In this six-part series’ overview, Zoetica Media founder Kami Huyse provided a big picture introduction to the 5 top social media trends that will shape the industry.
In this post, we’re going to dive deeper into Trend #1: Artificial Intelligence. Kami examines the tools driving it and shares ideas for how creative professionals can use the new technology to assist them in their work.
AI should enhance work, not complicate things. “What I’m finding is that a lot of the tools you already use [have] AI in them, and they are adding them as a feature to the toolsets that we already [regularly] use,” says Kami.
Welcome to the World of ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in late November 2022 that’s taken the world by storm. It’s incredibly easy to use – simply enter natural language prompts to engage in a conversation with the bot. CNET describes it as “an AI that's trained to recognize patterns in vast swaths of text harvested from the internet, then further trained with human assistance to deliver more useful, better dialog.”
Kami has successfully been using ChatGPT as an idea generator for a while already, but warns that not everything it creates is quality work. “Some of them were quite honestly terrible… [but if you take] pieces of ideas and put them together, it can help you generate lots of [quality material],” she says. “That’s the most important part to think about. These are tools…. You do not need to worry as much as you think you do because you still have to put that human touch on it, you have to put that thought into it, but it can help you to do things faster and also better.”
Using ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 together allows creative professionals to create text and accompanying images that enhance their written work, Kami suggests. DALL-E 2 is another OpenAI creation that creates images and art from descriptions entered as natural language. Possibilities include images to insert into blog posts, background images to use as the basis for creating Instagram posts, and more.
You can access ChatGPT by going to https://chat.openai.com/ and creating an OpenAI account. Right now the basic version of ChatGPT is free, although a $20/month subscription model called “ChatGPT Plus” is on its way.
Tools That Have AI Baked Into Them Already
Some tools, such as Canva and Searchie, employ AI to enhance their platforms and better serve users.
Canva
This design platform enables you to easily create a variety of materials such as social media images, presentations, posters, invitations, and so on. Its pro version allows you to use a “text to image” feature which translates a text description you’ve entered into an image you can then adopt outright or modify further and download for use anywhere online.
As good as this tool is, Kami says, “I don’t think this is going to end our jobs… I actually think if we can use it intelligently it’s going to help us to bring things to life off the page and then edit them down. It’s a great starter point.”
Searchie
This software platform geared towards content creators allows you to create, manage, and even sell your content in one place. Kami uses it to organize the videos she creates for Social Media Breakfast, offering a comprehensive hub featuring all things SMBHOU, such as her agency’s blog posts about the monthly event, a description of the next live meeting, and videos of all past webinars.
Searchie uses AI on the backend to assist with tasks like captioning videos. “What it’s doing is going through the transcript of the video and it’s basically summarizing it,” explains Kami. Once this text is generated, a user can copy and paste it underneath a video to serve as a handy caption.
More at hand
Kami shares additional useful tools on a handy AI assets sheet you can download for free here. One tool helps users create high converting emails, another assists in writing SEO-optimized content.
To learn more, watch Kami’s livestream where she walks through each of these tools in detail.
Six-part Series on The 5 Social Media Trends That Will Shape the Industry in 2023
• Overview: The 5 Social Media Trends
• Trend 1: Creative Professionals, Get Ready For the Artificial Intelligence Takeover
• Trend 2: Platform Fragmentation and Globalization – Coming next