• by Todd Wasserman , Staff Writer, March 6, 2023

By now you’re probably familiar with ChatGPT, and perhaps have wondered what its existence means for the marketing industry. Here are  two alternate opinions:

It’s a tool that marketers should embrace.

ChatGPT can create content much quicker than humans can, making the marketer’s job less of a creator and more of an evaluator. It  can also be used for chatbots that engage with a site visitor, and for email marketing. Instead of having a human write personalized email correspondence, a generative AI system can do all the email communication, including subject line optimization, segmentation and A/B testing.

The marketer’s role then shifts to that of editor, to ensure that mistakes don’t get through. That allows marketers to spend more time evaluating AI-generated content to ensure that it’s saying what you need to say, in email, social media or via a chatbot.

It is a job killer.

ChatGPT is already replacing workers. Resume Builder, a site for creating resumes, released a poll of 1,000 U.S. business leaders on Feb. 27 and found that 48% of them have already replaced workers with ChatGPT.

When asked if ChatGPT will lead to workers being laid off by the end of 2023, 33% of respondents said “definitely,” and 26% said “probably.” Among the jobs cited by business leaders as most vulnerable to being taken over by ChatGPT:

• Interviewing prospective employees. Some 77% of respondents say they use it to write job descriptions, while 66% say they use it to draft interview requisitions, and 65% use it to respond to applicants.
• Writing code -- 66% of respondents say they use ChatGPT for writing code.
• Writing copy -- 58% of respondents use ChatGPT for writing copy/content creation.

That’s just one survey, but marketers should take note and evaluate whether their talent is vulnerable to being taken over by a machine.