Where are we with AI?
It’s time to write a quick up update on how we can help you with your AI needs. We’ll do it, but we’re not sold. So what is good about AI?
First things first, if you’re reading this, you are probably savvy enough to know about AI and you’ve almost certainly used it. You’ve certainly spoken about it to friends and you’re probably onside. I bet you are also impressed.
And there is plenty to be impressed by, I’ve heard remarkable music written by AI on the spot, I’ve seen images, paintings being produced and I’ve also had many answers to many questions as well. So far, so good.
At work, I’ve seen AI being applied to my own everyday tools, from composing emails to Adobe Photoshop, from Shopify to Gemini. On my mobile, I am a little frustrated as AI seems to have taken over my basic ‘Hey Google’ commands, but I am getting used to it.
But here are a few things I am bothered by:
- I cannot seem to get AI to repeat itself or go backwards very easily. The other day, I was editing a photo, I only wanted to convert a cloudy sky to a sunny one and AI was brilliant in that not only did it convert the sky to blue, but also added all the shadows to various buildings, excellent, but annoyingly, it also misspelt some of the window signage on some shops in the photo. I never asked it to do that, and however hard I tried to get AI to either rectify the issue or start over, it overtried to enhance too much.
- Reading the latest SEO advice on how to promote a Shopify website on AI Chat programmes, the advice was, use the AI modules within Shopify to write the copy. This seems a little weird. To get noticed on AI, I need to create my content from AI. At some point, the world is going to realise that something real has to be at the bottom of the AI tree.
- Recreation does not happen. A lot of AI is predictive text; the AI Chat literally makes up the next word based on the previous words up to that point. It’s all part of an algorithm, but if today I ask AI to define the colour Black, tomorrow I’ll get a slightly differently worded answer. The rough gist of a simple answer to a question will, of course, be the same, but for more complex questions, this starts to be a problem. I needed answers to achieve something on a Meta/Facebook Ad Account, instructions for a series of steps I need to take. It was all wrong on most days.
- Instructions are an interesting one. Again, AI Chat is too vague. If there is a known procedure to a task in, say, Excel, it’s definitely hit or miss if AI Chat can even identify the correct Menu headings of a programme. Try asking ChatGPT to give instructions to set up an email account on an iPhone. Half the headings won’t exist. The issue at stake is that AI gets confused; it does not actually know anything, it just draws its information from the context of the question.
All in all, at the moment, there is a healthy dose of unreliability when using AI. The question I keep asking myself is that if AI can’t answer the simple questions – can it be trusted with the difficult questions?
I also strongly suspect that when using AI a certain amount of natural human intelligence kicks in as we all adjust and amend for AI’s inadequacies, yet we still credit AI with the answer. (Oh yes, AI gave me the instructions to set up email on the iPhone and I tweaked a few to actually get the job done).
So, where is it going at the moment? Exciting News just Breaking! ChatGPT is integrating with Etsy.com. You will be able to buy your product from Etsy without ever visiting the Etsy website. The Argentic AI engine will complete the purchase for you. Etsy is small fry compared to Shopify, and it’s coming to Shopify any moment.
Let’s think it through. All ChatGPT wants to do at the moment is use the ‘feed’ from these websites to populate its product knowledge. Wonderful. ChatGPT will easily be able to grab the photos, descriptions, prices and probably quite a few quirks to. With any luck, it will be able to upgrade the photos and make everything look even more enticing for me.
However, that is the easy part. ChatGPT will need to know the customer’s delivery address and payment address. The only way for that to happen is if we users, give that information to ChatGPT. It is all fine at the moment; the concept here is that ChatGPT will use a payment processor like Stripe to deliver the information to the Shopify website and actually pay the shop.
The question is, how long will that last? Data and Knowledge is everything, and AI is ever hungry for it. Right now ChatGPT claims it will not use the Information, but then potentially what will happen in the future.
If we take the example of Google Photos, everyone was encouraged to sign up and keep unlimited memories for free on Google Photos until about 2021, when Google started to claw back and charge people for the vast quantities of Photos they had. To a regular consumer, this all made sense. Poor old Google had to pay for that storage space. However, what Google were less open about was that they were using all the photos to train their system in image recognition, so that Google could know what was a photo of a cat or dog. Our photos on Google Photos are still used to this day for these purposes.
We are encouraging every client of ours to sign up to https://chatgpt.com/merchants in order to be ready for the next revolution in e-commerce sales. However, at the same time, we would urge all consumers to think twice before giving their details to any digital 3rd party. It’s a battle that the consumer will lose.