Issue #3: Game-changing app, AI access controversy, AI professor’s ChatGPT review, and $900M contract

Good morning,

If you could have just one bionic body part, what would it be?

The Terminator’s beady red eye? RoboCop’s cyborg body?

I wouldn’t be able to resist a bionic arm. Mainly for doing all my gym reps.

Even The Six Million Dollar Man – maybe the most iconic bionic character of all time – used his biological cyborg replacements to become the greatest secret agent of all time.

But it wasn’t just the $6 million ($40 million in 2023 dollars) surgery that did that.

An eye with a 20:1 zoom lens and his superhuman strength definitely helped, but Steve Austin’s passion for justice, deadly efficiency, and a strong sense of duty are what made him so admirable.

And 50 years later, AI today is no different.

You have to use it alongside your own skills, personality, and talent to succeed as a bionic marketer.

“We have the technology”, and within the next year, those who use AI as part of their marketing tool stack will see their business results and quality of life evolve with it.

Not everyone wants to, can, or should use AI.

But if you’re reading this, I’d say it’s pretty likely you want to indulge.

Shall we?

In today’s issue:

• An AI expert reveals how long it would take us to read all the information ChatGPT has learned.

• Get a sneak peek of the popular SAAS tool getting an AI makeover.

• The divisive reactions to AI that are creating a ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ split in the next generation.

• The 22-year-old shaping the future of generative AI tools.

• The generative writing bot that’s the best creative writing assistant you’ve ever had - with the bonus of some seriously swipe-able copy on the program website.

Let’s dive in.

BIONIC JUICE

Have you heard the one about AI being creativity-stifling? As if switching it on turns off all sense of humanity in your brain.

It’s not a dichotomy. The two things don’t exist in isolation. Incorporate AI into your creativity and you will find yourself in an enhanced state of innovation, ideation and inspiration.

AI is simply a tool. Like a pen or a computer. Get informed on how to use it well and you will elevate your creativity to heights you didn’t know existed, at a speed you didn’t realize was possible.

This comprehensive guide on how to get started with AI-assisted creative writing will show you:

• Mind-boggling ideas to broaden your creative horizons

• How to write more, faster—without compromising quality

• Where to find a never-ending supply of well-structured, easily flowing prose that provides the perfect foundation for your content

Speaking of AI-assisted content, the masters of NLP (natural language processing) over at Storylab.ai have released their guide on AI-assisted idea generation, specifically for content writers.

This brilliant resource covers marketing strategy and content writing topics you can talk about to achieve these goals.

There’s even a free AI-powered tool and template included.

LATEST DISCOVERIES

AI revamp for popular SAAS tool

How many tasks on your to-do list give you an irresistible urge to procrastinate?

You know, the ones that would really be quite easy to do but they just don’t fire you up enough to do something about them.

What if I told you almost all of those marketing and business burdens can be outsourced to AI?

Notion is widely used by professionals, entrepreneurs, and students for organizing notes, tasks, projects, and time management.

This week, they released a preview of their upcoming AI—and it looks incredible.

The original application’s sleek and user-friendly interface was a serious game changer upon release in 2013. With the integration of AI, Notion is set to revolutionize the way professionals work.

Divisive reactions to AI from the education community

The next generation has a lot to look forward to with the AI revolution. And they won’t have to wait until graduation to tap into it.

AI is set to transform the education sector. But - as with any innovation - trepidation accompanies the excitement. We’re seeing the full spectrum of emotions being played out in the response of educational institutions to AI advancements.

Washington University is recommending that all staff begin utilizing AI across assignments, courses, and learning objectives.

Supporting students to use AI wisely will give them a head start as they enter a rapidly-evolving world. They’ll graduate prepared to scale with AI in their career.

Washington University is among the first major educational institutes to endorse AI. However, there’s plenty of noise on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Public schools across New York City have banned ChatGPT across their internet systems.

A spokesperson from New York City’s Department of Education said:

The Atlantic predicts that AI will be the death of the college essay.

But if this peer group can learn and evolve with AI, they will be one of the most technically-advanced generations yet.

And they are already proving themselves. 22-year-old Princeton University senior Edward Tian has built an app that can differentiate between human-written and AI-generated essays, with a less than 2% false positive rate. And he did it as everyone else was seeing in the New Year.

Making the impossible, possible

It would take 1,000 human lifetimes to read the amount of information ChatGPT has been trained on, according to the Director of foundational AI research at London’s prestigious Alan Turing Institute.

Professor Michael Wooldridge told The Guardian: “These are the first systems that I can genuinely get excited about…hidden away in all of that text is an awful lot of knowledge about the world.”

He did also balance his enthusiasm with the current drawbacks: “One of the biggest problems with ChatGPT is that it comes back, very confidently, with falsities…You need to check what it says.”

Professor Wooldridge concluded, “It is very much a work in progress, but a transformative one nonetheless.”

Take a leaf out of the Professor’s book and remember: AI-generated content doesn’t automatically equal good content. It will need careful editing, fact-checking and proofing. But it’s incredibly exciting.

Funding:

$30M: ImagenAI has brought automation to photo editing and features an intuitive AI-powered personal profile. The tool analyzes previous edits to determine each image’s white balance, exposure, color correction, and more.

$900M: BigBear.ai has secured a $900 million contract with the U.S. Air Force. The app uses AI-powered analytics to enhance cyber security.

BIONIC TOOLKIT

Ready to get hands-on? Check out this week’s box of tricks to level up your marketing game.

🤖 ChatGPT prompt cheat sheet: Last week we featured outbound campaign tool Instantly.ai. The company’s co-founder, Nils Schneider, has now released a prompt cheat sheet.

🤖 Anyword uses analytics to optimize copy before you publish. They claim marketers using their platform see an average increase of 30% in conversion rates.

With a tilt towards social outreach and ads, Anyword works in multiple languages and has an impressive selection of reviews on its website.

🤖 Galileo describes itself as a “copilot for interface design”. In other words, it’s UI, AI style.

It uses simple text descriptions to create UI designs. The end result is then editable in Figma. It also taps into large language models for copy to populate your design.

🤖 Did you know that those who earn over $100k spend over 87% of their working week typing? (Source)

Compose.ai is an integrated Chrome extension that promises to slice that time by up to 40% via autocomplete and text suggestion.

The platform cleverly picks up your tone and voice while unobtrusively sitting on your Chrome browser.

Not only is it cross-compatible (you can use Compose across Slack, Notion, Coda, Word and more), but it can identify the context in which you’re writing and tailor its suggestions accordingly.

🤖 Sudowrite is impressive, even by AI standards. Not only can it produce copy in response to prompts, but it can also perform more advanced - and incredibly helpful - creative tasks:

• Rewrite: Your writing needs to be a bit more ‘Show not tell’? Sudowrite has a dropdown menu to do literally that. Along with several other rewrite commands.

• Feedback: The program analyses your writing and gives you three areas to work on.

• Thesaurus: This is embedded in the program and accessible in two clicks while you’re writing.

• Expand: If your pacing feels too fast, it can build on what you’ve written to slow it down.

• Canvas: Explore your story plot points and alternatives.

• Brainstorm: Never-ending ideas with the brainstorming buddy who never sleeps.

• Visualize: Bring your characters to life with art to help envision how they shape up.

And if you were looking to add to your swipe file, the website is worth a look:

THE LAST BYTE

The sheer amount of knowledge used by AI to inform its output has been brought home to us by Professor Michael Wooldridge. 1,000 human lifetimes can feel unfathomable.

The data is diverse, but this means it also includes some of the finest examples of marketing in history.

This 1955 travel ad is one of Oglivy’s favorite copywriting samples.

Content exactly like this is part of GPT-3’s database. But that doesn’t mean you’ll get the same words if you prompt it to generate a headline for a London tourism ad.

Creativity needs a little human touch to really take flight.

AI is not about replacing us. It's about augmenting our skills to make us faster, more creative and highly effective.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Don’t let the nay-sayers discourage you. Life for marketers is about to get a whole lot better.

See you next week,
Sam Woods
Editor