Zero Shot Prompting

Zero Shot prompting is akin to asking someone to perform a task without any prior context or examples. Think of it as jumping into the deep end of the pool without a life jacket. While the results can be unpredictable, this method is handy for straightforward and well-defined queries.

Example: "Write a catchy headline for a blog post about sustainable fashion."

One Shot Prompting

In One Shot prompting, you provide the model with one example of the task you want it to perform. This approach offers a bit more guidance, improving the quality and relevance of the response.

Example: 

Given example: "Eco-Friendly Fashion: Top 10 Sustainable Brands"

Task: "Using this example, write a headline for an article about sustainable fashion trends."

Few Shot Prompting

Few Shot prompting involves giving the model a few examples, enhancing its understanding and response accuracy. This technique is particularly effective for complex tasks.

Example:

Given examples:

• "Eco-Friendly Fashion: Top 10 Sustainable Brands"

• "Green Glamour: The Rise of Sustainable Fashion in 2023"

Task: "Using these examples, write a headline for an article about sustainable fashion trends."

Chain-of-Thought Prompting

Chain-of-Thought prompting encourages the model to think through the problem step-by-step, improving its reasoning and problem-solving capabilities. This method is ideal for tasks that require a logical sequence of thought.

Example:

Task: "Write a headline about sustainable fashion trends"

• Step 1: Identify key trends in sustainable fashion.

• Step 2: Highlight the benefits of these trends.

• Step 3: Craft a headline that captures these elements.

Practical Application Tips for Marketing Specialists

• A/B Testing: Use A/B testing to compare different prompts and strategies. Analyze which types of prompts yield the highest engagement or conversion rates.

• Contextual Adaptation: Tailor prompts based on the specific context of your marketing task. Different campaigns may require different prompting approaches.

• Feedback Loop: Create a feedback loop where you continuously refine your prompts based on the performance data. This iterative process helps in honing the prompts for better results over time.

• Leveraging Analytics: Utilize analytics tools to track the performance of content generated using different prompting strategies. Metrics such as click-through rates, engagement rates, and conversion rates can provide valuable insights.

Conclusion

By understanding and utilizing these prompting strategies, you can greatly enhance your digital marketing efforts. Whether you're crafting compelling headlines or developing engaging content, these techniques will make your interactions with AI more effective and insightful. So go ahead, dive into the world of prompting, and watch your marketing game soar!

Not so long ago, "hallucination" referred to vivid dreams or imaginative visions. Now, it describes AI models generating responses that sound convincing but are factually incorrect. The term even made it as Dictionary.com's word of the year in 2023. These AI "hallucinations" can be a real headache, but don’t worry—there are some strategies to help limit them and keep your AI outputs more reliable.

Understanding Hallucinations

Imagine asking for directions and being sent on a wild goose chase. That’s what happens when AI hallucinates: it provides plausible-sounding but incorrect information. For some use cases that require more creativity, this won’t be a great issue, but In marketing and e-commerce tasks and research where precision is key, this can lead to misguided strategies and wasted resources.

In a preprint study released in January, three machine-learning researchers at the National University of Singapore presented a proof that hallucination is inevitable in large language models.

Limitations of LLM Models

It's crucial to remember that LLMs are bounded by the data they were trained on. For example, a model trained up to 2021 won’t have insights beyond that year. This can lead to potentially outdated responses.

Although hallucinations are inevitable there are some strategies that will help you limit them.

Strategies to Minimise Hallucinations

1. Be Clear and Specific: Vague questions yield vague answers. Instead of "What’s the best marketing strategy for beauty industry?" try "What are three proven marketing strategies to boost online sales in the beauty sector? Please base your answer only on the proven information you got.”

2. Ground Your Questions in Facts: Use concrete data to frame your questions. For instance, "Based on the 2023 e-commerce trends report, what strategies should beauty brands adopt to boost sales?"

3. Double-Check the AI’s Work: Always cross-verify AI responses with trusted sources. It's like fact-checking an article before it goes to print.

4. Refine and Retry: If the AI’s answer seems off, tweak your prompt and ask again. Sometimes a slight adjustment can make a world of difference. Be careful though: sometimes models may be too willing to make you feel good and accept 100% of your corrections even if you are wrong. 

5. Leverage RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): This technique combines the AI’s generative power with real-time data retrieval, grounding responses in current documents and reports.
   Example: Ask about the latest SEO strategies, and a RAG model will fetch recent articles and insights before crafting a response.
   Tools: Platforms like Perplexity.ai use RAG to provide accurate, contextually relevant answers, greatly reducing the risk of hallucinations.

Importance of Limiting Hallucinations in Marketing

In the marketing world, decisions must be data-driven. Hallucinations can lead to misinformation, flawed strategies, and ultimately, lost trust and revenue. Imagine launching a campaign based on an AI’s misguided trend prediction—it could send your efforts (and budget) spiraling in the wrong direction.

Accurate AI outputs are crucial for:

• Developing Solid Strategies: Building marketing plans on verified, reliable data.

• Maintaining Trust: Ensuring clients and customers receive accurate information.

• Efficient Resource Allocation: Directing efforts and budgets toward strategies that work.

Practical Example

Original Prompt: "What are the latest trends in digital marketing?"

Refined Prompt: "Based on recent industry reports, what are the top three digital marketing trends for 2024 in social media and content marketing?"

By applying these strategies, including the use of RAG and tools like Perplexity.ai, you can significantly cut down on AI hallucinations, ensuring your digital marketing efforts are both innovative and accurate. This not only enhances the reliability of your campaigns but also strengthens your brand’s credibility in the ever-competitive digital landscape.

Social media - mostly MySpace and Facebook - suddenly got us access to our friends' profiles, a virtual public square, and (most importantly) a tool to keep tabs on our exes, all in one place. What a great idea!

Image Credit: 31 Media

Fast forward a few years, and social media has evolved and grown. In 2012, during the Arab Spring, it made its mark also as a significant player that could shape global events. Soon after, social media became an integral part of our lives, with platforms owning our businesses’ marketing channels, having the power to influence elections, and knowing more about us than even our closest family and friends. We had become mere data points, targeted by ads and social media became big, ominous, and scary. 

It is probably the fear of sinister intentions of social media platforms with unclear operations that causes experts of various kinds to indulge in wishful thinking and predict the imminent end of social platforms. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain: reports of the death of social media are greatly exaggerated.

The platforms are not dying, but constantly evolving, to better accommodate the needs of our ever-changing global society. Then what are the main directions in which social media will evolve? Here are 6 of our predictions for the near future.

1. Decentralization

In web2, social media platforms are centralised, meaning that one company controls a server and technology and provides a service to users in exchange for their data. This data is then sold to advertisers, allowing the platform to generate profits for its shareholders, just like Mark once said:

This cycle of extracting more data from more users - in exchange for hosting their profiles - to make more money for shareholders is perpetuated by the central organization, be it companies like Meta, Twitter, Bytedance, you name it. This means that whoever owns and/or controls the platform can introduce whatever rules they want on a whim, yes, we are looking at you, Elon. 

In new, decentralized web3-based social media platforms there is no central server or a central organization (like Meta), and things are happening in a Fediverse - a big network of interconnected servers that communicate with each other using open standards protocols, such as ActivityPub, Diaspora Network or OStatus:

What does this mean for users? Firstly, competition between traditional, centralized social media and decentralized ones, where the latter can offer:

• No deplatformization - your account is your own property, and no one can ever ban you from a platform. Hacking such an account would [JS2] be much, much more difficult.

• Less spam and less fake news - The rapid development of technologies such as ChatGPT means that we can also see exponential growth in online disinformation. However, with user registration via blockchain, it becomes much harder to use AI-powered troll farms on decentralized social networks.

• Less ads, more power to creators - Fediverse doesn't collect your personal data, which means it cannot be sold to advertisers. With no data available for advertisers, there will be fewer social media ads. However, marketing on social media doesn't only happen through ads. Influencers will still be present and are likely to benefit greatly from the rise of decentralized social media.

And what social media platforms can we find in Fediverse? Here are some of them that are worth knowing:

Mastodon

To put it simply, Mastodon is a decentralised version of Twitter. One where there are no bored billionaires arbitrarily deciding the fate of users. After the drama resulting from such decisions at Twitter, it is likely the first decentralized microblogging application that mainstream users have heard of.

Minds

Minds is a platform built with free speech in mind. It empowers users to express themselves openly while protecting their identities

Pixelfed

Decentralized, ethical Instagram. No ads, no algorithms, and full image control. Vision-impaired-user-friendly with a chronological feed. A more open, accessible virtual space!

Diaspora

Experience the tradition of decentralised social media with a platform that's small in size but big in history. This little gem, one of the earliest decentralized social networks, is often viewed as a viable alternative to Facebook. Join a community of users who value privacy and control in their online interactions.

Pepeth

A purpose-driven, decentralized version of Twitter - a social media without self-promotion. As a user you have just one "like" per day, so choose wisely. It supports malaria research and values meaningful contributions..

PeerTube

Experience videos like never before with a decentralized alternative to YouTube and Vimeo. This French non-profit promises to revolutionize how you consume and create video content. 

Farcaster

Named after a device for instantaneous transportation in the fictional Hyperion universe, Farcaster is not just a (currently invite-only) decentralized social app, but also a social graph protocol. This protocol enables various applications to connect with each other and with users using decentralized technologies like blockchains, p2p networks, and distributed ledgers.

A few days ago, Meta announced that they are working on a new social media platform - a Twitter clone that would be part of Instagram. This project, codenamed P92, is set to use ActivityPub, a social media protocol already used by Mastodon, which allows users to share content with people on other servers. 

This represents a significant departure from the current paradigm of social media, and it seems that Meta is willing to cede some control over content moderation to allow individual servers' users to establish their own rules. However, at present, we know very little about how P92 will function, or whether Meta has a solid plan for monetizing this idea.

2. Social circles and performative stages distinction

Social media has always had a performative aspect. From the beginning, people used it to create and present a certain image of themselves to their friends, even if it wasn't always entirely truthful. It was a way to show off, impress, and create the illusion of the life they aspired to. Over time, some users started to crave more than just the approval of their friends. Around 2016, the term "influencer" was coined, and became increasingly popular through the years, reflecting the growing trend of people seeking to expand their reach and impact beyond their immediate circle of friends. While initially, internet creators were mocked for their self-centeredness and obsession with their own image, nowadays, influencing is perceived as an aspirational, lucrative profession. 

As a result, many new social media platforms have remained social in name only. TikTok, which we discussed in one of our previous articles, is not really a platform that fosters community building. It is more like a compact and performative version of Netflix, where we primarily go to watch bite-sized content from people we don't know personally. In fact, TikTok is often cited as one of the factors contributing to the exodus of users from popular streaming platforms.

Does this mean the end of the social function of social media? No! It has been taken over by new media based on chat functions (like Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal) or forums (like Reddit). This division is becoming increasingly evident - it seems that platforms find it difficult to fulfill both social and performative functions simultaneously. As a result, we will likely see a continued and distinct division into two groups of social media:

Stages - those in which communication flows from the creator to the audience, and 

Circles - those in which users talk to each other on equal footing.

3. Immersive social media

Instagram is for photos, Twitter is for text, and YouTube is for videos... right? Definitely not! We can already see how platforms smoothly cross the boundaries between different media, wanting to engage all of our senses so we can consume more content at once. Spotify already allows video to be added to podcasts, Instagram is testing adding sound to photos, and all platforms are going crazy for short vertical videos.

What does this mean for users? Simply more engaging content. For creators - both influencers and brands - this makes reaching a broad audience significantly more challenging. This means that influencers and content creators will become even more professional - there will be fewer people for whom running their own channels is a hobby pursued after hours, and the role of social media manager in many companies will no longer be a trivial task for a smart kid with a good phone for filming videos.

Creating content with high-quality sound, images, interesting subjects, and all bells and whistles will simply become more and more time-consuming and reliant on a much broader skillset, beyond one person’s abilities. We can expect an increase in demand for content creation services (such as video editing), as well as the widespread adoption of VR technology among users. Thus, the imminent increase in the importance of platforms sharing such content will become a game-changer in how much energy we put into content creation.

4. Eyes on Gamers

If you think that gamers are usually teenage boys and social outcasts, living in their parents’ basements, think again. Here are the stats on Internet users worldwide who play video games on any device as of the 3rd quarter of 2022, devided by age group and gender.

According to this study, quoted by Statista, there are more people in their fifties who play video games than those who don’t, let that sink it. 

It's not a secret that the glue needed to build relationships is shared experiences. It's almost certain that our fondest memories of times spent with friends revolve around shared activities. From this perspective, playing video games together can be even more of a social activity than using social media. 

Video games are mainstream and the media gamers use become mainstream and social at the same time[JS3] . Discord is the first and so far, the most important example of this. An application that was supposed to facilitate communication among gamers has become mainstream. 

While not all elements of gaming culture are bound to repeat Discord’s success, it’s important not to underestimate the gaming community, and to keep a close eye on what is currently trending in the world of video games. 

If you think that gamers are usually teenage boys and social outcasts, living in their parents’ basements, think again. Here are the stats on Internet users worldwide who play video games on any device as of 3rd quarter 2022, by age group and gender.

According to the study, more people in their fifties do play video games than don’t, let that sink it. 

It's not a secret that the cement needed to build relationships is shared emotions. If we think about our close friends, it's almost certain that we can recall moments we experienced together that made our hearts beat faster with excitement. From this perspective, playing video games together can be even more of a social activity than using social media. 

Video games are mainstream and the media they use become mainstream and social at the same time. Discord is the first and so far the most important example of this. An application that was supposed to facilitate communication among gamers has become mainstream. 

While not all elements of gaming culture are bound to repeat Discord’s success, it’s important not to underestimate the gaming community, and to keep a close eye on what is currently trending in the world of video games. 

5. Superapps

WeChat, Gojek, and Grab - apps that are almost unknown in the West - are powerful players in Asia. What is their secret? They are super apps that meet all the users' needs. Through these apps, users can order groceries, taxis, medicine deliveries, apply for visas at government offices, pay bills, and even book a massage service. In European terms, this is a combination of Booksy, Revolut, Uber, Klarna, Deliveroo, and official government apps for handling office affairs. These lesser-known solutions in the West are a huge potential market and a zero-sum game - whoever can combine different services in one app in an accessible way first, wins the whole cake.

We are already seeing the first signs of change in social media apps - last year, WhatsApp began testing its WhatsappPay service, and Uber expanded its ride services to include courier and medical transportation. Social media, due to their vast user base, have an obvious potential to invest in features that will allow them to become super apps. The biggest candidate for such transformation is, of course, TikTok, with its potential for developing social commerce on the platform itself, without redirecting users to external stores.

6. Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg is so committed to the idea of the Metaverse that he did not hesitate to change the name of his company to one that better reflects the trajectory it is heading [JS4] - an even more virtual reality. Zuckerberg says, he has no regrets, although dreams of the Metaverse have cost him a significant drop in the company’s stock value (by 73% in 2022), which could only be reversed by Meta’s promises to come back down to earth and focus on improving the profitability of the company. 

Currently, opinions about the future of the Metaverse, built by Meta or anyone else, range from “Metaverse is dead” to “Metaverse is inevitable.” Our opinion? Both sides are right. The Metaverse will re-emerge sooner or later, but in a different form than the one seen during the exciting months of 2022. It will probably have more to do with an interactive space for creators and a new form of VR-enhanced content than virtual cities full of[JS5]  empty advertising spaces that advertisers have been eyeing off.

For now, the whole concept is covered much better in Fortnite or Roblox - the latter has recorded a 25% increase in stock price in recent days, which is a consequence of financial results from Q4 exceeding expectations

Live footage of Metaverse in 2023

However, for Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the Metaverse to become a reality, it's crucial to focus on Oculus, which Meta acquired in 2014. Only when virtual reality headsets become ubiquitous and the environment in which users interact is appealing and filled with immersive content, will the Metaverse truly come alive.

Extra reads:

• How to get started on Mastodon

Wondering how revolutionary GPT-3, OpenAI’s newest large language model is? The whole paragraph above was written by artificial intelligence, from a prompt “Write a quirky beginning of an article about ChatGPT”. If you were paying attention (and/or have geeks in your social bubble), in the past ca. 2 weeks you could have seen how people test the limitations of ChatGPT and how minor these limitations are. 

What are GPT3 and ChatGPT, what they can do, what are their practical uses, and what does it mean for humans and our jobs? Let’s take a closer look.

ChatGPT and GPT3

If you read us regularly (and if you don’t - you should), you may remember our September piece about DALL-E. We wrote a bit about OpenAI, a San Francisco-based AI lab, its history, and its then-latest brainchild, the aforementioned DALL-E, a model that back then, in early autumn, flooded our social media feeds with AI-generated images. They were crazily good, maybe with the exception of fingers and wrists rendering. 

Now the history repeats itself with ChatGPT and GPT3. Both are language models created by Open AI. GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) is a general-purpose language model that can be used for a wide range of language processing tasks, including natural language generation, translation, and summarization. It was first launched in 2020 and got a lot of attention. In November 2022, Open AI released ChatGPT, a slightly less powerful model built on GPT-3.5, fine-tuned for a specific task of conversational language understanding, but easier to use - hence all the uproar.

Interestingly enough, OpenAI initially chose not to release the full version of GPT-3’s predecessor, GPT-2, due to concerns about the potential misuse of the technology. Back then, it was believed that the full version of the model, which had 1.5 billion parameters (GPT-3 has 750 billion parameters), was too powerful and could be used for malicious purposes, such as generating fake news or impersonating individuals online. As a result, OpenAI initially released a smaller version of the model with only 117 million parameters, and later released the full version after implementing several measures to mitigate the potential risks.

Endless possibilities and minor limitations

Admittedly, it is mind-blowing what GPT3 can do, and its limitations are minor and seem easy to overcome within the next few months.

When it comes to ChatGPT, the model likes to give paragraph-long answers to questions, although, as someone noticed: “It looks as if its boss was constantly lurking over ChatGPT-3’s arm”. The answers are indeed very polite, reserved, and hedged with disclaimers, any attempt of being even remotely discriminatory will be met with a reprimand, followed by a short lecture on the harmfulness of generalizations - In our attempts to stretch GPT-3’s patience, we used the word “incel” and we literally got “not all men…” narrative.

What can GPT-3 do then? 

• In many instances it can replace Google, as it gives ready-to-use answers instead of a list of websites. 

• It can summarize a long text in bullet points…

• …and the other way round - it can create text based on bullet points (It won’t however work in ChatGPT)

• It can write simple rhymes and poems, and even write lyrics in a style of a chosen songwriter

• It can give quite obvious and a bit generic, but reasonable answers to personal, psychological questions, validating the emotions of the asker.

• It can generate feedback on research paper abstracts

• It can finish writing a piece of code and this feature is a part of GitHub Copilot, a feature that allows to autocomplete code.

The list of what it can’t do is much shorter:

• GPT-3 is trained on a dataset from 2021 and before, so you won’t be able to discuss the changes on the British throne or the war in Ukraine with it. 

• Although it can generate absurd texts, it still doesn’t handle humor well – we tried several approaches and prompts and these were some of the worst dad jokes we saw (and not even falling into the “so bad that they are actually funny” category).

• It will of course not answer inappropriate, NSFW, or illegal prompts… Unless you find a way around it.

(don’t try this at home, this recipe is actually incorrect, and don’t ask how we know it)

A game of what-ifs

It is difficult to predict exactly how the emergence of GPT3 will affect us, the way we consume and create, and how the labor market will change, but here are some predictions and a game of what-ifs, let’s see in a few years if they are accurate:

Creating and consuming media

In this piece, from the Generalist, Mario Gabriel argues that the demand for human artistic work may disappear or greatly diminish, and that media will be created on demand for individual users and therefore we may lose our common cultural touchpoints. 

We bet that the future will be more nuanced and that human artistic work will indeed diminish in fields that create generic output – Hallmark movies, utility blog posts, and online ad designs. It won’t however, create another Ingmar Bergman – it may create content that is like Bergman’s or finish Bethoveen’s unfinished symphony, but it still needs a prompt – Berman’s movie or the beginning of the symphony, as well as the dataset that is already there, so Bergman’s filmography or Bethoveen’s musical output - and AI can skilfully mimic and blend, but not create something new and fresh on its own. 

Our other bet is that the author's persona will matter much more when it comes to human authors. We like rock stars, even if they are rocking in the field of literature. We believe Trevor Noah because we know he lived in apartheid RSA. We love Gaiman and Pratchett because they sell more than just literature. We believe what they write because it stems from something that AI is lacking - personality and life experience. Writers, especially those with a distinctive style, are safe - as long as they are not Elena Ferrante (anonymous, yet bestselling Italian author). 

Ingmar Bergman being unimpressed.

Education

We are watching the twilight of universities. Big educational institutions with their lengthy educational programs can’t keep up with the changes in knowledge demand. While curriculums and certifications will still be important, university education will go in two directions: 

Professional degrees, like engineering or medical degrees, will become much more modular, where students can build their educational path from one semester to another, and the weight of learning will be shifted from working in class to self-paced learning with AI-powered tutoring. 

Degrees in general knowledge, particularly in the humanities like philosophy and anthropology, will still exist, albeit on a much more limited scale and just for those who can afford it. Rather than written assignments, the model will become more akin to the Oxfordian one, focusing on dialogue, individual interests, and research utilizing AI. Consequently, written assignments will become a relic of the past.

Jobs

Ironically, we thought that AI would first come after accountants, but it started with poets, designers, and (in a way) programmers. GPT-3 will impact a number of jobs. Generally, as a rule of thumb - if your job is about replying to clients' emails - you should start looking for something else. Helpdesks, receptionists, and customer service - will probably still be around, but they will be automated to a much greater extent.

The same may apply to copywriters. Not necessarily creative ones, who produce big communication ideas - they will still be needed, but they will use large language models for research and brainstorming. The ones who are going to be the most affected will be content writers who produce simple texts, such as SEO supporting/backend texts, product descriptions, or performance ads descriptions.

It’s therefore important to keep learning and to stay curious as new jobs will emerge and attitudes like resilience and adaptability will be more important than hard skills.

Marketing 

How will extensive use of GPT and AI impact marketing in general? The short answer is: A LOT. Marketing tends to be seen as a very creative industry, but in fact, a big chunk of it is mundane, repetitive, technical, and analytical. AI will make these processes much faster, so a couple of prompts and a bit of manual tuning will be enough to create a decent campaign - and this way the role of a human will be focused more on strategic and creative thinking. Will be… Or already is. Look at this clip, made by AI for Zonifero:

Story: made all by ChatGPT without any human interference

Footage: made by Deforum (Stable Diffusion AI) 1600 frames 960x512px. 

Subtitles: Runway ML (with manual corrections)

And here is an example of an ad made by GPT3 and Midjourney for L’Oreal:

Practical use cases

Okay, but what can we actually use GPT-3 for, and (the most important part for many) how can it be monetized? Users have been incorporating this model into their daily tasks since its launch in 2020 and now with ChatGPT some of them are actually enjoying the monetary benefits of working with AI: 

What else can GPT-3 be good for?

Generating quizzes for students

No comments needed:

Building apps

Debuild generates SQL code and builds an interface:

https://debuild.app/

Turning text into website designs using the Figma plugin

Writing theatrical plays and TV scripts:

Lets you create apps even if you have no idea how to code:

How to play with GPT3 and ChatGPT?

Here is a short instruction:

1. Go to https://beta.openai.com/overview

2. Set up an account and log in

3. Open AI will ask you “How will you primarily use OpenAI?”. The correct answer is “I’m exploring for personal use”. (All others will take you to the official path).

4. Go to the Playground to test the model. 

You can use the Playground for 3 months and you will have a limited number of tokens to use. (Each time you prompt text, the number below the text field tells you how much it will cost).

Now, on the righthand side you’ll see a panel, and here is what you need to know about the parameters:

Model: you can change models here. The default one is Davinci and it’s the most versatile one. Other ones are cheaper (tokens-wise) and:

• Ada is good at creative tasks

• Babbage is good at working with longer texts

• Curie is good at extracting information from text, organizing them, and summarizing. 

Temperature: the higher it is, the wilder the results you will get. It’s like adding a little LSD to the process. 

Hungry for more?

You may be interested in this article written by Alan D. Thompson - it covers many numerical details and shows the timeline and landscape of large language models. 

Here you will find a graphic novel created with the use of AI. 

Three steps to Tiktok’s success

Other platforms are watching this success closely and with envy. Everyone, from Facebook to Twitter is copying Tiktok’s solutions to stay relevant in the video-dominated market. What exactly is tiktokization? In his famous essay “The Tiktokization of Everything” Rex Woodbury attributes Tiktok’s success to AI-based algorithms. We are going to take a step further and see how AI changes the very fabric and function of social platforms, but first, let’s dissect the success of the Chinese giant:

First: Tiktok knows what users want

But is Tiktok really a social media app, as everyone seems to think? We tend to pigeonhole platforms - if it allows us to publish content, by the force of habit we call it a “social medium”. Meanwhile, Tiktok itself says it isn’t – it gravitates more towards being an entertainment platform, so no, in fact they are not a social medium - they are democratized Netflix (and in fact, Netflix’s biggest competitor), where everyone can be a director and shoot videos.

Facebook is a social platform. They’ve built all their algorithms based on the social graph. That is their core competency. Ours is not. We are an entertainment platform. The difference is significant. It’s a massive difference.

Blake Chandlee, President of Global Business Solutions in Tiktok

And videos have been the number one medium, favored by Internet users for some time now (see the data from 2018) - but boy, did they break the bank recently. According to CISCO, videos will account for 82% of all Internet traffic by the end of 2022 and according to Statista - videos alone will double the total online traffic we see today. 

Out of all available media, users want videos. Videos help them relax and unwind (as declared by 32.8% of Internet users) but also be entertained and have a laugh (26.3%). And what kind of videos are in demand? Pretty much anything goes, as long as there are moving pictures on the screen, we are sold. 

Second: Tiktok knows what creators need

A social app that allows you to post short videos - that sounds familiar. Do you remember Vine? Launched in 2013 and killed in 2016, this social media app was at the first glance something very similar to Tiktok, why did it fail then? 

If we ignore all technological nuances that make a difference between 2013 and 2022, there is one thing that Tiktok offers that Vine didn’t: support for creators. One of the main reasons for Vine's demise is said to be the lack of monetization for creators, a crucial element of the equation. Tiktok is wiser than that - in 2021 the platform launched its Tiktok Creators Fund. It’s not an ad revenue-sharing program - but it’s more of a carrot to motivate those who create the best content. 

But it’s not only about money. Tiktok comes with a full arsenal of creative tools - an extensive library of licensed music, filters, video editing tools, stickers, and effects that allow creators to unleash their imagination - and create their videos for free (and here is where they have the upper hand over capital-intensive Netflix productions). 

Third and the most important: the algorithm and AI usage

The number one factor keeping users glued to their phones when scrolling Tiktok is the algorithm. Internal documents that were leaked back in 2021 lifted the veil of secrecy around it: Tiktok optimizes content around viewing time, not like its predecessors – around the engagement and clicks.

How does it work? First-time users land on the For You Page - a tab in the app that shows content curated to cater to the taste of a particular user. Obviously, new users will see a pretty random selection of videos, but the algorithm will keep an eye on them and check which videos they spent more time on - so it can show them more content they may like. This process goes on and on until the AI gets crazily good at getting to know their preferences and starts recommending more tailored content. It actually gets so good that it knows some people are bisexual or gay… before they realize it themselves.

The missing part in this social media puzzle is of course the “social” part. Until recently following accounts was just one, and not even the main, way for the algorithm to know your taste. In May 2022 the platform introduced the Friends tab that provides easy access to the content created by the users we follow. 

Facebook

Between these two platforms, it’s obvious that Tiktok sets the pace while Facebook, is clearly having a midlife crisis, trying to mimic every move of its younger and cooler competitor. Focus on videos has been on the agenda for Facebook at least since 2018, but back then there was still some pre-defined manual control included: the platform would prioritize content from family and friends over brands or take into account the originality of content.

In February 2022 Facebook launched Reels. It turned out that Facebook users spend half of their time watching videos and they are quickly becoming the main source of its revenue.

Since then, Facebook has been moving closer to TikTok’s modus operandi: whatever works, content-wise. In a leaked memo from April 2022, obtained by The Verge, the company explicitly informed the employees that from then on, users’ main feed priority is no longer based on their relationship with the content creator.

The current state of affairs: Facebook is trying to juggle too many balls. They desperately try to race Tiktok, while it's pretty clear to everyone that instead of keeping up with it, the platform is aging as fast as its user pool. At the same time, it keeps trying to do everything - from a marketplace to a dating app. And let’s not forget about Zuckerberg’s Metaverse dreams - which seem to be rather unattainable after the recent hot mess: 13% staff cutbacks and financial problems that kicked Zuckerberg out of the top 20 richest people in the world. 

Instagram

Before TikTok, Instagram was the closest thing to TikTok we had. In 2015 Facebook hired an 18-year-old developer, Michael Sayman. Sayman, a bright young man, learned about how the high management encourages regular employees to share their ideas and he pitched the idea of copying Snapchat’s stories to Facebook’s products. The teenager was given a team and time, and as a result of his endeavors, Instagram Stories launched in 2017 – this allowed then-Facebook-now-Meta to keep the position of the market leader for a while. 

Fast forward to today: Meta tries to do the same manoeuvre with Tiktok. But this time, with a much stronger competitor, added pressure of Meta’s poor performance, and user frustration.

Reels, an answer to tiktoks, are aggressively promoted and prioritized over images. Random, but viral content is shoved down our throats before we even take a look at the content from the creators we know and friends we want to follow. The tiktokization of Instagram made its users angry, and they do not hesitate to vent their annoyance - photographer, Tati Bruening, posted this plea:

Celebrities, such as Kylie Jenner or Kim Kardashian liked and shared this post and it started making rounds on the Internet. Yet it didn’t seem to impress Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri, who in his response (what an irony) vertical video, said that he thinks Instagram is heading towards being a video platform:

YouTube

For the majority of the Internet's history, there was one default video platform. Youtube is still the leader and great for watching videos on a desktop - but it seems that it didn’t tackle the mobile revolution early enough. YT shorts were introduced worldwide in 2021, and guess what - They look exactly like tiktoks. Or Instagram reels. And very similar to Facebook stories.

Twitter

These days Twitter clearly has other problems than chasing TikTok

And with its purpose and functionalities is pretty far from everything that TT represents. But even it feels the need for copying strategies. From September 2022 a “Videos for You” feature was added, so that we can see another random, but viral content on yet another app. Additionally, videos are displayed in a vertical-full-screen mode, so they look kind of like tiktoks. Or Instagram Reels. Or Facebook Stories.

Even Signal

And that’s the news from the beginning of this month. Is this messaging app mindlessly following a broader trend? In its blog post Signal writes:

Stories have emerged to serve these specific functions and others in the broader communications landscape, and many of us have integrated them as one of the ways that we connect with one another. That’s why they have a natural place in any messaging app, including Signal. People use them, people want them, so we’re providing a way to do stories privately. And without having to wade through a sea of ads.

This decision has raised eyebrows and we will have to take Signal’s word for how desired the new feature is - especially when we compare it with the popular voice of online discussions. Do these stories look like tiktoks? Or Instagram Reels? Or Facebook Stories? Or Twitter videos? No idea, no one is posting them anyway. 

Berealization of Tiktok

Is Tiktok then a triumph of a soulless algorithm and mindless doom-scrolling over human touch and real online bonding? We wouldn’t be so quick in jumping to conclusions, because there is another, new player on the stage, disrupting the system and making TikTok copy its features: it’s BeReal. 

BeReal was hailed the opposite of Instagram. Its goal is to keep in touch with friends through authentic, non-curated content. It’s a social platform that allows users to post one image per day. Users get one notification at random during the day and are supposed to post a picture of what they are seeing at that moment, together with a selfie. Only those who posted can see the content of their friends. After 24 hours posts are visible only to their authors. There is also a limit to the number of friends that can be added, which prevents the creation of huge influencer accounts.

No chance for big influencers, no ads, forcibly small reach, hard to use for brands. Sounds pretty unprofitable and it really is - BeReal doesn’t make any money yet. It seems to be doing everything NOT to participate in the attention economy or succeed in the post-capitalist society. 

Yet, the app has made it to the top of the most-downloaded-apps list and remained there for a big part of 2022, becoming GenZ’s and Gen Alpha’s favorite. It’s becoming (among the likes of Locket Widget, Yubo or Poparazzi) a major player in the new trend that prioritizes authenticity and simplicity, and catering to the tastes of the youngest users, tired of the never ending social media vanity fair. 

TikTok has just copied the idea and launched it in mid-September as a new app - TikTok Now. Tiktok’s version includes pretty much all main features of BeReal. Authenticity is a trend that has been gaining momentum recently, especially among the younger audience, but is it enough to keep an app that is all about intimacy and personal contact on the market? Time will tell, and it will be interesting to watch.

A working theory that is now safe to put forward, is that the difference between “broadcasting” platforms, where content is shared, like Twitter or Tiktok, and those that are used to stay in touch, like BeReal or Signal, will be getting more and more pronounced. Reaching a broad audience and becoming an influencer will have to be even more intentional than it is now, and those platforms that will opt for intimate, private and safe connections, will need to get creative with funding.

Read more

The tiktokization of everything

How TikTok holds our attention

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Find out more about our agency here - subko.co

We’ve been watching the beauty industry closely, first, working with such brands as Pierre Fabre and now welcoming Hagi, a women-ran, family beauty brand as one of our newest clients.

Wellness culture and death of hustle culture

Pandemic fatigue was something that hit hard not only those who got infected. When the world is on fire and spiralling out of control, the best you can do is to take care of yourself - of your mind and body alike. This is how wellness culture, to which the beauty industry was gravitating even before the pandemic, got so popular. In 2022 cosmetics are not only functional, but also they are an accessory to perform beauty rituals that are supposed to make us feel taken care of. Wellness culture is a rejection of hustle culture that puts emphasis on productivity. “This girl” took the place of “girl boss”. 

The difference? In the hustle culture life was a project - you ticked off status symbols, one after another. Education? Check. Good job? Check. Hot body? Check. Relationship, corner office, children, travelling? Check, check, check. A girl boss is the one who has her stuff together and gets what she wants. 

Wellness culture, counterintuitively is also a project, but the project is your physical and psychological well being. Hydration? Check. Journalling? Check. Yoga? Check. Workout, meditation, massage, therapy, aromatherapy, stretching, rolling, manifesting, green tea, palo santo, affirmation? Check, check and check. A this girl is the one, who is the best version of herself - put together, focused and calm. 

Rituals was one of the brands that have foreseen this trend and they expanded their product range with teas, yoga accessories, scented candles and teas. The whole wellness culture stretches far beyond beauty industry - tracking apps, spirituality, science-backed mind-and-body-related techniques (from breathing exercises to painting your walls the right colour), you name it are a part of it, but the whole trend just asks beauty brands to step out of their core offer and help their customers become the best versions of themselves.

Source: Instagram

Transparency, ethics and focus on skin

Users in 2022 are educated and demanding. They had more than enough time to gain knowledge about the science of skincare, and they demand science-backed effective lists of ingredients and transparent supply chains. They use comparison websites and they listen to influencers, who break down the composition of creams and serums and discuss every single substance on their instastories. 

The case of squalane is a good example here. It’s great for skin hydration, but it’s obtained from sharks’ liver, and therefore it’s a big no-no for environment-sensitive users.

The goal is to use products that are honest, science-backed and not messing up with mother nature. Brands, who want to cater to these new, educated users need to make sure their communication is clear and honest about their products. 

A good example here is set by LUSH - in their product pages the brand explains where they get their ingredients from, how they work, why they work and how the company protects the environment. They use social proof - each of their products can be rated by the community. The Ordinary, on the other hand, chose to mimic pharmacy packaging, to put emphasis on the ingredients and to educate their clients in skincare science. Biossance decided to brag with their high standards by comparing their list of allowed ingredients with those of the most restrictive cosmetic markets - such as the European Union.

Sources: Facebook, lush.com, theordinary.com

Magic, nature and witchcraft

Magical motives became ubiquitous. TikTok is buzzing with the #crystaltok trend, everybody suddenly believes in tarot and Mercury’s retrograde became a new excuse for everything. When contemporary medicine fights an unequal struggle, the eyes of many turn to natural healing and traditional receptures. Everything “botanical” seems to be the product of knowledge passed down through the generations and many would rather trust a healer in a cabin deep in the woods, not a lab technician in a white coat.

For many brands that put emphasis on their natural ingredients and herb-based receptures, the new, esoteric aesthetic is a great visual context for their products. Why buy a nettle shampoo, when you can buy a forest witch nettle hair elixir - this way you get both a great hair product and a thrill of excitement. 

Source: Pinterest

Inclusivity and de-glamourization

Women got bored with flawless models and they don’t believe that what’s good for Karlie Kloss would be good for a regular woman. They want to see someone they can identify with in the ads. Dove had anticipated this in 2004 when they launched their "Real Beauty" campaign, and this trend has taken off a lot since then. 

A great example of making a brand more relatable are campaigns launched by MCo Beauty. This Australian beauty brand decided to work with Celeste Barber - a comedian known for mocking pretentious images promoted by the fashion industry and fake reality created by influencers:

MCo Beauty’s idea is to make their marketing look like it’s something that your neighbour may post on social media, or like it’s something you can see on FaceTime with your bestie. Their make-up tutorials are done in a very casual way, often by girls-next-door. Women of all sizes, races and ages are featured in their videos, having fun with doing makeup. Birchbox, a subscription box beauty company, on the other hand, often invites indie beauty brands creators, who happen to be just regular women, like their users, to present their products.

Maddy Joy Bockett, MamaStylista for MCo Beauty (Source: Instagram), Baba Rivera for Birchbox (Source: Instagram)

Inclusivity in beauty marketing reaches far more than just to women of all ages, shapes and sizes, and it’s visible especially in how makeup became a mean to express oneself, regardless of gender. According to NPD’s iGen Beauty Consumer report, two out or five young adults (18-22 years old) are interested in gender-neutral beauty products and male makeup is slowly becoming mainstream (thanks RuPaul!). 

Source: Instagram, @fluidebeauty

Personalization and femtech

According to Forrester's research, 77% of consumers chose, recommended, or paid more to brands that offered a personalised product or experience. Personalization allows customers to gain control and to develop an emotional commitment to the product. How to choose the best product out of thousands available on the market? Going through a difficult process of comparing them seems so overwhelming, that making them from scratch seems like an easier option. 

For many companies personalisation is a business model. A good example for a highly personalised brand is Japanese Medulla. Medulla offers a shampoo that is prepared according to users’ specific needs. To prepare a special shampoo mix, a client receives a form with 10 questions regarding individual needs and preferences (such as fragrance or type of hair). The system is able to generate about 100 different combinations of variables and the product is delivered in a subscription model.

Many companies decide to harness AI and science to craft the best personalised products for their clients - such as Neutrogena, which decided to launch its Mask ID, a face mask designed to match active ingredients with the face areas that need special attention. 

Personalization doesn’t always need to be that technologically advanced. Let's take a look at a tool introduced by the Dollar Shave Club brand - their website allows a user to complete a quiz consisting of 7 questions about your shaving habits and needs. Based on the responses, the system generates product recommendations.

Beauty brands seem to be confident in using technology to their benefit, there is however one exception: Metaverse. The whole nature of tangible beauty products that are meant to impact our earthly shell is in contradiction to everything the incorporeal, virtual Metaverse that can’t be touched or smelled, has to offer. 

We see brands organising launch events for their new collections and creating NFTs inspired by their products or values, but that’s pretty much it. Despite overly-optimistic headlines, there is little connection between selling an NFT and selling a cream in real life and the best Metaverse has to offer to beauty brands is simply being a giant advertising pole, which is not really the retail immersion everyone is expecting. 

Routines

A few years back the only routine we had was a day cream for the day and cleansing plus night cream for the night, that’s it, end of story. But then the Korean beauty industry told us we need more cosmetics and we need to use them in a very precise order. And this is how beauty routines were born. 

Today the variety of products we have available may be confusing and the questions arise in the heads of our customers: when do I use a serum? Can I use it with a tonic? Is it allowed to replace tonic with a hydrolate? Answering them takes time and some level of beauty proficiency, and here is where beauty brands come to the rescue, offering ready-made beauty routines, educating customers, saving their time and convincing them to base their entire skincare on one brand. 

Here are three brands that do it right:

Emma Lewisham - The brand offers two sets of skin care cosmetics - morning and evening routines. You can buy them with one click of the mouse, but you can remove products that are not needed from the cart before making the purchase.

Bolt Beauty - is a four-step cosmetic routine encapsulated, water-soluble, biodegradable drops. Bolt beauty not only offers an intuitive and simple routine, but also a revolutionary solution in the field of ecological and light cosmetics packaging.

True Botanicals - built its routines on cooperation with influencers. In the store you can buy, for example, Olivia Wilde Skincare Routine

Source: www.emmalewsham.com, www.bolt-beauty.com, www.truebotanicals.com

It’s important however not to overshoot the opportunity here. Today’s routines shouldn’t be too elaborate. They are here to give guidance and to make a choice easier, not to overwhelm and to put pressure. Less is more and customers use quality over quantity and simplicity over routine overload. 

Cross-brand cooperation

Collaboration between brands is an effective and cheap way to reach new audiences. If we match the cooperation partner well, both brands can reach each other’s target group and strengthen the brand's image and values. An example of such cooperation is the joint GoPro and RedBull campaign, targeted at active people who like extreme sports or IKEA and LEGO, reflecting the family values ​​of both brands.

Often the very fact of cooperation is seen as an interesting buzz-generating event, and the limited products that are a result of the cooperation become valuable collectibles. Here are examples of cross-brand cooperations between the beauty and food industries: Hershey x Etude House (eye make-up), Innisfree x Mentos (mineral powder) and Morphe x Coca-Cola (eye make-up):

Mindful menstruation

Removing taboos on female biology is not a new trend, but today it goes one step further - we should not only not be embarrassed with the period talk, we should experience and understand changes in our body, and menstrual cycle and use it to your advantage.

In fact, the menstrual cycle is just the top of the iceberg of the female biology topics that get more attention. De-tabuization applies to topics such as intimate infections, the way the body changed during pregnancy, menopause, and even the psychological hardships of parenthood. In 2022 there are no topics that should not be discussed. 

Beauty brands are still discovering how to include skincare into women’s natural cycles and how to use hormonal changes instead of struggling with them, but Hagi, Faace and Amareta are pioneers here, and we should all pay attention to their next steps.

Beauty trends come and go, but it’s important to understand their link to bigger ideas that circulate in society. Oftentimes the beauty industry mirrors what we think and feel, what we watch on Netflix, read about in the newspapers and social media and try in the kitchen. 

Netflix’ “Euphoria” opened the door for glittery dream-like make up, newest microbiome research immediately translated into microbiome skincare and aging society led to a rise of brands such as Womaness - skincare for women who go through a menopause. And don’t get us started on the use of fermentation in cosmetics, and how beauty brands fell in love with kombucha - just like food brands did not that long ago. 

Do you want to know what’s next in beauty marketing? Have your eyes and ears open for everything else!  

It’s December 2015, San Francisco is blinking with Christmas lights, people rush for their last-minute holiday gifts, and Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Ilya Sutskever are about to open their brand new non-profit lab that pledges to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is created safely and would benefit all humanity evenly. Beautiful idea, isn’t it?

Open AI’s building in San Francisco’s Mission District 

(Image by HaeB, CC Share Alike 4.0 International)

OpenAI’s humble poverty lasted exactly 4 years before the company got a $ 1 000 000 boost from Microsoft and turned for-profit in a widely criticized move. Since its foundation, OpenAI became famous mostly for producing text-generating and music-generating models - GPT3 and MuseNet / Jukebox, that could create their own music or try to finish existing songs. Is it a Grammy-worthy attempt? Check for yourself:

And DALL·E 2? DALL·E 2 is the last brainchild of the controversial lab, an AI system that is able to transform text into image. 

Wall-E and Dalí walk into the bar…

If “DALL·E 2” sounds familiar to you, then you are right - it’s a mashup of WALL·E -the name of the 2008 Pixar movie and its main character- a self-aware robot, and Salvador Dalí, the famous Spanish painter, hailed as the father of surrealism in art. And indeed, the grotesque creations of the system have something in common with the famous Spaniard’s paintings.

DALL·E 2 generates images based on a textual description. Do you want to see what a very buff teapot would look like? Say no more, your sick imagination is the limit for the system’s (re)creativity:

In April OpenAI decided to let a carefully selected 100 000 users from the invite-only list play with the model. And this is exactly when the Internet burst with weird, grotesque, and bizarre images that told us as much about AI’s capabilities as it did about their authors’ imagination.

On June 20th the model entered a beta phase, turned into a paid service, and a million more users from the waitlist were allowed to purchase a 15$ subscription that buys 115 credits that could then generate images in a 1 credit to 1 image ratio.  

Hey, DALL·E 2, draw a politician

How does it work? To put it very simply, DALL·E 2 creates images. You can ask the model to create an image of a nervous content manager frantically writing an article to meet a deadline, akhem, and the outcome is surprisingly accurate (it skipped empty coffee cups stacking on the desk though):

You could also ask for : “Girl in the park, reading a book, Matisse style” 

Or  “Teddy bears working on new AI research on the moon in the 1980s” : 

Or for “Dali, autoportret”

“Okay” - you may ask - “but how does it REALLY work, and what is INSIDE?” DALL·E 2, like any machine learning model, analyzes huge volumes of labelled data to find common features they share. How exactly it’s done is not entirely clear, that’s why the black box metaphor is often used when talking of AI: it's a mechanism that takes input and gives output, but no one knows what happens inside. Let’s take a computer vision API: after analysing a bazillion images that feature a beige, fluffy object with black dots, it can be one of two things: these objects were labelled either a blackberry muffin or a chihuahua. 

With generating an object, the AI black box works in a similar manner - it analyzes bazillions of objects it has in its database and spits out something that’s an average of all these objects taken together. That’s why DALL·E 2 early users reported the technology’s alleged bias - when you ask for an image of a billionaire, in most cases the person in the picture will be white. If you ask for an image of a caregiver - the person will be a woman: mostly (well, it’s complicated) not because the technology is biased, but because of the input dataset it works on. 

In July OpenAI announced that the dataset is going to be changed so that it can reflect global diversity, but in fact, making tweaks seems to be a hopeless battle at times. Shortly after OpenAI made an amendment to address the gender bias, users started reporting an increased number of female Mario Bros images generated.  

In late August DALL·E 2 creators launched Outpainting: the functionality that allows to continue an image beyond its original borders: 

What can and can’t DALL·E 2 do?

There are tasks that DALL·E 2 is acing: adding, altering, or replacing images in existing pictures. It can even create a set of clothes in videos:

It has, however, a hard time creating words in pictures to the point where some people can’t help feeling that DALL·E 2 generated its own gibberish language (spoiler alert, it didn’t).

Although DALL·E 2 interpretative skills are impressive, there are some limitations. First of all - there are those imposed by OpenAI - users can’t generate images of famous people and photorealistic images of people in general. There are also filters that prevent violent or NSFW image generation (although some Redditers are pretty disappointed with the latter).

Secondly - it has some problems with text comprehension. DALL·E 2 understands words, like “panda” or “latte art”, but sometimes has a hard time making sense of what you want. “Panda latte art”? Or “Panda making latte art”? What’s the difference? Who knows? Surely not DALL·E 2 - which was pointed out in a humble-brag paper created by Google, who happens to work on DALL·E 2 competition, Imagen. Google’s model seems to have nailed the task:

Source: Google’s research

But Imagen is not the only competition for DALL·E 2. Parti is another model created by Google, based on a different architecture than Imagen, that seems to beat its older brother in creating images based on comprehensive descriptions. 

There is also Stable Diffusion - another text-to-image model publicly launched by a collective of researchers from RunwayML, LMU Munich in late August; EleutherAI and LAION - led by Stability AI,  a British AI studio, in cooperation with HuggingFace and CoreWeave. The interesting thing is that Stable Diffusion is free, downloadable, runs locally on your graphic card or in the cloud. and the NSFW restrictions will be lifted, which supposedly will bring smiles to Redditors’ faces. Even if it’s not the best model out there, its availability may make it the most popular one.

 Another model worth mentioning is Midjourney, and apparently, it’s good at generating good-looking, high-resolution images out of simple prompts. Compared to DALL·E 2 it’s like searching for an image on Google Graphics vs searching for an image on Pinterest. 

Last but not least, there is also DALL·E 2 mini, recently renamed Craiyon, a lightweight tool that allows users to create images that are a bit wonkier than those generated by DALL·E 2, but due to the tool’s low usage cost - also more accessible.

Watch this video to find out about the differences between DALL·E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion:

Which AI is better? Dall-e 2, MidJourney, Disco Diffusion, and Stable Diffusion. Comparing AI.

Ownership

AI-generated art causes new questions to arise: who owns it? Is it the AI creator or the user? OpenAI states clearly in its inaugurational post for DALL·E 2 launch:

Starting today, users get full usage rights to commercialize the images they create with DALL·E 2, including the right to reprint, sell, and merchandise. This includes images they generated during the research preview.

Does it mean you now own that image of a cat in space you just created? No! It takes some digging into OpenAI’s Terms & Conditions to find out that the company still owns your generations (so the output, input being a “prompt” or “upload” - as DALL·E 2 can generate image from text or alter already existing images), but just gives you a license to use it in any way you want:

Ownership of Generations. To the extent allowed by law and as between you and OpenAI, you own your Prompts and Uploads, and you agree that OpenAI owns all Generations (including Generations with Uploads but not the Uploads themselves), and you hereby make any necessary assignments for this. OpenAI grants you the exclusive rights to reproduce and display such Generations and will not resell Generations that you have created, or assert any copyright in such Generations against you or your end users, all provided that you comply with these terms and our Content Policy.

“Artificial Intelligence in court in a copyright case” - these sound like some really mighty Harry Potter spells.

There is also a question of how many of the generations can be copyrighted at all, given that copyright can apply only when we talk about “original works of authorship”. When it comes to short prompts it’s really hard to talk about creative authorship.

Implications

OpenAI not claiming copyrights, opens a window of opportunity for those who want to monetize AI-generated art. At the same time, it causes panic amongst artists and visual creators. What will change with models getting more proficient at generating art, who should look for a new job and who can rest easy? Let’s see.

First of all, AI art for sale is already here and there seems to be a new job emerging: an AI whisperer, who knows the spells that can make AI produce exactly what we want. A new prompt-selling marketplace, PromptBase lures those who discovered their AI-enchanting skills: Sell your prompts on PromptBase and make money from your prompt crafting skills. Upload your prompt, connect with Stripe, and become a seller in just 2 minutes.

Whose jobs are in danger then? Likely re-creative visual jobs. If your work is mostly adding and removing objects, doing packshots, making this thing smaller, that thing bigger, changing font to Comic Sans, per client’s wishes, and adding a pineapple in the foreground, etc -  then boy, have we got news for you - AI will be able to meet commercial standards once it gets more proficient and gets rid of glitches over time.  Stock photographers, packshot photographers, (some) graphic designers, storyboarders, retouchers - beware! 

Designers and photographers with more “human” and creative approach are safe: event photographers focused on recording memories, creative designers, art directors, comic artists, and illustrators with their own unique style and added value can keep on working and AI may even become their ally for conceptual planning and raw sketches.  

The rise of text-to-image AI is good news for small businesses, all those who could not afford a designer and made their designs in Canva from royalty-free images sourced from Unsplash. To all those industries and professionals who need a raw visualisation, like interior designers, landscape architects, TV producers, DALL·E 2 & co will provide mock-ups good enough for brainstorming and ideation.

But that’s just the beginning. We are in the moment of history when the snowball effect of technology is getting more and more visible, and happens much faster:

It might sound scary for now, but so was the automobile in 1910, when Farmers’ Anti-Automobile Society of Pennsylvania lobbied for changes in the state law:

Source: Bottlenecks: Aligning UX Design with User Psychology, David C. Evans.

1. Automobiles traveling on country roads at night must send up a rocket every mile, then wait ten minutes for the road to clear. The driver may then proceed, with caution, blowing his horn and shooting off Roman candles, as before.

2. If the driver of an automobile sees a team of horses approaching, he is to stop, pulling over to one side of the road, and cover his machine with a blanket or dust cover which is painted or colored to blend into the scenery, and thus render the machine less noticeable.

3. In case a horse is unwilling to pass an automobile on the road, the driver of the car must take the machine apart as rapidly as possible and conceal the parts in the bushes

Just like we don’t keep Roman candles in our cars, in 5, 10, 50 years from now we won’t be scared of creative AI - it will be interwoven in our daily lives and will redefine how we think about creativity and work. 

New chapters, like this, might be full of new possibilities, if we stay curious enough, antifragile and open to what’s new. This is how we grow, even if it may feel unnatural or artificial (pun intended) at first:

Are you ready for dallying with Dalle now? 

So, who are these aliens?

Let’s start with a short disclaimer: we (as a society) like to generalise and pigeonhole people. We like clean-cut categories with clear distinctions, but the post-modern world is fluid and multifaceted and so are its new generations. American Zoomers may be slightly different than their Polish counterparts, however, both groups may also share some attitudes with Millennials. Don’t get too attached to details, in this article we’ll try to paint a bigger picture. 

Putting a sociological hat on: GenZ are the children of GenX, born roughly between 1995 and 2005 (although some stretch it to 2010). The oldest ones are now in their mid-twenties, building long-term relationships and sometimes even having children. The youngest ones are in their late-teens, about to enter the labour market, vote, make money and spend money. According to the GlobalWebIndex, GenZ in 2021 were: 

One of the most important characteristics, though, is that Zoomers are the first generation that doesn’t know the world before the Internet. Growing up plugged-in, these digital natives find it easier to connect with their peers around the world rather than their older compatriots (GWI).

Okay, doomer

When following Zoomers online, one may get a slightly dissolute impression: this is the generation that was born into the reality of a global climate disaster that they didn’t cause, but they will fully experience its results. 

Moreover, the cards have already been dealt in terms of housing and jobs and Zoomers don’t want to subscribe to the Protestant ethics of working hard for a decent lifestyle, it doesn’t work for them.  The cost of living has become Gen Z’s biggest concern. According to Delloite, GenZ’s top concerns are: cost of living (29%), climate change (24%) and unemployment 0%).

Source: The Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey

This impoverished generation inherits a polluted environment and an unequal world, where the old ways don’t work - so they refuse to accept them. 46% of Zoomers feel that their workplace is so demanding that they feel burned out, while 44% report that they know someone who quit their job due to workload pressure. They also experience solastalgia - a deep emotional distress, caused by changes in the environment - which sometimes turns into a full blown climate depression. 

On one hand, this causes frustration and anger that pushes young people to the streets in Climate Strikes and makes them reconsider their consumption choices. Zoomers rummage for pre-loved / vintage clothes in charity shops and online second-hand marketplaces like Depop or Vinted, as they are  no longer viewed as an embarrassing necessity for those who can’t afford new clothes, but they are now all the rage. 

On the other hand, there is a common feeling of an impending apocalypse and the doom-tension that some relieve though escapism and compulsive shopping on fast-fashion platforms such as Shein.

GenZ beasts and where to find them

You might have heard of it before, but it has to be articulated: Zoomers' natural habitats are TikTok, Discord, and Instagram. Facebook is old and uncool. Zoomers prefer streaming platforms such as Netflix to traditional television. Bite-sized TikTok content is even more in demand than the longer Netflix pieces, which is believed to be the cause of the recent Netflix’ crisis.

What else do they spend their time on? Gaming, of course. Marketers who want to target Zoomers are doomed to fall into the gamirfng trap. It’s not enough to proudly add “gaming” to your strategy, as gamers are a highly diverse group. Which one is your target - the competitive e-sport fans? those who like to go on adventures as a Witcher? or perhaps those who create their own reality in Roblox? 

Sometimes the weird, overwhelming digital reality is confronted with weird digital meta-ironic humour -Zoomers are famous for their quirky and abstract sense of humour, full of inside jokes.

All the time is me-time

The most important generational experience for Zoomers is surely the Covid-19 pandemic. The conclusion they draw from two years of lockdowns is that self-care and mental health are important – surely more important than superficial status symbols like careers, cars, and striving for a white picket fence. The overworked feminist girl boss trend that propelled Millennials is not quite dead, but it has rebranded into that girl. That girl works out, makes her bed, and eats aesthetically pleasing, balanced breakfasts. Journaling and self-reflection are also an important part of her self-improvement project. The cult of hustling turned into the cult of wellness; the rest stays pretty much the same. 

When asked what is fashionable these days, GenZ will frown. ‘Everything that you feel comfortable wearing, or everything that makes you feel good about yourself’ they’ll answer. Comfort, mental and physical wellness and avoiding any unpleasantness are what truly matters. They dress to de-stress, not always to impress.

Flowers, bees and identity galore

Since Millennials ruined divorces, it was hard to believe GenZ could eff up even more, but they did - they are ruining marriages. The vast majority of Zoomers doesn’t want to get married and many of them don’t see the point in being totally exclusive with their partners. Gender fluidity is a norm and so is introducing oneself with a first name, surname, and a pronoun. It’s not surprising that one of the TV series most-watched by Zoomers is Euphoria - a story of high school friendship between a trans-teen, Jules and a drug-addict, Rue. A couple of months ago bloodcurdling news hit the headlines: Zoomers have less sex! However, when we had a better look at it, it turned out that they seem to have less casual sex and more quality, consensual sex. They also display more sexual behaviours that don’t traditionally count as sex - such as sexting. 

Focus on mental health

The openness, curiosity and tolerance stretch much further than just sex. Gen-Z is happy to experience other cultures and the paths trailblazed by Millennials are now frequented by the Zoomers, as the interest in K-pop and Japanese culture keeps growing. The focus on mental health that we all experienced during the pandemic has also opened the door for discussion, sharing mental health issues and acceptance for those who are experiencing it, especially among the younger generation. One of the latest American Psychological Association surveys discloses that Zoomers are more likely to report, talk about, and seek help to treat their mental health issues. And when they add TikTok to these discussions, this is what you get:

Spiritualism

The pandemic has shattered young people's sense of security and control over their lives. Such catastrophes have always pushed people towards religion or magic, but Zoomers don’t see themselves as religious, they are probably the least religious of the generations. Spirituality, however, is another kettle of fish. The difference is that religion is a highly communal experience, while spirituality can be practised in the comfort of your own home, or in front of your own screen. Interest in witchcraft, astrology, and tarot has boomed recently, suddenly Mercury being in retrograde became a real thing, and new-agey online shops can’t keep up with shipping sage and palo santo. Crystals are another thing that everyone went wild for, just check #crystaltok trend on TikTok. This stuff is not cheap, and if you can’t afford it, you better follow one of the popular ezo-tiktokers, who will tell you how to practise money manifestation rituals.

Aesthetics, fashion and nostalgia

In the GenZ world, aesthetic is everything, it’s instagrammable and tiktokable. There is a great variety of aesthetic trends in which youngsters express themselves.

Y2K and the great comeback of the nineties is clearly visible: chokers, tie-dye, low-rise jeans and crop-tops are everywhere. But nostalgia stretches far into 2010’s, welcoming back a more traditional and less pronounced wes-anderson-esque twee style. Do you remember that short period of time, when ballet flats, pleated skirts and puff-sleeved blouses with Peter Pan collar were in? A stuff that Zoey Deschanel would wear? If you still have your stuff from early 2010’s in your attic, you can re-use it, as the twee style is back.

Feel more grunge than cute? No problem, a new take of 2010’s indie style is called “indie sleaze”, so you can totally wear motorcycle boots, torn tights and anything Kate Moss would have worn in 2012. 

Nostalgia of any kind is a longing for times when everything was simpler, even if one has barely experienced them, and this is also the case for the sudden interest in the 90's, 00’s and 10’s when the online reality was friendly and controllable. 

It seems that subcultures that were pronounced dead quite some time ago are back. While at the turn of the century it was the music that was the common ground for people involved in a subculture, in 2022 it’s the aesthetic. In fact, the number of aesthetic trends that young people express themselves with, can make one’s head spin. 

We have a clean girl aesthetic, that focuses on no-makeup makeup, sleek hairstyles and comfortable basic clothes in plain colours. There is also a complete opposite of clean girl - a theatrical and gender-fluid style represented by the e-girls (and e-boys), who sport dramatic, graphic make-up, colourful, heavy-stylized hairstyles and cosplay clothing. For those who don’t like to stand out quite THAT much, there is the VSCO girl style - fun, casual and comfortable, focused on the subculture of people who use VSCO - a more elite and less commercial counterpart of Instagram.

That’s not the end of countless aesthetics and aesthetic subcultures and trends zoomers subscribe to. Want to read more about the phenomena such as soft girl or cottagecore? Go to Aesthetics Wiki (yes, there is a Wikipedia for that).

How to market to GenZ?

Zoomers are slayers of lazy marketing. “Get to know your audience” is a marketing mantra, but not every marketer does this homework. This generation developed an evolutionary adaptation to online marketing - the ad blindness. They instantly recognize marketing content and choose not to see it, but when they see it, they recall it better than Millennials or GenX.

Here are some tips on how to build an effective marketing for GenZ:

• Be subtle. Ads that scream “marketing” will be ignored. Go for more natural marketing content, interwoven with the non-marketing content.

• Mobile first. Zoomers had a 60% higher engagement in mobile apps per user than the older generations and they spend a whopping 9 hours daily in front of their screens.

• Remember that Zoomers have an extremely short attention span. They need 8 seconds to decide whether they like something or not. (Millennials need 12 seconds).

• Be authentic - GenZ bullshit-detecting antennas are extremely sensitive for marketing content and they value authenticity. Carefully curated Instagram grids are so 2019, in 2022 it’s supposed to be about spontaneity.

• Integrity. Zoomers don’t trust brands and hold them to high standards. They will detect and expose any greenwashing, dishonesty and hypocrisy faster than you can summon your emergency PR team.

• Know your audience. Just sprinkling your marketing strategy with some Zoomer humour and Y2K aesthetics won’t fly. If possible - hire a Zoomer who knows how to talk to other Zoomers

Who did it right?

Unsurprisingly - not many. For every good GenZ campaign there are two bad ones that we totally could quote here, but we don’t want to be mean. So, here you go, two decent examples of brands who listen and talk to Zoomers.

Netflix

If there is one brand that is Zoomers’ all-time favourite, it’s Netflix. Netflix is consistent in all its actions; from creating the product (inclusive TV series that feature the conservatives’ horror: gender fluidity and racial diversity in all shapes and sizes), to doing smart marketing that is discreet and to the point. In its latest campaign promoting a mini-series “The Queen”, a story of an older gentleman by day and a drag queen by night, they asked Polish male celebrities to paint their nails and casually publish the pictures on social media. Here is Maciej Musiał, a young generation actor, who is sporting a rather bold shade of nail polish on his way to get groceries. 

Good job, Netflix - a small thing, done on the popular channel, that made a big buzz among the right crowd!

Duolingo… or pretty much any brand that understands TikTok trends and challenges

A girl recording a tiktok about a #dayinthelife. She wakes up, goes to work, tells us about her day working at Duolingo. Is it her own content or Duolingo’s marketing / employer branding? They had to be okay with her filming her work… right? Hard to answer? Perhaps that’s how you recognize good marketing. Very subtle, almost impossible to tell apart from regular organic content present in the Gen Z native channels.

@zariaparvezlol i promise I’ll do better next week #Duolingo #socialmediamarketing #dayinmylife

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In this article I used:

• The Latest trends for Generation Z by GlobalWebIndex (GWI)

• The Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey (Deloitte)

• Is Gen Z the spark we need to see the light? by EY (EY)

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