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Are you All In on using AI?
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As much as you may want to grandstand and shy away from using generative AI tools in place of doing the work yourself, whilst you’re busy doing that, your competitors are readily embracing AI and reaping the benefits.
Whether it be optimising the customer experience, streamlining key processes, or even making key business decisions, generative AI tools can unlock a new realm of benefits to the eCommerce retailers willing to use them. In fact, research found that more than 45% of eCommerce businesses using generative AI in eCommerce have enhanced their shopping experiences.
In this blog, we want to look at some of the AI tools we use as a marketing and branding agency, how we use them for our clients, and some things to bear in mind when using generative AI tools in general.
This is where most people will first dip their toe into the world of generative AI. ChatGPT is a search based AI model that is most often used as an alternative to Google and other search engines.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a chatbot and virtual assistant that allows users to refine text and ask for suggestions based on the content provided to it and the content it can find most frequently online. The tool has seen significant use since its launch due to its impressive capabilities in tasks such as text completion, translation, and creative writing.
We often see brands or entrepreneurs use Chat GPT, or other text based generative AI tools, as a complete alternative to writing copy or content themselves. Whether it be product descriptions, social media captions, or even complete blogs, ChatGPT certainly can do it all, whether it should is another question.
What a tool like ChatGPT fails to take into consideration is your brand tone of voice, the point you originally set out with to write your content, and your target audience. The end result is that your written language sounds similar to every other brand that uses the tool and that all product descriptions, blogs, and social media captions that have been written using the tool, sound far too similar to each other too.
We won’t pretend like we never use Chat GPT. It is ultimately very useful both as a search engine and to generate a lot of ideas quickly. So let’s look at how we use the tool.
We often use ChatGPT when creating the initial ideas for tone of voice documents, brand slogans and taglines, or product descriptions. It’s rare that the finished product will at all resemble the answer generated by the tool, but, as every copywriter will know, there’s nothing more daunting than a blank page. Simply getting some ideas down is a great start, regardless of how “good” they might be, and it’s an area that Chat GPT can undeniably assist in.
We work in a ton of different industries, and often have to write content for products and services that we may know little about. Time is money and using tools like ChatGPT as a search engine to answer our queries and inform our written content is a great time saver
Not all written content is built in the exact same fashion. With content such as product descriptions being much more serviceable and information led than other pieces of content, letting tools like Chat GPT give you a first version to go ahead and edit, can save your time on writing long copywriting drafts, allowing you to spend more time on longer, more intense pieces of content such as blogs. However, if you’ve got enough experience writing product descriptions, it may be quicker for you to simply write them from scratch, rather than going through and making substantial edits to a description written by a third party tool.
Going beyond using Chat GPT or alternative tools for anything more than the most entry level written content, will not only stagnate the quality of your written content overall, but you are largely doing your brand, your copywriters, and ultimately your customers a disservice.
Adobe Firefly and Stable Diffusion are two similar AI models that generate images based on prompts and the images that are fed into it. Adobe Firefly, a product of the Adobe Creative Cloud, is currently in Beta Testing, whereas Stable Diffusion is a deep-learning generative AI developed by OpenRail. Both are much more intensive to set up than ChatGPT, and require more processing power from your computer too, however the results often are far superior.
These tools are actually far less useful in eCommerce than you’d think. With so much of eCommerce design being wrapped up in typography, colour palettes, and logos, you can really only use these tools in select areas. Unless you want to replace product imagery or are only using the tools for minor touch points, they have little use, but to go as far as to call them useless would be an overstatement. So, let’s look at how we use the tools in creating branding for eCommerce brands.
Sometimes, you simply need to get a concept sold in before further work can take place. Whilst using stock imagery or even imagery used by competitors is a great way to achieve this, it can sometimes be difficult to find the exact imagery you’re looking for, especially if your idea is a unique one.
This is where generative AI has a natural place to step in. Images produced by these tools can be big time savers, and can help you refine the look and visual style you’re actually going for.
Backgrounds, patterns, and otherwise small graphical devices are great examples of where using generated images is a great time saver. By using generative AI, product imagery can be improved from using bland backgrounds to using more inventive backgrounds than you typically have access to IRL. Furthermore, AI generated images have a distinctive look to them that’s unlike what you can create naturally. To this end, this style may naturally fit with your brand art style in minor doses.
That’s right, not even the super-skilled web development position is free from the creep of the AI overtake. In their Winter Editions 2024, Shopify announced the implementation of their own stack of generative AI features, each of which are likely powered by models such as Chat GPT and stable diffusion.
Shopify magic, can create professional product photos with AI-enabled image editing features. This allows merchants to instantly generate, match, or remove the background of existing images using just a few clicks or keywords.
And whilst it’s not a generative AI, Shopify’s Semantic search goes beyond keyword matching to better understand the intent behind a customer’s search. Using the tool, customers can use more natural words and phrases, and get richer, more relevant results.
Each of these tools has their place, but again none should be looked at as doing all of the work for your business, rather as what they are - tools to help you along the way.
One thing to bear in mind with using AI tools in general, is that the use of them can go against your brand image in some cases. We saw this with women’s fashion brand Selkie late last year. The brand prides itself on being inclusive, waste free, using sustainable materials, and championing the artisans that design and make their clothing. So it came as no surprise that a portion of their audience was less than pleased when they discovered that generative AI had been used in some product imagery in the place of real artists.
Generative AI should remain as a tool to be used, not as one that replaces people first innovations and ideas. It’s a line you’re going to have to tow, but if used in the ways outlined here, you should be set up for success and be able to generate the rewards of generative AI.
If you’re unsure of where your brand falls on this scale and find yourself relying on generative AI too frequently, speak to us and we can help you reach eCommerce success today.
