When you think of Artificial Intelligence (AI), does Data come to mind? We’re talking about that character on Star Trek who seemed to know everything. In the show, Data is a member of the crew of the USS Enterprise-D, serving as the ship's second officer and operations manager. As an android, he possesses superhuman strength and intelligence, and is capable of processing information at incredible speeds.

Over the past several decades, technologists have been trying to achieve the level of sophistication in data processing that the character on Star Trek possessed, and today, with new AI-powered apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it seems as though we’re getting close. 

So, what does that mean for marketing departments in startups, medium-sized businesses or large enterprises? During a recent BDO Digital webinar, “Maximizing ROI with Artificial Intelligence,” industry experts Kirstie Tiernan and Ganesh Rajamani of BDO Digital, and Andrew Cohen of Netsurit, explored the topic. They discussed various ways that businesses can use generative AI – the type of AI that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots – to improve productivity by up to 40% while optimizing the customer experience. 
 

From simple analytics to artificial intelligence 

Data analytics is the process of examining datasets to draw conclusions about the information they contain, and data analytic techniques enable businesses to uncover patterns and extract valuable insights from raw data. Taking data analytics a step further, AI combines a rich set of sub-disciplines, methods and tools to enable learning and problem-solving across numerous areas: speech recognition, computer vision, machine translation, reasoning, attention and memory, and robotics, to name a few.  

“Instead of answering questions like ‘What happened?’ or ‘Why did it happen?’, AI can be used to predict what might happen and prescribe next actions to reach a desired outcome,” said Rajamani during the webinar. “Eventually, AI will enable cognitive analytics, which will help us understand and know what we don’t yet know.   

The ChatGPT phenomenon 

While AI has become increasingly important to businesses across all industries – it’s used in some form by 37% of organizations – only recently has it entered the spotlight, as the ChatGPT craze spreads across the nation. ChatGPT is a deep AI language model developed by OpenAI based on the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) architecture that’s trained on massive amounts of text data and is capable of generating human-like responses to natural language prompts. (If you haven’t tried it, you should – it’s pretty remarkable!)  

While ChatGPT was the first AI model of its kind to make a splash in the news, others are gaining recognition, as well. WaveNet, a generative AI model developed by Google, can be used to synthesize realistic speech and music.  

As Generative AI becomes more widespread and understood, the development of more innovative deep learning models is inevitable. 
 

Generative AI use cases  

Generative AI-based applications like ChatGTP are valuable across a variety of use cases. They can generate text in a variety of contexts or produce product descriptions, news articles or even poetry in seconds. They can be trained to generate images either from scratch or from combining elements of existing images, or generate video footage or enhance existing videos. Some models can generate new music, melodies or harmonies.  

Here’s how some industries are using generative AI to automate repetitive, manual tasks while adding insight and value to data: 

• Healthcare: Analyze patient symptoms and medical history, and generate a list of possible conditions 

• Recruiting: Screen resumes for relevant skills and experiences and generate clear and detailed job descriptions 

• Technology: Save time in software development by generating code 

• Customer service: Provide instant customer support and personalized assistance 

• Legal: Drafting legal documents and contracts 

• Financial services: Generate financial reports from data, and assist analysts and investors in decision-making 

• Fraud detection: Analyze financial data for unusual patterns and identify potential fraud 

This is just a sampling of applications for AI – the possibilities are virtually endless, and the impact will be enormous. 

“We’ve been having discussions with our clients, explaining how AI can save hundreds or thousands of dollars in personnel costs and have a tremendous impact on their business,” said Cohen, CEO of BDO Alliance Partner Netsurit, which works with organizations to identify, prioritize and implement application and business process automation initiatives. Cohen is a frequent user of ChatGPT himself. “By enabling me to quickly generate executive summaries for business proposals, the technology has accelerated my ability to close business,” said Cohen. 

What can Generative AI do for digital marketing? As it turns out – a lot. According to David Lewis, BDO Digital CMO and Practice Lead, Demand Generation Group, Generative AI is “a helpful co-pilot that is re-writing the playbook for B2B marketers to create and optimize content.”  

Lewis predicts that AI – particularly generative AI apps like ChatGPT– will be used across the entire marketing mix, providing huge productivity gains in targeting, nurturing, lead scoring, routing, personalization and more. It has the potential to streamline marketing processes, increase efficiency, and improve the customer experience, ultimately leading to increased conversions and revenue.
 

Get Started with Generative AI 

Working with Alliance Partners like Netsurit, BDO Digital is pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a “smart” business with custom machine learning solutions that solve real business problems. If you’re just getting started with AI, we can help you leverage a secure, tailored ChatGPT instance in your existing environment for a variety of applications, including communications, research, strategy and planning, innovation, customer service and more.  

Watch the full webinar on-demand and learn more about our AI Consulting Services here.