Artificial intelligence is a hot topic, and a recent study shows over 61% of marketers have used AI in their marketing activities. By now, you’ve probably heard all the ways AI can assist you in crafting and executing your marketing strategy, but are there any drawbacks?
1. Machines can’t replace human connection
While AI can personalize marketing campaigns using up-to-date data, this doesn’t remove the importance of human connections.
In fact, 89% of consumers appreciate customer service chatbots for their quick responses.
- Chatbots cannot display emotion and are unlikely to respond to a customer’s inquiry with empathy like a human agent.
- Chatbots also have limited responses and may not have the data necessary to answer every customer’s question.
If customers feel like their concerns aren’t taken seriously or they aren’t getting the answer they need, they could become frustrated, and their relationship with your brand can sour.
Quality customer service is integral to retaining customers, so you shouldn’t over-rely on AI when communicating with or connecting with your consumers.
4. AI lacks human creativity
AI can assist in customer segmentation, recommendations, and other marketing processes, but human creativity is still necessary for developing innovative content strategies that connect with audiences.
While AI-generated content may be useful, it lacks the personal touch and empathy that only a human marketer can provide. Companies should use AI as a tool to streamline marketing processes, not as a replacement for human input.
2. AI predictions and analyses can sometimes be wrong
Reliable sentiment analysis (i.e. figuring out if a sentence is happy, sad, or sarcastic) is really hard for artificial intelligence, along with reliable sentence parsing.
Visually recognizing a teacup reliably is challenging for current machine vision algorithms.
In other words, AI doesn’t possess the human intuition to understand and carry out specific tasks — such as analyzing feelings and intentions. An AI can get something wrong without the guidance of human experience and perception.
3. They require huge sets of data and human intervention
Speaking of data, an AI is only as capable as the data it’s given, and it needs massive data sets. So, you may need to hire someone who understands AI well enough to train and upload these large data sets.
Or, your current team will need to train and expand their skills to work with AI.
If the process seems too tedious and costly for your brand, consider if and how you want to integrate AI into your strategy.
