What is ChatGPT and How Will It Affect Digital Marketing?

It has become somewhat of a clichè for ChatGPT to be used to write an opening paragraph about ChatGPT, but the truth is, the impact of this technology on digital marketing is undeniable. As a language model, ChatGPT has the ability to generate human-like text, making it a valuable tool for content creation, customer service, and more. In this article, we’ll explore how ChatGPT is being used in the world of digital marketing and the potential it holds for the future.

Now, if I told you that the above paragraph wasn’t written by a human, you may not believe me. But to anyone that has been following or using Open AI’s ChatGPT, this would come as no surprise, and you may even call it a clichè.

What Even is ChatGPT?

In the simplest of terms, ChatGPT (chat generative pre-trained transformer) is a natural language processing tool that is driven by generative AI technology, simple right?

ChatGPT uses deep learning to sift through billions of words to create human-like answers to users’ prompts. For example, below, is the prompt that was entered to generate the first paragraph of this article.

ChatGPT is run by an American AI research and development company called OpenAI, which recently received a $10 billion investment from Microsoft. Until they recover their investment, Microsoft will hold a majority stake (75%) in the company, after which their control will reduce to 49%.

What is ChatGPT Capable of?

Creative Writing

ChatGPT can generate text with any conditions or prompt that you can imagine. Do you want a summary of The Twilight Saga in a 300-word poem in the style of Dr. Suess? ChatGPT can generate a poem in less than 15 seconds, but don’t plan on winning any Pulitzer prizes with ChatGPT’s writing.

Answering Questions

People have also been testing the limits of ChatGPTs’ ability to “help” students complete homework and pass exams. Recently, ChatGPT has received an MBA, earned a medical license, and passed the Bar.

Computer Programming

ChatGPT is also fluent in some coding languages like JavaScript, React, and Python. It is capable of writing basic code for simple queries, but doesn’t have the ability to create complex scripts that would require software engineers. That being said, this technology is still relatively new, and the more data that it has to train, the better and more sophisticated it will become.

What Effect Will ChatGPT Have on Digital Marketing?

With all that ChatGPT is capable of, many industries are wondering how this new technology can integrate into their current workflows and how it will affect industries as a whole. At PHOS, we’re keeping a close eye on ChatGPT and what it could mean not only when it comes to marketing, but also its large-scale ethical impacts.

The Micro Effects of ChatGPT

ChatGPT for Content Writing

You may be thinking, “Awesome! With ChatGPT, I don’t have to worry about writing thank you notes, emails, or even working with a copywriter!” And while some of that may be true, we wouldn’t be too quick to pull the plug on human-generated content, especially when it comes to your website.

According to Google’s helpful content update, your web content should be written for humans first, and spamming your website with content generated by ChatGPT, doesn’t seem to fit that definition. Not to mention, Google has openly declared that AI-generated content is against their webmaster guidelines.

Even with ChatGPT being extremely powerful – and seeming to generate what a human could have otherwise written – an AI detector on the internet is easily able to identify AI-generated content.

Not to mention, when ChatGPT does get something wrong, it has a tendency to be confidently wrong. If you are accidentally spreading misinformation while using ChatGPT, you and your organization could be held legally responsible for the content that you publish from ChatGPT. Even if the AI gets it right 95% of the time, is that a risk you are willing to take?

ChatGPT for Idea Generation

One use case for ChatGPT is helping you come up with ideas when you just don’t have any creativity juice left in you. At PHOS, I have become the arbiter of a weekly Friday Poll in our Slack channel, and coming up with a new poll isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

In my weakest moments, I have looked to ChatGPT for guidance on these polls, unfortunately, to no avail. I have had much more luck with a classic Google search or browsing r/polls.

Shortening Text for Character Limits

The meta description and SEO title on your webpage, Twitter posts, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more platforms have character limits, using ChatGPT to shorten your text can save you a lot of time and headaches.

Use ChatGPT for Research

ChatGPT in its current form should never be used as a primary source of information. If you gather facts, statistics, or historical information from ChatGPT, you should make sure to verify it with trusted sources. ChatGPT’s current database only has information up to 2021, much of which is out-of-date information.
Sometimes the most important element of research is knowing what questions to ask, and ChatGPT works great for this. Something like, “What questions should I be asking when doing research on the history of Gainesville, FL?”

The Macro Effects of ChatGPT

As much as we are all excited to automate and increase the efficiency of our workflows, the emergence of this new technology has massive implications for the digital marketing industry as a whole, and could significantly change what marketers are focusing on.

Bing and Google’s Integration of AI Within their Search Engines

Bing has traditionally been an afterthought when it comes to SEO, in its current form, it only represents about 8% of the total search market, compared to Google’s ~85%.

But, since Microsoft announced “New Bing” that will be powered and augmented by a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, Google has been on “Code Red.” Seeing this as a real threat to their current market domination, and entering a new era of “AI search wars”, Google announced their own version of ChatGPT – Bard.

Unfortunately, Google’s announcement of Bard didn’t go as smoothly as they would have liked. A single mistake in one of the answers that Bard generated caused Google to lose $100 billion in market value. But this hiccup isn’t going to stop them from going all-in on competing with Microsoft’s push for AI-augmented search.

What Will SEO Look Like with the New Bing?

Microsoft has given some insight into how their new Bing will interact with their current ranking system and determine what answers to give to users’ queries.

“We developed a proprietary technology we call Prometheus, which is a first-of-its-kind AI model that combines the fresh and comprehensive Bing index, ranking, and answers results with the creative reasoning capabilities of OpenAI’s most-advanced GPT models.” – Jordi Ribas Corporate Vice President, Search & AI

Now, marketers will need to unpack and predict just what it means to create content that ranks for SERPs and AI inquiries. As detailed above, AI will be leveraged not only as a chatbot, but also to generate search engine results. We suspect it will only be a matter of time before Google releases more information regarding Bard’s effect on SEO.

What’s Next For ChatGPT?

What effect this technology will have on workflows, organic traffic, and search as a whole is up in the air. Our team at PHOS Creative is keeping a close eye on this technology, and making sure that we use this ChatGPT in an ethical and reasonable capacity.

We are also keeping a pulse on how this technology will affect how we optimize our clients’ websites for search engines, to ensure that we are ahead of the curve, and lead the way in a new era of search.