The explosion of AI usage has given not only content creators something to think about. It will also be more and more a part of the legal department’s responsibility. David Parker, someone who has been leading from the frontline of marketing technology for more than 25 years at McCann, Kimberly-Clark, and PMI gave us his views on how generative AI will affect content marketing in the next few years.

More than anything there needs to be more control of content. There’s a proliferation of production by humans and AI. It’s possible to instantly create 3,000 variations of the same thing, but how do you control that content and make sure what is being produced is effective and where it’s being published?


It’s easy to get into AI as a service-based offering. Organizations stepping into the world of AI can produce an awful lot of rubbish content very quickly, but more interestingly we are seeing the concerns of privacy, copyright, and intellectual property becoming strong counterbalances.

In the future, we will probably see a lot of increasing restrictions on what generative AI is able to give us. The protection of copyright law is going to be something in the next 2-3 years that will start to impact this kind of irrational free thinking. The issue with AI technology is it must run on structured data. 


There are some advantages. If you use the tool for doing overlays or removals, this is great. But if you’re saying, can you make this look exactly like something else, there’s limited use in the long term.


What you’ll see is this going up to the Federal level in the US and your studio will change in the way it uses information and privacy, as we did around individuals previously.


And rightly so. It’s a great advancement for content. Data should all be incorporated into the creative process with the copywriter and the art worker. Agencies already have a copywriter and artwork, they need the data scientist as part of that team.


This should be a bit of a wake-up call for agencies saying your front end, your creative team, is your value proposition, which is archaic. The way they’re working is still not a modern way.

There is still a long way to go with GenAI though. It’s still OK at the moment, but still experimental It has to be looked at – however, the biggest challenge to generative AI is definitely around copyright.

David Parker is a seasoned marketing and digital leader with roots in digital business, omnichannel marketing, and technology. David’s 25+ year international career and skills have been developed at the transformational point of leveraging consumer data + content. David has been Vice-President of Digital at PMI, the Global Content Marketing Strategy & Technology at Kimberly-Clark, and the SVP Global Director of Digital at McCann.

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