This month we have been thinking a lot about the pros and cons of using AI in marketing. Here are 3 things we found interesting for sharing with other marketing professionals:
1. Are AI tools eliminating jobs? Yale study says “not in marketing.”
We agree! Marketing is one of the industries that relies on human creativity. As PR & Marketing professionals, it is important to be able to gauge your target audiences’ emotions and motivations. When we brainstorm new ideas and concepts for our clients, we use first hand feedback from clients and their customers to drive our creative thinking. While AI can be useful for data driven activities, PR & Marketing still relies on a more personal connection when it comes to developing bespoke, brand specific strategies.
2. Elon Musk launched Grokipedia – We tried it and this is what we found
The jury is still out. With news stories circulating in favour of Wikipedia, the original online encyclopaedia, and murmurs of political bias, we decided to test it for ourselves. Our starting point? A simple search: “What is Public Relations?” While Grokipedia, the recently launched AI encyclopaedia, appeared impressive at first due to the number of references – 197 vs Wikipedia’s 81, this doesn’t necessarily mean the content is more reliable.
With this in mind, we moved on to a more topical search, the “United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30)”, which is taking place in Brazil this week. In our opinion, Grokipedia did seem to provide a more in-depth description of the conference although very little detail on this year’s conference could be found (could this be because the USA are not attending for the first time?). Compared with Wikipedia which had a dedicated page to COP30.
And even more specifically we searched for topics in our industry. Specific names of spas or round ups such as Best UK Spas do not tend to come up in searches on either platform, however a basic search of the word “spa” brought up very similar results. The list of contents was identical from Etyomology, and the History of Spas through to Recent Trends and Regulations. Although the content wasn’t identical (the intro was different) we suspect that Grok had lifted much of the text from Wikipedia.
We like the inclusion of when articles were last fact checked on Grokipedia which is clearly presented at the top of each search, which we think adds value. However, each search we carried out over the last few days was “Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago” which raises some questions about the frequency and legitimacy of its verification process.
Another notable difference is that Wikipedia includes images, whereas Grokipedia has a more minimalist feel, completely lacking visual content.
In summary, Grokipedia scans a lot of sources, but quality and credibility still matter. For marketers and PR pros, AI tools and new platforms can help research, but human judgment is key.
3. Open AI has launched its new video and audio generation app, Sora 2. Is this an AI tool that can enhance marketing?
There are always two sides to every story. With Sora 2, marketers can use their creativity combined with AI to bring their vision to life. They will save time and resources but at the sacrifice of traditional videographers, script writers, producers, directors, prop providers, costume designers and so on. We also feel that often AI-generated videos can feel slightly artificial and can lack the authenticity of the human touch.
The bottom line: Sora 2 is a powerful tool for marketing, but at this moment in time, human creativity and expertise remain essential for creating truly engaging video content.
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