AI Tools for Digital Marketing: Beyond ChatGPT

Unless you have been living off the grid for the last couple of years, it is almost certain that you have come across some of the hype that surrounds GPT-3. This Artificial Intelligence (AI) system has taken the world by storm: from the polemic Guardian article to the recent news about it being able to pass an MBA exam, GPT-3 has sparked a lot of heated discussion since it appeared back in 2020. This has been intensified even more after the appearance of ChatGPT, a Chatbot interface which was released last November and has made the interaction with this complex AI engine so easy that pretty much anyone can use it. As of today, 30 million people are using it daily as an aid in various kinds of writing activities, from poems to coding. 

But what is ChatGPT? In broad terms, it is a Chatbot designed by OpenAI which uses a natural language processing (NPL) algorithm based on an extremely large and complex neural network trained on enormous amounts of text gathered from the internet. This system extracts patterns from this material to create a model that automatically generate human-like responses to any sort of text input. The result is an interactive software with an almost uncanny capacity to respond to any query or request. (Don’t be fooled though! Even though it might seem like it, its responses are the result of very complicated probabilistic patterns and not of any sort of understanding!) 

ChatGPT has many uses for digital marketing, and many are already trying to incorporate it into their strategies. Besides its most straightforward application as the most advanced customer support ChatBot yet (used by the likes of H&M and Sephora), it can also help with personalised product recommendations, and Lead Generation through Conversational Marketing.

However, although GPTChat has certainly received a lot of attention lately, it is not the only AI tool with exciting use cases for digital marketing services in Australia. While there is a great number of tools for a wide range of uses we will only show you a handful, some of them which use GPT (or other large language models) for different purposes. That said, let’s take a look at other AI-powered tools which are transforming the way businesses market and sell their products and services today.

Text to Image and Image to Text (T2I & A2T) 

AI-powered text-to-image (T2I) engines (or ‘AI Art’ generators) were the centre of attention just before ChatGPT came around. Similarly to what happened with the latter, in the last two years we witnessed a momentous shift, where intuitive and accessible interfaces were designed for these complex systems so that now can be easily used with little or no technical knowledge. Once again, OpenAI was one of the leaders with their Dall-E engine, but plenty of others have appeared, such as Craiyon, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Jasper, to name a few. T2I engines are based on different neural networks and are used for a wide variety of purposes and with varying degrees of sophistication: from artists doing serious (and unsettling) work using these systems to the recent social media craze around AI portraits to a Twitter bot that can be prompted to ‘draw’ any tweet. 

However, T2I also has many potential use cases for digital marketing which can help improve engagement and save time and resources. These systems can be used to create images and visual content tailored precisely for individual customers, something that could very possibly change the strategies used by any branding agency in Australia radically in the years to come. They can also potentially be used for real-time product visualisation, opening the door for forms of customisation that were previously impossible to achieve. 

The flipside of I2T is I2T, or image-to-text converters. Once again OpenAI is leading the game with their GPT-fueled Image Captions engine. This kind of tool is very different from optical character recognition (OCR), a form of image-to-text converter that you might be familiar with if you have tried to scan books or physical documents. As implied by the name, what OCRs do is recognise characters in images and converts them into machine-readable and editable text formats. However, image captioning involves more complex procedures which automatically generate descriptions or metadata by extract relevant features of the image such as shapes and gradients. 

I2T could have several uses for digital marketing services in Australia. For instance, customers could engage in visual search. In other words, it would allow them to upload images of products (something they saw on the street, for instance) to find something similar. It could also help automate and speed up certain processes in social media management (like automating tags and captions). 

As you can see, I2T and T2I AI systems have plenty to offer for the future of digital marketing services in Australia. Although until today they remain separate from ChatGPT itself, some people are also imagining the possibilities if they were to be implemented together!

Text to Video and Text to 3D (T2V & T2D) 

If ten years ago someone told you that in the future it would be possible to convert a couple of sentences into a video, most probably you would have received the news with a lot of skepticism. And rightly so: text-to-video converters are at the cutting edge of AI-powered tools and they have been slower to appear due to the huge computing costs that they imply. However, today we can already see emerging tools such as Runway, Synesthesia, and Meta’s Make-A-Video.

These systems use natural language processing algorithms to analyse and understand text input, which is then run through video generation algorithms to render moving images that reflect the content. They range from the simple to the (shockingly) complex; from simple slideshow-style videos to animations with advanced features such as sound effects, voiceovers, and customizable visual styles. Take a look, for instance, at The Crow, an AI animated film created by computer artist Glenn Marshall which won the Jury Award at the Cannes Short Film Festival last year. 

T2V is already a mind-boggling piece of technology by itself. However, its uses for digital marketing services in Australia are also potentially game-changing for this industry. It can help businesses to create video content easier and faster than ever before, especially for social media and other digital channels where video content is highly effective. By automating the video-creating process, T2V can save time and resources, while also allowing businesses to create more personalised and engaging content for their audiences. 

Text-to-3D converters (T2D) are also still relatively new and in the early phases of development. While they might perhaps not have the mass appeal of T2V, it’s not an exaggeration to say that they will probably revolutionise many areas of the creative industries, since they could allow businesses to quickly and easily create animations and visualisations without requiring specialised skills or software. They could open the door to completely new ways of product visualisation, virtual tools, and animated marketing content. As this technology continues to improve, we can expect to see more innovative and exciting applications in the field of digital marketing services in Australia.

Other Marketing-focused Tools for Content Generation and More

Up until now, we have mostly talked about large language models and converters. However, there are also many other marketing-focused AI tools that are already being used every day. 

Phrasee is a tool focused on ‘brand language optimisation’ which uses a natural language processing algorithm to create a cohesive brand language. It is being used by brands such as Virgin and Domino’s to homogenise their particular brand ‘voice’ across all their channels, from social media posts to emails. It is somewhat similar to Acrolinx, a software used by companies such as Google and Amazon to make sure that all their marketing content is tightly aligned with their brand identity. As a branding agency in Australia, we can assure you that these tools are becoming a must in the field. 

Optimove is a customer relationship manager (CRM) software platform designed to help businesses improve their customer retention and loyalty, offering several features for managing customer data, creating targeted marketing campaigns, and analysing customer behaviour. It has been one of the pioneers in the use of AI in CRM, winning several awards in the marketing technology industry. MarketMuse has also been praised for its innovative implementation of AI, this time in the field of content strategy. It offers a range of features for analysing and optimising content, such as content analysis, planning, optimisation, and performance tracking.

Lastly, we have GrowthBar, an search engine optimization (SEO) software tool that uses AI to help businesses improve their visibility and ranking on search engines. It offers a range of features for SEO analysis and optimisation, such as keyword research, competitor analysis, and performance tracking. 

As you can see, in this day and age there are AI-powered tools for pretty much anything you can imagine! Some of these tools are already being actively used for digital marketing services in Australia  by some early adopters, while others are still being developed or show potentially exciting use cases. If you would like to learn more about them or about how they could be implemented in your business’s marketing strategy, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!