The Hot Topic: "GPT-4" and "ChatGPT". What Future Landscape Will AI Create for Marketing? (Part 1)

One AI technology that gained attention in 2022 was services generating illustrations from text prompts provided by humans. However, the AI text generation service "ChatGPT" has recently become a major topic of discussion. "GPT" refers to the language model developed by OpenAI, one of the world's leading AI research organizations. Released in 2020, "GPT-3" made a major impact across society with its ability to generate long texts like novels and articles seamlessly. Then, in November 2022, "ChatGPT" was released, enabling users to obtain text information and ideas through "conversation." Furthermore, "GPT-4" was released in March 2023. It significantly improved upon GPT-3's accuracy and gained the ability to generate text from image inputs. It is also said to be capable of generating text on specialized topics with greater precision than ever before.

This time, we interviewed Satoru Yamamoto and Amarsanaa Agchibayar from Dentsu Digital Inc., a company primarily engaged in AI development projects while also tackling marketing and solving social issues. We discussed their predictions and outlook on the impact AI like "GPT-4" and "ChatGPT" will have on society.

A groundbreaking AI technology that learns and provides highly accurate answers

Q. "GPT-4" and "ChatGPT" are major buzzwords now, but I imagine many people still aren't familiar with them. Could you explain the differences between these two and what kind of services they are?

Yamamoto: "GPT-4" is one type of AI natural language processing model. To put it simply, you can think of it as the brain of the AI. On the other hand, "ChatGPT" is an AI chatbot. It's based on the technology of "GPT-3," the generation preceding "GPT-4," but it was retrained on a specialized dataset to create a service specifically focused on conversation. If you have a clear purpose and want high-quality output, "GPT-4" is more suitable. If you want to start by talking about various things and see what emerges from the conversation, "ChatGPT" is more appropriate. Additionally, while ChatGPT is accessible to anyone in a chat format, GPT-4 offers higher general processing capabilities and greater flexibility for customization, making it more commonly used by developers. Given its recent release, various developments utilizing GPT-4 are still in their early stages.

Regarding GPT-3, for example, if you input "Please write a catchphrase for Company A's Product B," it will combine various information and generate multiple catchphrases.

I also once used GPT-3 to generate Twitter content. By inputting requirements like "include lots of sparkly emojis," "incorporate the keyword Halloween," and "include the attraction's features and price," it would create text matching those specifications. GPT-4 enables even higher-precision output.

Q. With such amazing technology emerging, it seems like professions like writers might become obsolete, right?

Amaru: There's often debate about whether AI technology will "surpass humans." From the perspective of current mechanisms, while practicality is certainly improving rapidly, I still believe human control is necessary to achieve truly better output—output that genuinely aligns with intent. A while back, there might have been an image that "if you just feed it lots of data, like big data, AI will handle everything," but it's not that simple. The current reality is that humans input instructions called "prompts" to elicit the output. The quality of these prompts significantly impacts the output's quality, so it really tests the human's sense and experience. Recently, a new field called "prompt engineering," specialized in crafting these prompts, is gaining attention.

While prompts like "Please write an article like this" can generate text, ensuring the quality of the output requires substantial human involvement. So, to put it another way, I see it more as a tool that extends human capabilities.

With the emergence of ChatGPT, it's said that many jobs humans do will become unnecessary if AI can handle them. Honestly, there's also talk that even AI developers like us might become redundant. To prevent that, we ourselves must shift gears and adapt—that's what we're working on every day.

An era where personal avatars engage in conversations on behalf of individuals

Q. What are your thoughts on services utilizing ChatGPT and the future societal changes it may bring?

Yamamoto: I believe interactive technologies like this have the potential to become new marketing platforms. Television was a marketing platform with immense influence, delivering the same information to a large audience simultaneously. Then came internet search, allowing individuals to seek out information they previously only received passively. The emergence of social media further enabled the provision and collection of information tailored to each individual.

With ChatGPT technology entering this marketing platform, I believe we're entering a phase where information is extracted through repeated questioning and interaction. For instance, when introducing a celebrity's profile, it will become easy to pull out information about them through various conversations. Furthermore, while current SNS platforms often involve posting anything and everything that comes to mind, it will become increasingly easy to "ask only for the information you want" from within that stream. This could eventually become a form of media itself.

For instance, imagine a platform where each person has a digital avatar-like character. By talking to this avatar, you could extract information about the person. If asked, "What was the most interesting episode for you?", the avatar could search past data, find the appropriate story, and answer on the person's behalf. This seems like it could be realized very soon.

AI technologies like "GPT-4" and "ChatGPT" are being perceived as having a massive impact, even threatening human roles. Perhaps what we are being asked is to clearly define "how to master them" and "what to do using AI." In the second part, we continue to ask Mr. Yamamoto and Mr. Amarsanaa how "GPT-4" and "ChatGPT" will change society and how they will be utilized in marketing.