Brands and AI-Generated Content – is this the Future?

A new survey found that customers preferred AI-generated slogans over the ones created by humans. AI created slogans for many big brands including Skittles, McDonald’s and others, and pitted them against the ones generated by humans. It was found that some of them were really clever and did much better than the ones that humans came up with. But some didn’t do as well.

Quality Logo Products is a company that makes promotional goods for businesses. They asked AI to come up with slogans for 50 companies that included brans like Lego, Verizon, Burger King and Levi’s. It then asked about 1,000 Americans which slogans they liked better – the traditional ones that were the brand’s own or the ones that AI came up with. According to the results of the survey, it was found that customers preferred the AI slogans 46% of the time!

Of course there are some original slogans that humans came up with for brands – like the ones for Skittles and McDonald’s – that were considered better than their AI versions. But it is rather a close call.

Facebook - 83% preferred the AI slogan of “Your Digital Neighborhood” to the human “It’s Quick and Easy.”

Samsung – the AI-generated “Technology for Life” beat Samsung’s own “Do What You Can’t”

Adobe - 80% liked AI’s “Designing Your Dreams” over Adobe’s own “Changing the World through Digital Experiences.”

Google - 87% preferred AI’s “Explore Everything. Miss Nothing” over the brand’s own unofficial “Don’t be evil” (it changed it to “Do the right thing” in 2015 with the creation of Alphabet).

Some brands saw their original slogans out-perform AI –

Skittles - the existing “Taste the Rainbow” clearly did better (got the approval of 93%) than AI’s “Taste the Technicolor.”

Subway – Subway’s own “Eat Fresh” beat AI’s “Bread Baked Daily. Memories Made Always.”

McDonald’s - “I’m Lovin’ It” beat AI’s “Savor the Moments, Taste the Magic”

KFC - “It’s Finger Lickin’ Good” did way better than AI’s “Where Every Bite is a Delight”

Burger King – its own “Have it Your Way” did much better than “Taste Royalty.”

There were some close calls -

Adidas - 52% preferred AI’s “Stride with Pride,” to its actual “Impossible is nothing.”

Lego – 51% preferred AI’s “Your Imagination, Our Pieces” to its own “Play Well”

Levi’s – AI’s “Denim Done Right” almost tied with the brand’s own “Quality Never Goes out of Style.”

There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence completely revolutionizes everything that it touches. And when it comes to creativity, everyone has seen what AI can do.

Should brands rejoice? Without a doubt – as AI or Artificial Intelligence has the power to automate processes, sift through humungous volumes of data, help with segmentation and targeting, improve logistics, and optimize various facets and stages of business processes.

Should creative people worry? AI like the human brain is capable of learning from the information or experiences that already exist. But at a speed that the human brain just cannot comprehend. Based on all the data that it gathers and understands, it comes up with content. Some of it can be great – some of it, not so much. While it can come up with content, AI is not so great at being very creative or at coming up with concepts. What it can do really well, is follow commands and come up with lightning-fast responses.

So while AI is great for coming up with multiple versions of a headline or multiple versions of an email or multiple versions of an email subject line, Artificial Intelligence is not going to come up with wildly creative concepts or copy.

It will quickly go through all the available data, understand it quickly and come up with something based on all this information. But can it come up with something completely new and creative? Not quite.

And so there will be hits and misses – as we have just seen. Some of it can really work – but some of them just need an actual human to bring in the magic.