Microsoft Bing Image Creator and Christopher Dodds, 2023
This article was originally published in Marketing Mag.
The value of expertise is under threat from generative AI and instant access to information. Skilled professionals face a dilemma of using or boycotting the GPT technology, a decision which Icon co-founder Christopher Dodds explores.
Should you share your expert knowledge with an AI, or wait for someone else to do it for you? What happens when your skills, knowledge and expertise become a subscription-based commodity? How do we manage AI hesitancy and fear among teams? And the use of tools without authorisation or governance?
These questions agitate me more than I’d like to admit, and I’ve been pondering them since OpenAI burst onto the market by adding a simple chat interface to most of the world’s knowledge.
With OpenAI’s latest innovation in customisable GPTs, the landscape of knowledge-based expertise is undergoing a seismic shift. The community-driven approach to creating a GPT agent is reminiscent of Apple and Google’s app store tactics, tapping into the collective genius of millions to forge a novel digital marketplace.
And building a GPT has become as easy as ranting about the ROI of programmatic marketing, crisis comms or breeding Birman cats. OpenAI has devised an interface where your natural language is the only tool needed to build a virtualised version of your knowledge – supplemented by millions of expert reference points.
Icon recently trialled it by building the 'AuStyle Editor' – a GPT trained in the Australian Style Manual, along with web writing best practices, SEO and accessible copywriting. Although it’s still a work in progress, the tool significantly streamlines copywriting, summarisation and editing tasks for Australian Government content creators.
So, what’s the impact on the industry and scribes at large?
