5 AI trends for brand marketers to know about right now

As artificial intelligence continues its run as the most popular technology on the market, wary advertisers are beginning to qualify their adoption. Meanwhile, AI providers are jostling for talent by poaching each other’s staff with seductive pay packages and political organizations are marshaling new efforts to combat deep fakes ahead of the U.S. presidential election this fall. These and other trends describe the AI space over the past few weeks, which Ad Age has compiled into a list that pays particular attention to those developments that could impact brand marketers. The advertising industry sits squarely in the middle of many of AI’s ramifications, which means staying up to date on the latest happenings—from the competition between tech giants to the shifting regulatory landscape— is essential for preparing and adjusting one’s own strategy. The outlook of AI is not what it was a year and a half ago when ChatGPT first launched and, in some ways, it is different every week. Also read: AI prompting lessons for marketers Keep reading to learn about five AI trends that brand marketers need to know about right now. Advertisers’ wariness of AI heats up Advertisers are becoming more wary of AI as the technology continues to reflect growing pains, particularly with respect to bias and mischaracterization. Underwear brand Thinx launched a campaign last month drawing attention to the harmful ways that generative AI depicts women’s health, such as puberty and menstruation. Thinx also intentionally opted for human artists to design its creative in a way that invoked generative AI’s hyper-realistic style, while avoiding the baggage in the process. This week, Dove pledged to not use AI to depict people in its ads, pairing the commitment with a spot that shows how AI pigeonholes conceptions of beauty. And McCann announced plans to make the same stipulation for its clients who leverage the marketing company’s new partnership with Aimagination. Meanwhile, brands have started to ask for extra AI guardrails in contracts with agency partners, citing worries that the technology could steer them in unwanted places. Production companies, too, are concerned that the threat of AI application could outweigh the potential boons. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here AI washing crackdown The hype around AI is starting to snap backwards as regulatory bodies crack down on mischaracterizations of one’s use of the technology. This practice, dubbed “AI washing,” refers to false marketing claims being made about AI, such as an exaggeration of its role inside a company product. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month busted two investment firms for AI washing, fining them a total of $400,000. And the Federal Trade Commission has also stepped in, shutting down an e-commerce platform in August for deceptively claiming that AI was helping to maximize revenues. The FTC previously issued a warning to advertisers to keep their AI claims in check. Companies looking to avoid AI washing, and its steep repercussions, should aim to be more specific in their promotional materials about their use of AI, among other safeguards. “We’ll see a lot more enforcement activity this year,” Katie Gardner, partner at law firm Gunderson Dettmer, told Ad Age. Tech companies jostling for AI talent Advertisers should know that they are not the only companies struggling to bring in new talent skilled in AI. Tech leaders, including Meta, Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI, are jostling for the best minds in the space, and very much getting in each other’s way. Meta is losing talent to other companies because it doesn’t pay as well, according to The Information. The social media giant has started to hire candidates on the spot, without conducting any interviews, as well as send recruitment letters personally written by Mark Zuckberg to researchers at competing firms, per the report. Tesla has also had to fight off tech companies from poaching its AI engineers. Elon Musk tweeted that the EV brand is boosting pay for these positions, and also confirmed reports that he has convinced other top talent to stay by bringing them into his AI-specific venture, xAI. And trouble is affecting Google’s DeepMind AI research lab, where its top executive, Demis Hassabis, is reportedly frustrated over losing talent to OpenAI and fighting for resources within the company, per The Information. More employment news: US ad industry added 900 jobs in March Efforts increase to fight political deep fakes As the U.S. presidential election nears, organizations are marshaling efforts to fight an onslaught of political deep fakes, which aim to disrupt the flow of accurate and truthful information directed to voters. A bipartisan group called the AI + Election Security Coalition is launching a string of ads to warn voters about such deep fakes, according to Axios. The organization hopes to see wide distribution of its ads on social media via influencers, and will spend an additional $5 million of paid advertising in swing states. Deepfakes will become the new spam — but with dangerous consequences like THIS. Don’t fall for the fake on Election Day. Keep calm & vote on. pic.twitter.com/FnFH91NReC— The Future US (@seeTheFutureUS) April 8, 2024 TrueMedia.org is another organization that is stepping in, having last week launched a tool for determining the authenticity of media found online, per The New York Times. Users approved by the nonprofit can submit files of video, images and audio and the tool will output a label reflecting a level of suspicion—from not suspicious to uncertain to highly suspicious. Traditional brands have seen the emergence of deep fakes, too. Wipes brand GetDirty went viral earlier this month for releasing ads that were doctored with deep fake technology. And deep fakes of Taylor Swift have been used to hawk Le Creuset cookware. Read more: How a deep fake of an influencer went viral AI marketing blog How brands are using ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and other tools Read more here AI providers hunting for data Recent reports show the lengths to which AI providers are finding new sources of data in order to train and strengthen their large language models (LLMs). Meta, Google and OpenAI have each ignored corporate policies and debated circumventing existing laws in order to obtain this information, according to a report by The New York Times. OpenAI and Google, for instance, have both scraped YouTube videos for data, despite the practice being prohibited by the video platform. (YouTube is owned by Google, but video copyrights belong to creators.) Meta considered buying publishing firm Simon & Schuster so it would be able to train its models on longer works. It also discussed the possibility of whether to hoover copyrighted data and accept the inevitable lawsuits as opposed to waiting until more legal data became available, according to the Times’ report. Meta, Google and OpenAI have also struck costly deals with image companies in order to use their data to train models, per a report by Reuters. Shutterstock netted deals worth between $25 million and $50 million with multiple tech giants, and those deals have since expanded. Freepik, another stock image provider, has partnered with two large tech companies, and Photobucket is holding its own talks with multiple AI firms. The deal making and internet scraping may sound familiar to marketers, who have long understood the value of data to create a more effective output. On this front, perhaps the ad industry could provide some insight for AI providers, or, in contrast, cautiously learn from their failures and successes.

5 AI trends for brand marketers to know about right now

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