Something is happening, and it’s happening fast. It’s an exciting time for, well, anyone. If you haven’t been paying attention, there have been some life-altering (not exaggerating) developments in the AI space (and more specifically, GPT) since November 2022. The evolution within the last six months has been even more astounding. As I said, it’s happening fast. By the time you read this post, it will surely be outdated. However, with that caveat in mind, let’s begin.
The main influencer in this space is OpenAI. OpenAI is responsible for producing ChatGPT and DALL-E (an AI system that can produce realistic images from a natural language prompt). OpenAI has made the ChatGPT model available to the public via an API, meaning developers and other companies can leverage the functionality in their platforms and use cases. Some already have. HubSpot, Canva, Snap, and Instacart, to name a few.
Then last month, on March 14th, ChatGPT-4 was released. ChatGPT-4 is essentially smarter than previous versions. GPT-4 scored in the 90th percentile on the Bar Exam, while GPT-3.5 only scored in the 10th percentile. GPT-4 can also see and understand images. It also boasts increased ‘steerability’ and can handle 25,000 or more words.
Then, in the last several weeks, came AutoGPT. I’m not going to lie, AutoGPT is giving me nightmares and massive fits of inspiration. AutoGPT is leveraging GPT-4 technology but has several significant upgrades from the basic GPT-4 model. For example, AutoGPT:
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Has live access to the internet
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Can self-prompt
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Has both long and short-term memory
What does that mean? The ability to self-prompt is tied to its most significant difference in how you use the tool. With AutoGPT, you articulate a goal rather than a prompt. AutoGPT then works on your behalf to accomplish that goal, giving itself prompts and tasks supporting your goal, and runs autonomously until it accomplishes said goal.
A goal could be, “Find me a gluten-free recipe for chicken parmesan” or “Find a solution for climate change” but the result is that the model will work on your behalf, independent of human prompts in search of accomplishing this goal. If you’re wondering, “What happens if I tell AutoGPT to destroy humanity? What happens then?” Vice has already asked and answered that question. Turns out that AutoGPT searched for “most destructive weapons” online and recruited other GPT-powered AI agents to do additional research on its behalf, and started tweeting about how human beings are destructive and selfish creatures, likely attempting to start its disinformation campaign in support of its primary objective.
However, we’re all still here, so it’s time to start thinking about leveraging this technology for good, or at least to make our day-to-day lives more efficient.
We will have a lot more to say about AI as this space continues to evolve. There are long-term strategies for publishers and media companies to consider, as well as concerns about how this technology will change and impact consumer behavior in seeking out content and answers online. Ultimately, we don’t know what the broader impacts of AI will be on society, information access, and beyond. But for now, let’s talk about how you can use this technology as it exists today to support your existing business goals.
How Media Companies Can Leverage GPT Technology Right Now
I’ve been taking diligent notes over the last few weeks as I’ve learned how other media companies are starting to leverage the new exciting technology. There are so many use cases already, and more will emerge over the next few months. Remember, ChatGPT isn’t guaranteed to deliver accurate results, so never publish or share content sourced directly from ChatGPT without oversight and a fact-checking process.
How Your Sales Team Can Use ChatGPT Right Now
Write cold emails to prospects
ChatGPT’s natural language processing capabilities will write full email copy you can test in your sales outreach to prospects. This could be text that a sales rep sends directly or that you incorporate into your automated cold emailing efforts.
Find contact information for relevant decision-makers
I tried this one using AutoGPT, assigning the goal of “Find the contact information for the head of marketing or the person who makes marketing decisions at the Dallas Museum of Art” (DMA).
I watched it create tasks to check social media profiles and the museum’s website. It struck out on the DMA website, sharing that there was only a general “Contact Us” link available. Then it moved on to social media profiles and came back with, “After analyzing the professional profiles of Dallas Museum of Art's employees, I have found the contact information for the head of marketing. The head of marketing at the Dallas Museum of Art is…” and then listed the name and email address for the person most likely to make marketing decisions at the DMA. Task completed. Took only about 2 minutes.
Find prospective companies for advertising outreach
Here, I tried asking ChatGPT-4, “Who are the top competitors to this wedding vendor in Dallas?” I dropped the URL of the first ad I saw on the D Magazine website. It returned a list of 5 additional wedding vendors that offered similar services to the one I had provided. So there are five additional prospective advertisers that your sales team can pursue.
I also tried this with AutoGPT, asking it to find me five prospective advertisers in the Dallas market. See the results for yourself:
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How Your Editorial Team Can Use ChatGPT Right Now
Create article summaries FOR email newsletters, social media, or your website
I heard from more than a few content creators that they are using ChatGPT to provide a summary of articles on their website that they then use in their email newsletter or social media. You can ask ChatGPT for social media copy relevant to a certain article. The result will be written like a social media manager, including emojis, calls-to-action, and relevant hashtags.
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Research topics, people, history, AND MORE
One of the more laborious tasks when creating content is the extensive research you often must do when writing on prominent figures, entities, businesses, etc. Well, now you can tap GPT to do that research.
Using recent news as my inspiration, I asked AutoGPT to compile a list of all of Harlan Crow’s most relevant contributions to the city of Dallas, which I might want if I was starting an article about the recent controversy surrounding Crow but don’t want to dedicate a ton of time to researching Crow and his background. ChatGPT-4 returned about 500 words of background information about Crow, noting his historical support for the arts, the size of his home art collection, his contributions as a major donor to Southwestern Medical Center, his role in the restoration of The Adolphus Hotel, and Old City Park. That research may have taken nearly an hour to compile, but ChatGPT did it in less than a minute.
It’s worth calling out my note of caution again. The answers I received from ChatGPT-4 weren’t sourced, nor are they guaranteed to be 100% accurate. Publishers should still scrutinize the results they receive and develop a process for validating data sourced from ChatGPT before publishing.
Content ideation and brainstorming
This one gets better the more thought into your prompts, but if you detail the type of audience you are writing for (i.e., young parents) and what you want to write about (education), ChatGPT can give you back some content ideas to serve that audience best.
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How Your Audience Development Team Can Use ChatGPT Right Now
Content optimization for search engines
ChatGPT can streamline the effort of creating copy for topic and tag pages or SEO-friendly page titles and meta descriptions for your most valuable content. Some of the newly released ChatGPT plug-ins can do this for you inside Google Sheets.
Download the GPT for Sheets plug-in and integrate it with your OpenAI account. From there, you can use simple formulas to send specific prompts to ChatGPT, and the result will be returned in a cell. For example, put a single URL in one cell, the instruction to create an “SEO Friendly page title” in another, write the specific formula, and you’ll have page titles populate directly in your document, just like magic.
However, another word of caution here. There is little to no regulation around AI and data privacy for now. Always exercise caution with what kind of data you input into ChatGPT.
Write headlines for ad or email campaigns
Like its ability to create social media copy, ChatGPT is great for creating ad copy that you can leverage in campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more. In your prompt, be sure to specify the platform and the kind of tone you are trying to strike, and ChatGPT will give you some options to consider or start from for your next ad campaign or marketing email.
Start with prompts like the ones below to be specific about your audience, objective, and desired copy length:
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“Write a [preferred tone] marketing email targeted toward [target audience] promoting this article [URL] that is no more than [X] words”
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“Write a [preferred tone] marketing email targeted toward [target audience] with an offer to [objective] that is no more than [X] words”
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“Write ad copy for a paid campaign on [platform] targeted toward [target audience] promoting this article [URL] that is no more than [X] words”
While there are countless ways media companies can take advantage of AI, this list is by no means exhaustive. However, it hopefully provides some ideas on how AI can increase efficiency, foster creativity, or free you from performing your least favorite tasks. Regardless, AI will revolutionize our lives, so be prepared for the ride, as we are only scratching the surface of what this technology can do. We’ll keep talking about it, too, so look for more analysis and thoughts soon on the intersection of AI and media and publishing.
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