Bite Size Comms

It is of course customary to start a new year with some predictions. I have just two for the wide world of communications. They both make me laugh a little. They both relate to AI. 

The first prediction is that virtual influencers will take over from real-life marketing influencers. Brands are apparently finding marketing influencers too expensive and unreliable in what the FT described as an ‘over-heated market’. Digital avatars are on the rise. The FT reported that pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as haircare line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret. Brands have paid about £1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media — despite the fact that she is entirely fictional. Insragram analysis of a H&M advert featuring virtual influencer Kuki found that it reached 11 times more people and resulted in a 91 per cent decrease in cost per person remembering the advert, compared with a traditional ad. Marketing influencers who are increasingly regarded as superficial and fake are being replaced by .… real fakes!

The second prediction is that a lot of news media articles, particularly at the local level, will be written by AI journalists. The Guradian reported that Barrow Worcester Journal, a very old local newspaper owned by the UK’s second biggest regional news publisher, Newsquest, is hiring AI-assisted journalists to report on local news. Newsquest has so far hired eight AI reporters in newsrooms across the country. The AI reporters use an in-house generative AI copywriting tool and turn content and press releases from trusted sources, like local authorities, into news reports in the publisher’s style. Reach, the largest local news publisher in the UK, is also testing AI reporters. Newsquest says it frees up real journalists’ time to do investigative reporting. But remember the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree in September? Turns out that much of the local reporting was done by an AI hack!

Happy New Year.

[Image: Unsplash]