It seems that life does go on, despite the news. Life now includes helpful AI agents to help you shop. Stop cheering.
Those of us blessed with AI in its role as yet another dogmatic, time-consuming, verbose commercial procedure aren’t cheering. Particularly those of us who’ve done mountains of advertising copy and sales materials.
Consider the process. You search for something you want to buy, and you get the usual formatted search, AI overview, and a sales pitch. Paid placements are quite bad enough. The whole search gets buried under the paid placements. Now add AI.
The current AI sector theory is that AI will be “persuasive”. Nice to know anyone’s that naïve, isn’t it?
No, it isn’t.
Say you want to buy a toaster. Legends say that back in the day your family used to own a toaster.
With the insanity of middle age, you and your ego decide that you will again aspire to such lofty social goals. You mad impetuous statistic, you.
So, despite the shudders from your family, total strangers, and a few squirrels, you search for a toaster.
Now, grudgingly consider the fact that there could be nothing easier than looking up info about your searches from data brokers to your search.
It’s a lot worse than that, and your consumer mudslide starts way up the market food chain.
You get all your past searches because it’s a search engine function to remember searches anyway. Yes, the AI can access that data. You hit Shopping and go to a site.
You also get AI business strategy, market planning, etc. It looks very like More Things You Can Do With Your Expensive New Toy For Businesses. This includes marketing, branding, and market positioning. You haven’t even clicked on a product yet.
All of this is based on one search.
The toasters arise from the products page. Some of them don’t even look like toasters. They look like someone’s trying to build a new alien civilization and couldn’t be bothered to tell you.
At this point you don’t need AI. You need a therapist up there in the tree with you.
But you get the AI. To quote from The Conversation link above:
A more recent meta-analysis of eight studies similarly concluded there was “no significant overall difference in persuasive performance between (large language models) and humans.”
This just means that the AI can process you to death or a sale, whichever comes first. You probably won’t get that invaluable condescension and implication that you’re unworthy of a toaster, though.
The usual “Behold! It casts its eyes upon our products, the wretch! Send a vassal to sneer it into submission!” is unlikely. You’d only get the impression that you should be a better person before daring to buy a toaster.
The AI will just obligingly tell you everything it wants you to know. Scripted spiel with a dialog box. Never mind what you want to know. It won’t understand your whimpers.
Nevertheless, you and your family will get an heirloom $19.99 toaster, eventually.
What does this have to do with advertising, you enquire wistfully from your burrow?
Nothing. Nothing at all. Do you see any real business value? The real sales pitch and trigger for everything is your search enquiry. You’ve already sold a toaster to yourself. The AI has simply reinforced your fears.
Successful salespeople don’t waste your time or theirs with superfluous garbage. In this case, they know that you want a toaster, but they also know that you may want to sing, dance, and frolic in the fields again. So, they keep the verbosity functional.
My suggestion from years of advertising work and statutory-level consumer protection work:
You need advertising in AI like you need a third armpit.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
