Native Drop: OpenAI's Sora is pioneering a new era in Marketing
We release regular LinkedIn and Twitter content that breaks down AI and Web3 concepts and brand case studies. Here are some of the highlights from the last fortnight.
Welcome to the new subscribers who have joined us since the last newsletter! We release regular LinkedIn and Twitter posts that break down AI/Web3 concepts and brand case studies that are likely to drive mainstream adoption. Here are some of the recent highlights that you may have missed:
My feed has been filled with posts about OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool, Sora. What no one is talking about and what I'm most fascinated with is what this means for brands and the future of customer personalisation.
What is Sora?
Sora can generate videos up to a minute long, prompted with text, pre-existing images and video. OpenAI has announced this feature to collect feedback and give the public a sense of what AI capabilities are on the horizon. It has held off on making Sora publicly available while it performs “red team” exercises where experts try to break the AI model’s safeguards in order to assess its potential for misuse.
Here are some of my reflections:
1. Brand storytelling is about to become a whole lot more personalised and immersive:
Sora is going to much more easily enable brands to hyper-personalise marketing campaigns and advertising to each individual, adapting to unique preferences, demographics and locations.
If we think about Sora in the context of the Apple Vision Pro (AVP), released two weeks ago, together they’ll eventually allow users to create immersive worlds and interact with them instantly.
As spatial computers (like the AVP) get more discreet (e.g. contact lenses), brands will eventually be able to seamlessly integrate users' surroundings into generated video content and ad copy, delivered in real time, making customers the protagonists of the brand story.
This merging of digital and physical worlds is going to significantly impact content-driven industries, making it easier for smaller teams pull off more immersive and bigger creative projects.
2. Sora will not replace human ingenuity. It will magnify it:
The internet is already full of content and with Sora, there is going to be even more junk proliferating the internet and a real risk of content fatigue.
While Sora has initial flaws, like accuracy, as the tool matures over the next few months, it will produce much more realistic content.
In the short term, skills like effective prompting and human-centered design will be a key differentiators for creatives, ensuring that the content they produce connects with customers amongst the noise.
As marketers, we need to experiment and figure out how these tools are leveraged to bring new connection and creativity to customers - asking questions like what kind of content will get customers coming back and what they want out of these interactions.
3. Brands will have to navigate significant challenges around hallucinations, bias and copyright:
The pace of AI is outpacing regulation. The World Economic Forum has listed AI-generated misinformation as the most significant risk facing the world in 2024.
Sora when combined with technologies like AI-powered voice cloning could spread harmful narratives and pose major risks to brand reputation. The realism of Sora's video content raises concerns about copyright infringement, as it may inadvertently reproduce material without proper attribution.
Organisations need to start establishing strict governance procedures to mitigate risks around use. According to Forbes, while 93% of organisations recognise the risks associated with using generative AI, only 9% are currently prepared to manage these challenges.
How do you think this technology is going to impact your work?
Find a link to the post.
If you don’t know what spatial computing is yet, it’s time to learn about it. Apple's Vision Pro is now accessible to customers, and gives us a glimpse into the future of computing.
Spatial computing refers to the ability to overlay digital content onto the physical world, in a way that’s natural. Think of it as stepping into the internet, instead of just looking at it.
Just like the smartphone freed computing from the desktop computer, the Apple Vision Pro uses spatial computing, to transition us away from screens. It aims to make our interactions with technology less invasive and more natural.
The Vision Pro has already sold 200,000 units in its first 10 days. It resembles ski goggles with an external battery pack. Users can control it using eye and hand tracking—pinching to select and flicking to scroll through apps. This seems like a privacy nightmare and Apple says it’s taken steps to restrict some of the data collected by the Vision Pro, including what people’s eyes are looking at.
The headset offers an immersive video experience, making users feel like they're actually present in the video's environment. It runs applications such as Camera, Microsoft 365, Disney+, and Zoom, allowing you to feel like you’re in the same room as your colleagues.
Immersive video is a key feature of the headset, which lets users feel like they’re physically present in the space where the video is taking place. The headset also runs applications like Camera, Microsoft 365, Disney+ and Zoom - so you can feel like you’re in the same room as your colleagues.
Do I think we’re all going to be walking around wearing our headsets anytime soon?
No, the bulkiness of the product makes it hard for mainstream adoption. But it does seem like Apple is using the Vision Pro to learn more about how customers interact with a headset that turns the physical world into a giant screen.
This tech also gives us a great glimpse into the future of computing and will eventually change how we interact with the world.
Find a link to the post.
Is your organisation ready for AI? Employees are desperate for AI upskilling, but employers are falling behind.
A new report by Oliver Wyman found that while 79% of employees want training in gen AI, only 64% of employees think they’re receiving the training they need and 57% found training to be inadequate.
The two main reasons for this:
While people are using AI chatbots to help with their work on an individual basis, 70% of organisations are still in the early stages when it comes to developing AI. People are moving ahead on the productivity gains, while organisations are still in proof-of-concept and pilots.
Most organisations don’t have a coherent plan yet for how employees should be using AI at work. While employees ranked AI their top re-skilling priority, employers ranked AI training as the fourth most important, behind softer skills like analytical and creative thinking, leadership, and social influence.
If you’re looking to upskill yourself or your teams in AI, here are 5 free and reliable resources to get started with:
AI Academy by IBM: This course is led by IBM thought leaders and designed to help business leaders gain the knowledge needed to prioritise the AI investments that can drive growth.
AI for Business by University of Pennsylvania: UPenn offers a series of courses about AI and it’s applications across different industries, like marketing, finance and people management.
Google AI for Everyone: Google offers a beginner course for participants to learn about generative AI and machine learning, and how they’re being used in the real world.
Introduction to AI with Python by Harvard University: This seven-week course covers AI algorithms, game-playing engines, handwriting recognition, and machine translation.
OpenAI Resources: Tutorials and resources to a) help developers leverage the OpenAI API to build real generative AI apps step by step, b) support regular users with more effective prompts.
What would you add to this list?
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