AI Marketing Ethics According to David Meerman Scott

This issue features an interview with bestselling author and marketing expert David Meerman Scott. He shares his views on AI's marketing impact, troublesome ethical issues, and advice for marketers.

Jan 17, 2024

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, entrepreneur, investor, and advisor to emerging companies. He is also a bestselling author of 12 books, including "Fanocracy" and "The New Rules of Marketing & PR," a marketing classic.

Interview Summary

AI's Impact on Marketing

AI allows lazy marketers to churn out low-quality content at scale.
It helps skilled marketers be more productive (e.g., writing headlines, summarizing, and accessing their own content).
AI on social media pushes polarization, hate, conspiracies — it’s very destructive.
AI will likely start citing sources and linking back to original content.

Ethical Implications

Can perpetuate biases — marketers must be diligent.
There’s a risk of excluding or limiting options for certain groups.
Can confirm untrue or discriminatory beliefs.

Transparency

Disclose AI use even if not required — that’s important for reputation.

Advice for Marketers

Understand how to use AI to augment work, not replace skills.
Marketers still need creative, strategic, and interpersonal skills.
A marketer doing original work without AI is still more valuable than a marketer who only uses AI.

Full Interview Audio

There is occasional light static in the audio, which we attempted to remove. It should not hinder the interview, however. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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Q: How has artificial intelligence (AI) transformed modern marketing?

DMS: AI has made lazy marketers slightly more productive by enabling them to create content quickly. However, it often results in poor-quality content flooding the market. But for those people who understand how to use large language models like ChatGPT and use them well, it can be really interesting and important.

I have often used those tools myself for things like, after writing a blog post to come up with a headline, because I'm not really very good at headline writing. Also, I've taken five of my books and all of my 20 years of blog posts and dropped them into a private database that I put an AI chatbot over the top of to query myself. That's a great use of AI.

Q: What are your views on the algorithms powering social networks?

DMS: I believe the AI algorithms behind social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are the most destructive technology ever invented. They're designed to increase user engagement for ad revenue, which often leads to the promotion of harmful content. The problem is that the AI algorithms push people into whatever they end up dabbling in, and they push more, and then if you dabble more, they push more.

For millions of people around the world, it's conspiracy theories … hate speech … polarizing content that's ripping not only this country but the world apart. They're terribly dangerous, and a lot of the problems that we see in society right now are driven by the artificial intelligence algorithms coming out of those two companies (Alphabet and Meta).

AI has made lazy marketers slightly more productive by enabling them to create content quickly. However, it often results in poor-quality content flooding the market.

Q: Google now generates AI answers to user queries, which has to be destructive for businesses. Why would I need to click on your link when I can get the answer right there?

DMS: That's likely going to change over time; there's already evidence of it. What I think is going to happen is that content sources will begin to license their content.

I also think that when content is sourced it will end up having a link. So the answer won't be a whole list of blue links the way it is now with regular Google, but there'll be a text-based response like there is in ChatGPT, for example, together with some way of showing where the source is.

It’ll probably look somewhat like Wikipedia does today. If you go to Wikipedia and search for something, and you take a look at the Wikipedia entry, it has citations where the original content was that drove that.

That’s already happening. Go to the Microsoft Edge browser and then use that to access Microsoft Bing. Do a query and ask it to ask the chatbot to provide the answer. It's actually using ChatGPT because Microsoft has a partnership with OpenAI. It cites the sources for the content and provides links to it.

Q: How can brands maintain authenticity and genuine connections with audiences using AI?

DMS: Businesses do business with people. That's always been the case, and will always continue to be the case, and it will be very important for organizations to understand that. While AI tools are helpful, they should not replace human connections or human-created, human-curated content.

They are best used for automating mundane tasks, such as transcribing audio files or summarizing long reports. Over-reliance on AI for content creation or customer support risks losing the human touch essential in marketing.

Q: What are some ethical implications of using AI in marketing?

DMS: AI can perpetuate biases and ethical issues, such as portraying CEOs in stock photos primarily as white men. Marketers must be vigilant about how their content could be used or manipulated by AI algorithms on social networks. Ethical concerns also include the potential for AI to confirm discriminatory beliefs and exclude certain groups from services like housing.

Alphabet and Meta have, in many ways, crossed ethical lines because of the hate, polarization, and conspiracy theories they’re promoting. The idea that an algorithm can confirm the things that you believe to be true that are either not true or are discriminatory can be a really big problem.

If you decide that a particular ethnic group or a particular demographic is beneath you, and you go to the chatbots, or you go to various other AI tools, they can confirm that.

Q: Can AI enhance empathy in marketing?

DMS: I spoke with the CEO of an executive company that uses AI to crawl your entire website and look for places where you can enhance the site to help people who have various disabilities ensure accessibility. It can also help in translating marketing materials into different languages, broadening reach and inclusivity.

Q: What responsibilities do marketers and developers have in promoting ethical AI use?

DMS: Both marketers and developers should focus on doing the right thing, and not just be slaves to the spreadsheet and the quarterly earnings report, but instead be thinking about how they can help people and how they can be an appropriate part of society.

Q: Should the use of AI in marketing be disclosed?

DMS: While I personally disclose when AI is used significantly in my work, I don't believe it needs to be legislated. Transparency is important, but the decision to disclose AI usage should be based on individual judgment and ethical considerations.

Q: What advice do you have for future marketers regarding AI?

DMS: Future marketers should understand how to use AI to augment their work, not replace it.

I believe a marketer who is doing original work without AI, at least right now, is probably still more valuable than a marketer who only uses AI and doesn't know how to write, doesn't know how to create, doesn't know how to organize a website, and doesn't know how to engage with people on a human level.

I would rather have somebody who has those skills than someone who just happens to be really good at prompt engineering.

We want to express our deep appreciation to David for giving us the interview opportunity. If you want to share the same — or perhaps you have a question for David — leave a comment. We’ll pass them along.