"How Generative AI Will Transform Marketing and Communication" – Insights from the AI Business Frontlines (Part 2)

Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are increasingly used daily by companies as information gathering methods and creative production tools. As their adoption spreads further across society, how will marketing and communication change? What challenges and risks might arise?

Four experts discussed these questions: Takuya Kodama of Dentsu Group Inc., who oversees the "AI MIRAI" project driving AI adoption across the Dentsu Group; Kazuya Kishimoto of Dentsu Inc., also an AI MIRAI member working on AI-powered creative operations; Satoru Yamamoto of Dentsu Digital Inc., engaged in AI-driven marketing support; and Kengo Shibuya of Dentsu International Information Services Inc. (ISID), Kengo Shibuya, engaged in a discussion.

Making Digital Marketing More Human

Kodama: Traditional chatbots often felt impersonal, mechanically spitting out pre-programmed responses. ChatGPT, however, enables more natural, human-like dialogue. This has sparked significant interest in projects that chatbotify characters or corporate personalities.

Kishimoto: ChatGPT represents a dramatic leap forward in expressive richness compared to traditional chatbots. Shortly after ChatGPT's release, we received inquiries from a publisher asking if we could create a chatbot based on their manga characters. Many other companies also express tremendous expectations for ChatGPT, frequently asking us, "Can ChatGPT do this?"

Kodama: I previously built a system that provides feedback on ideas from various perspectives. You could ask it to "critique this from a sustainability standpoint" to validate ideas.Now, avatar chatbots based on personas can be created easily. By using them as stand-ins for users to gather feedback on new products or ad campaigns, or to conduct interviews, our understanding of users becomes dramatically more refined. Utilizing generative AI in this way could make digital marketing strategies much more high-resolution. I believe many companies share this expectation.

Yamamoto: Currently, Dentsu Digital Inc. is advancing an initiative called " Humanized Digital Experience (HDX)." Within this, a key focus is how to realistically reflect human communication—including eye contact, tone of voice, and gestures—in avatars.It's said that only about 10% of human communication is verbal information; the rest is conveyed through facial expressions, voice quality, and gestures. Therefore, I believe it's entirely possible that even slight differences in an avatar's mannerisms could significantly impact conversion rates.

Kodama: That sounds fascinating. Of course, AI still faces various challenges, and how deeply it will integrate into society remains uncertain. However, there's no doubt that the use of generative AI will fundamentally transform how companies communicate with customers. For example, customer information, which was previously scattered across separate sites like service introduction pages, dedicated payment/reservation sites, and social media, could be consolidated into a single corporate bot. Moreover, through close communication via natural conversation with human-like avatars, we might accumulate rich, detailed information that was previously unattainable.

Society and laws are struggling to keep pace with the evolution of generative AI

Kodama: By the way, generative AI like ChatGPT is said to carry various risks and issues. What do you think we need to be particularly cautious about?

Shibuya: I believe we need to closely monitor how negative sentiments and ethical issues surrounding AI will be resolved going forward. Regarding ChatGPT, from a system integrator's perspective, over-reliance on OpenAI, a single research organization, is considered one risk. Currently, there is a possibility that the service itself could shut down due to some trigger. If that happens, it's important to note that projects currently under development could also face the risk of collapse.

Kishimoto: Currently, the biggest concern when releasing services incorporating conversational AI using large language models is probably prompt injection. This refers to making the AI behave in ways the developers did not anticipate by asking it specific questions or giving it commands.A few years ago, before generative AI emerged during the simpler deep learning era, an AI chatbot from a certain company started making discriminatory remarks due to malicious user prompts. While various countermeasures against prompt injection exist, they are often quickly bypassed, creating a never-ending cat-and-mouse situation.

Kodama: Another problem is that the potential damage to companies resulting from prompt injection isn't yet fully clear. What liability arises for a company when a chatbot makes hurtful statements? What about copyright for content generated by AI? These matters remain undefined. Society and the law haven't caught up with the evolution of generative AI.

However, doing nothing could mean falling behind companies that are actively pushing forward with its use. While taking care not to inconvenience customers or general users, I think there's also an aspect where we simply have to experience and learn from various patterns.

Anticipating uses developers never imagined

Kodama: Finally, just as a personal thought, could you share what you want to do with AI going forward? Your dreams or ambitions?

Shibuya: I've long contemplated how to translate the power of IT and computers into tangible, physical forms. I envision a world where robots act as intelligent partners, operating autonomously without explicit human commands. It's a world where every household has an AI companion like "Jarvis" from the Iron Man movies, supporting every aspect of daily life through intelligent dialogue. Large language models are incredibly compelling tools for achieving this.

Yamamoto: Since childhood, I've had a strong fear of death, making "the challenge of immortality" a major theme in my life. One way to overcome death, I believe, is to ensure your thoughts and ideas persist after you're gone. In the past, people might have left behind their memoirs to achieve this, but in the future, we might be able to preserve our avatars eternally.I dream of a world where, if my son faces difficulties in life, he can consult with my avatar, and I can provide him with timely and accurate advice.

Kishimoto: The history of technological development could also be called a "history of misuse." New possibilities are often unlocked through unintended uses. For example, software designed to correct pitch instability in singing voices, when used with extreme settings, created unique vocal effects and gave birth to captivating musical expressions.The "Transformer" learning model, which underpins ChatGPT, was originally developed to improve machine translation performance. I doubt even its developers anticipated at launch that it would become such a transformative technology for society. Using AI can give birth to things we never even imagined. That's what I look forward to most.

Kodama: Generative AI still holds immense potential for expression and creativity, doesn't it? I, too, want to keep creating new and exciting things across all kinds of fields.

Generative AI has the potential to make digital marketing more human-centered and significantly transform communication between companies and users. The Dentsu Group intends to continue solving the various challenges before us while expanding the possibilities of AI utilization.