A lot has happened in the past few months and if you blinked, you may have missed one of the ad industry’s most profound growth spurts. From the launch of ChatGPT in Q4 2022 to several fast-following commitments from major players to build smarter and better, everyone seems obsessed with Artificial Intelligence. Its potential to launch a new digital gold rush comes from its promise to revolutionize content creation, digital ad management solutions and more broadly, the consumption of information online. 

This week alone, we saw new offerings from both Google and OpenAI as they vie for consumer attention. OpenAI’s GPT-4 includes an updated language model that is able to receive text and image inputs and touts enhanced response accuracy as well as added safety features that help to prevent disallowed content. The latest version allows analysis of even bigger data sets (up to 50 pages of text) and goes beyond photos with capabilities to “read” diagrams and screenshots. 

Meanwhile, Google released exciting new AI tools with PaLM API including features particularly well suited to marketers within Gmail and Google Docs, that allow you to simply type in a topic of choice to receive a draft that will be instantly generated for you. Like GPT-4, the tools will assist in the brainstorming process and cut down on time spent with copywriting. We’ll see expansions into sound and video as a follow on.  

Companies like Morgan Stanley are already using GPT-4 to build tools that help streamline and organize first party data, while others like the Government of Iceland and Duolingo are leveraging the technology for advanced language applications.  

The questions for the online advertising industry are mounting. Will it replace jobs? What about content? While some ponder the “death of journalism”, IAB Europe’s Chief Economist, Daniel Knapp suggests a more mundane reality for the use of AI in the mid-term. Knapp performed an analysis of a single average client’s media for a one-year period that revealed 143.6 trillion possible variations on the execution.  From an ad campaign execution standpoint, AI might have its hands full for a while. 

While the race for number one spot on the AI charts heats up, IAB Canada is tracking the pending privacy law which will include an entire section for artificial intelligence. The details of the bill will most likely pertain to requirements for disclosures and transparency and will be developed with industry input over the coming months. We look forward to providing our members with updates and opportunities to lean in and help shape our submissions. In the meantime, we can anticipate that start-ups in the space will be required to keep their algorithmic notes handy.