, not mediocrity.