I have a confession. Before graduate school here at UNC-CH, I had never used any sort of Artificial Intelligence platform. I was scared to be accused of cheating, and I wasn’t sure where to even start. Now, I use AI with almost every assignment. I’ve learned how to use it for research, how to refine my writing style, and ways it can generate images, videos, and even music. I see it as a partner in crime. I know what my skills are as a writer, and AI helps cover the gaps.
One of my favorite classes in my program incorporates AI in a unique way. Each week, our class has two assignments. On Tuesday, we learn techniques in class for something in the digital content realm, such as an infographic, social media advertisement, data visualization, or audience profile. We complete the project based on what skills we already have and what we learned that day in class. Then, on Thursday, we learn how to do it with AI.
This experiment has given me a great insight into where AI both excels and struggles. Need a quick background on a company or target audience profile? AI can give pages worth of research in seconds. Ask it to create a data visualization? The sources are questionable, and the graph doesn’t exactly make sense. Here is an example: I asked Sora to make a 20-second advertisement for Coca-Cola. I combined four 5-second clips that told the story of a girl drinking from the classic bottle at a bright music festival. For the most part, Sora got the details correct. However, the platform really struggled with the girl drinking. Her actions were awkward and inconsistent, and her face warped twice in just a 5-second clip. It took four variations of my prompt to reach a video I was happy with.
However, AI cannot compete with my authenticity and creative ideas. I take great pride in my storytelling and out-of-the-box thinking, and I find that AI produces quantity over quality when it comes to idea generation. This is where my skills as a writer shine. There is a lot of worry over AI’s impact on the job market, and I share the same anxiety. Still, I think that humans’ true creativity and eye for detail are still leaps and bounds ahead of AI. Raw emotion and humanity are what provide the spark in marketing and communication.
