What does Alibaba’s new AI copywriter mean for advertising?

According to Alimama, the marketing platform for Alibaba, the new Chinese-language tool is capable of producing 20,000 lines of copy per second, and has passed the Turing Test. Adweek reported that Alimama did not provide any details as to how the test was conducted.

Alizila, the platform for updates on Alibaba, wrote that “brands using the new tool, such as fashion chain Esprit and Texas-born clothing brand Dickies, can adjust the length and tone of their copy, such as dictating whether they want the tone to be ‘promotional, functional, fun, poetic or heartwarming.'”

According to Mumbrella Asia, Alimama said the tool “uses deep learning and natural language processing technologies learn from millions of top-quality existing samples to generate copy for products” By pressing the ‘Produce Smart Copy’ button, customers will have their copy instantaneously.

Competition is coming for copywriters! https://t.co/jCZRWQwKhq href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/copywriting?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#copywriting #ContentMarketing #AI #Alibaba

— Mathias Philippe (@kolargol) July 5, 2018

How does the industry cope?

The discussion around digital transformation in marketing and advertising has long-since shifted from just moving off paper and on to the the screen: the industry is dealing with threats from all sides.

Sushman Biswas from MarTech Advisor wrote a column last year about the digital transformation challenge for advertising agencies. In it he writes:

“At a time when consumer choices are unpredictable, the one fact that agencies can control are designing strategies that focus on delivering great experiences rather than mere selling tactics. The constant barrage of messages that a consumer comes across on multiple channels every day only confounds their buying decisions… With the wealth of data available to advertisers today, it is important that they leverage these people-based insights to drive hyper-personalized, immersive and real-time consumer experiences.”

An employee-first approach

This discussion around creating experiences over using selling tactics to market and advertise a product is especially pertinent now, with the emergence of a product that does the latter.

“To fully transform the way brands talk to their customers, it’s firstly vitally important to first change the way your business talks to its workforce,” writes Katya Linossi from The Drum Network, about a people and employee-first approach to creating these unique customer experiences. “In order to provide this superlative service, we need to have the right infrastructure and tools internally to meet our client’s growing demands. And our employees need to not only have the enthusiasm to help clients on their own journeys of discovery, but have access to the tools and resources to help them consult better.”

Putting employees at the forefront of a company’s digital transformation is a suggestion that comes up often, regardless of the industry. And at a time when new tools that have the capacity to take over jobs are popping up, leading research suggests that it’s essential to take this people-first approach, while embracing and not being fearful of new technologies.