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AI & marketing managers: keep calm and carry on!
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Is generative artificial intelligence ready to replace me? Since its sudden emergence, this has been one of the major concerns driving the digital world. To gain a better understanding of the ethical implications, we spoke to 11 digital marketing professionals. While they are aware of the upheavals to come, they remain confident about their future.
If marketing ethics has been a concern for researchers in the industry since the beginning of the 20th century, the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing has naturally emerged as a central concern since late 2022 with the advent of generative AI technologies. Do they pose a threat to the jobs of marketing professionals, as often discussed?
We interviewed 11 digital marketing professionals currently working in France and the United States. We intentionally selected profiles with varying levels of seniority and hierarchy, ranging from a digital marketing project management intern to the CEO of a renowned online advertising agency, including a junior art director and the Data Director of a well-known French retail conglomerate.
“Everything is created by us, everything is written by us”
Beyond the scientific community, professionals themselves are questioning the new ethical challenges raised by generative AI. In 2023, 22% of individuals report already using generative AI regularly in their work, according to McKinsey. Delegating writing tasks can thus present an ethical dilemma in their eyes: “Ethically, it’s complicated to send clients articles that are empty and don’t bring much,” points out a Marketing and Sales representative we interviewed, for whom robot-generated content may provide little added value to the reader.
Above all, our interviews reveal that it is delicate for marketing professionals to take a firm position on the actual knowledge they have about AIs. In their eyes, AIs are still challenging to define, whether they are novices or experienced. “For newsletters, I don’t use AI at all; we use Hubspot, everything is created by us, everything is written by us, nothing is modified,” assures one professional before expressing doubts: “Even for writing ads on Google Ads, I’m not sure if it’s AI. Maybe, I’m not sure…” Her uncertainty raises the question of whether this confusion results from a confluence of technological advances or a lack of sufficient technical skills to differentiate between AI varieties and specific applications. [...]
