Is ChatGPT and generative AI the (right) answer for association communications? Let’s explore what it does and how it could impact your association and job.
AI and ChatGPT are a regular topic of conversation. No one could blame you if you started to think that nearly every story you see is about generative AI, including ChatGPT or one of its competitors. It might leave you wondering, “Is it really that big a deal?”
If you’ve been able to do any hands-on experimentation with the platform, you’ve probably started believing that it is. There tools that are game-changers, and then there are tools that are society-changers. AI is likely the latter.
There’s little it appears generative AI can’t do. There are vast applications for this technology across a number of industries. And while this post will focus mainly on what ChatGPT (text generation) can do, generative AI is also shaking up the entire creative and artistic world with capabilities like: converting text to images, music, animation, speech, and video.
It’s a powerful tool for addressing limitations of scale, time, and maybe even talent when it comes to content creation.
While Chat GPT (and other generative AI) can be a powerful and useful tool, it’s not perfect. It gets some information wrong. Careful human oversight, editing, and institutional knowledge is still necessary for ensuring accuracy and context. Your content is a reflection of your association – generative AI shouldn’t be used to replace important human contributions, but rather to augment them.
So, how can association communicators leverage this technology revolution? In what ways might ChatGPT help us with recruitment, engagement, and retention? And what are some of the limitations you need to look out for?
When you’re looking for the answer to a question, the days of entering a query into Google and having to sort through pages of sponsored and organic links could now be numbered.
Users can ask AI chatbots questions and get a direct answer. Or enter a query into search and get an AI overview or summary of the results, pulled and consolidated from whatever sources the search engine can find. Provided the answer is correct, this is infinitely more efficient than Google.
And if the answer isn’t what the user was looking for, rephrasing, clarifying, or getting more specific with the text entered into ChatGPT will change the results. In other words, the more skilled a user is at entering data into ChatGPT, the more strategic, specific, and detailed the question, and the better the search results.
These search powers can be helpful for associations who appreciate the value of data and knowledge because they make it faster and easier for your association to learn:
Yes, these are all things an association can Google instead. But the ability to get aggregated answers instead of list of links (and thus more work), is what has changed. The excuses for not intimately knowing your industry, members, or partners are falling away fast.
This is where you might want to tread more carefully.
Associations are in the relationship and trust-building business. Members value transparency and authenticity. They also value being known to the association and getting limited and highly relevant communication based on the information they’ve shared with the associations.
Your members probably aren’t looking for a higher volume of content – especially not if it’s obviously auto-generated – just because new robots can make it. That’s not to say you can’t use ChatGPT to aid in content generation and scaling your content strategy, but human discretion is needed to determine when and where you should.
Members are turning to associations – including their leaders and other members – for personal opinions based on experience and true thought leadership. ChatGPT is capable of generating neither of these things. While it does a decent job of collecting information and not directly copying or plagiarizing, ChatGPT is, by design, an amalgamator of existing material.
There may be some instances where it doesn’t matter if your content is written by a human or not – but there are other cases where you just can’t replace human experience and expertise. So think about using Chat GPT for copy that’s pure information: a list, recitation of facts, boilerplate, or a strictly-business form email. All these can be ChatGPT-generated as long as human eyes audit and edit the results.
For anything that involves real opinion, new thinking, or needs to exude the authentic personality of the writer, it’s best to keep the human element. I these cases you could still use Chat GPT to help with research as opposed to doing the writing.
Chat GPT can also be helpful for building off your original content. This relieves some of the manual effort of generating shorter content and messages from longer pieces. Think creatively about how you can use ChatGPT to repurpose what you have or what exists already in your industry. You’ll still need to review and edit (and one of the beauties of this approach is you don’t have to use what ChatGPT comes up with), but it gives you a jumping off point. Here are some ideas:
Whether you’re an AI advocate or a skeptic, this webinar provides a look at its practical application.
Read MoreThe capabilities of AI are ever expanding. Gain a solid understanding of AI terms and what they mean.
Read MoreLearn how Higher Logic’s new AI Assistant will redefine the way your association works on emails and how you can...
Read More