Expert Speak: Is there a need for a ‘Made with AI’ tag for transparency?

While AI and deep fake have taken quite an innovative approach when it comes to influencing the viewers, the lines between what’s real and fake are getting blurred. So is there a need for a ‘Made with AI’ label to keep advertisers in check?

Picture this - you log on to an online shopping website to take a look at the models wearing the latest fashion clothing, take your pick and move on. If observed closely, you will later realise the models looked oddly perfect on the screen and were probably made with AI.

Fashion brand Levi’s has been testing AI-generated clothing models to ‘increase diversity’. This is especially concerning considering AI is being used to replicate humans of varied cultures, sizes, and ethnicity.

While AI and deep fakes have taken quite an innovative approach when it comes to influencing the viewers, the lines between what’s real and fake are getting blurred. Its catalytic and scarily realistic-looking developments are why there’s a demand for official guidelines from industry veterans and consumers. 

In 2021, with the rise of the influencer marketing trend, the inability to figure out if a paid collaboration has been assimilated into content, forced the Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) to make the ‘paid’ tags mandatory for content creators. Two years later, the clarity given to consumers seems to have made a smoother functioning for businesses and influencers with the ‘paid partnership’, 'Ad', and ‘collab’ stamps being visible on all social platforms. 

So is there a need for a ‘Made with AI’ label to keep advertisers in check?

Industry View

When influencers were asked to make a clear distinction to their paid collaborations by highlighting it in their hashtags, it didn’t negatively impact the industry, states Sheetal Goel, Digital Marketing Head, Aditya Birla Group. 

“The consumer is intelligent and always right. So even if the hashtag or tag of ‘Made with AI’ comes in, I don't think the consumer will mind as long as they're getting the information in a format that they want, if it’s relevant to them.”

Dr. Praphul Chandra, Co-founder and Advisor, TreasurePACK believes that transparency and building trust with customers is more important. He doesn’t think a vast majority of people would object to content created by AI, citing ChatGPT’s milestone of achieving a million users in less than five days. 

“The issue is not that people don't want content created by AI, I think there's a sense of cheating that people feel if they realize that what they thought was created by humans in fact, created value. The stamp of ‘Made with AI’ could build clarity and trust amongst the users and will help the adoption of this technology.” 

AI gains more acceptance

Lulu Raghavan, Managing Director, Landor & Fitch adds that it’s important to believe in the power of human creativity. “You wield the power, not the machine. Don't lose touch with the actual consumer that you're creating the marketing for.”  

The rising epidemic of deep fakes and possible violations also requires due diligence in the ideation and execution process. She mentions that while producing original work and curating the final solutions to show to clients, the team at Landor & Fitch have to do the customary checks to see if it's not original because somebody could have come up with the same concept. With tools like trademark databases, they are able to ensure that nobody else has that design. 

Also Read: Experts Speak: Data, tech and AI to shape festive marketing in 2023

MMA India’s Modern Marketing Reckoners report aimed to understand how AI has benefited marketers and a survey showed that they've started using AI to personalize and improve their consumer experience. It was noted that there has been a 20% increase in customer retention, and there has been a 25% increase in business growth. 

With this data, it’s important to note that consumers require a level of trust to gain a cohesive experience from businesses that are making use of generative AI. 

Adding to this, Moneka Khurana, Country Head and Board Member, MMA Global - India said that at MMA, they are trying to discover use cases that can help marketers understand what is beneficial and detrimental to their business. “We're trying to create a checklist which allows marketers to understand which territories to enter when it comes to utilizing AI and its power and what to stay away from.”

Recently, Wakefit.co launched a campaign featuring a AI-created kid version of Bollywood actor, Ayushmann Khurrana. Using deep learning AI programmes combined with thousands of images of the Bollywood star, the brand constructed a 360-degree CG model of young Ayushmann's face.

Tech Giants and Correlation to Data

Stanford University’s annual AI Index report ranked the total investments in AI startups in India at $3.24 billion in 2022, placing it ahead of South Korea, Germany, Canada and Australia.

Recently, advertising giant WPP announced their partnership with NVIDIA to build a generative AI-enabled content engine for digital advertising that will enable advertisers to create commercial content by implementing 3D tools into their mix. 

With tech giants like Google and Microsoft also constantly battling one another to race ahead of the game, Vasuta Agarwal, Chief Business Officer – Consumer Platform Advertising, InMobi highlights how this will impact the advertising industry and platforms. 

She said, “Tech giants often have access to vast amounts of anonymized data, advanced AI capabilities, and significant resources. This combination allows them to develop sophisticated mobile advertising platforms and offers highly targeted advertising solutions. They leverage their AI expertise to improve ad targeting, optimize ad delivery, and provide robust measurement and analytics tools for advertisers.”

With AI tech getting stronger, Virtual Influencers have also become a norm worldwide. Lu do Magalu, the most followed virtual influencer with 6.3 Million followers on Instagram, is a virtual human launched by Brazil's Magazine Luiza.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lu do Magalu 💙 (@magazineluiza)

India's top virtual influencers list include Kyra, a photorealistic virtual human. She has over 253k followers on Instagram and has partnered with brands such as boAt and Amazon Prime.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by K Y R A ✨ (@kyraonig)

As these companies continue to innovate and refine their advertising platforms, they are likely to shape the future of advertising. It will be essential for advertisers to adapt to evolving privacy regulations and continue to deliver relevant, non-intrusive, and valuable mobile advertising experiences to effectively capture the attention of consumers, Agarwal further added. 

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and creator of ChatGPT, during a meeting with PM Narendra Modi on his recent visit to India, said that OpenAI is currently self-regulating.

"We spent almost eight months on GPT making sure that it was safe enough to release. We build the technology, and we have worked with organisations to figure out what the limits should be and tested them all. We do think that coordination is important. So self-regulation is important. It is something that we want to offer. The world should not be left entirely in the hands of the companies," Altman said at the session.

Sheetal Goel of Aditya Birla Group has observed that there could be a rise in predictive AI models as data has become a large topic that everybody's been talking about.

“I think the next stage will be predictive models which companies have already started investing in. Every company has huge amounts of data from engagements with consumers. So the next step will be to see how all that information can be used to create these models.”

However, she mentions that companies are still trying to figure out how to stick to regulations to keep the data private. 

With the fundamental shifts in content creation, creativity and the easily accessible data being used to conjure lifelike pictures, videos and TVCs, the government of India is also working on setting guidelines for the use of AI models and it's only a matter of time before advertisers might have to stick to the ‘Made with AI’ tag alike the influencer marketing business.