Ep. 46 - The Future of AI in Social Media

Will Artificial Intelligence take over social media in the near future?

It's a question Riley discusses in this week's episode of the Digital Wrap-Up!

Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, is the hot topic on the internet right now, and for good reason. It's being used for new applications almost daily. You've heard of Chat GPT, right?

So with AI becoming so prominent in many different aspects of our lives, how will it make its impact on social media?

We're already beginning to see social media management softwares implement AI caption writing into their platforms.

Will it go beyond just caption writing? Will AI take over the role of the social media manager?

Riley doesn't believe so. He explains why in the episode.

Let us know what you think about AI in social media! Tweet us: @HardenDigital.

Enjoy the podcast? You can directly support the show by visiting http://bit.ly/DigitalWrapUp.

Transcript

Riley Harden: 0:00

How will artificial intelligence be used in the world of social media? And will it be good or bad for social media managers moving forward? That's a topic we're gonna discuss today in the digital wrap up welcome back to another episode of a digital wrap up. My name is Riley, and I'm the host, and I'm the CEO of heart in digital and design. So today's gonna be all about AI. I know it's the the second episode in a row that we've kind of talked about artificial intelligence, if you haven't watched or listened to the last episode with Kaylee, and I go back and give that a listen or watch on YouTube. As we talk about the new feature that's rolling out or soon the rollout for Photoshop, where you can edit and create crazy backgrounds that look real using Photoshop AI features. But instead of you know, that's more of a design photography, application of AI. Today, we're going to talk about how it's being used in social media and kind of the future of AI and social media, we've already begun seeing some software's that we use for our clients for creating content, start implementing AI, both. So we use Agora Pulse, which I've talked about before, and they just implemented a new kind of AI content writing feature. And then we're also experimenting with another social media management platform right now, too, that also has a same similar feature. That is really, you know, everybody knows about like chat GPT right now and how you can use that to write blogs, write papers, and school, which obviously, you know, teachers are catching on and, and realizing that they're not real articles or papers, but you've been able to kind of create content, write blogs, create social media posts, and things like that with chat GPT for a while, but now, some of these software's are implementing it directly into their platforms. So you know, when we go and create a post for any of our clients, or even the hardened digital accounts, we have an option to kind of generate a copy or a caption for the post. And so you know, you give it some key points or key topics that you want to discuss. And it can create a, an entire caption for you. And the new one that we're testing out can create captions specifically for are specifically tailored for different platforms that you're using. So that's kind of the the big one that sparked my interest. With the whole social media side of AI, is obviously content creation, and I was talking about this morning with our networking group is that it really allows the people who are not creative writers or who don't know how to, not necessarily don't know how, but don't have that creative link to them that, you know, it's just real generic content all the time, AI can be used to kind of spice up that content, make it more interesting, or maybe tailored specifically to different audiences based on who you're writing the content for, who your clients are, who your audience is on social media, so it helps you kind of be more creative in that, that world of content creation, which, you know, should you be a social media manager, I think this question, in a way got brought up was, you know, I mentioned creative writing is like, well, if you aren't a creative writer, then you shouldn't be writing in the first place, but which is a valid point. But this kind of allows people who may be creative writers or social media managers, we, we experienced writer's block to just like, people who write books, or people who write blogs and articles and things like that. We can experience writer's block too. And this can kind of just propel you through that or you're just having a rough day not feeling super creative, and what you're writing. So I think that specific feature of how you can use AI for creating content for social media is very beneficial. You know, it does allow some of the people who maybe aren't great at writing or shouldn't really be doing social media or creating content for social media. It allows them to kind of sneak by I think Kaylee and I talked about that in the last episode. But you know, you got to live with it, some people are just always going to take advantage of the systems to kind of benefit themselves. But I think overall, for the world of content creation, AI is going to be a good thing moving forward. You know, I reference or I keep talking about AI and I had an idea of so not necessarily social media related, but HubSpot, which is what we use for a lot of our sales and marketing efforts, also has a new chatbot system. And one of the things is it can write a blog for you. And so I was like, Okay, well, what is this AI chatbot, say about the future use of artificial intelligence and social media. And it produced a pretty lengthy blog for the heart and digital blog, you can check it out now at heart and digital.com/blog. And, you know, I decided to run with it, and I posted it, I made a couple of changes, I think, but and then, you know, added a header to break up the sections, you know, just real simple stuff. And it talks about some of the most exciting applications of AI, which is the whole chatbot feature for social media. And I think it can be implemented more in the future of when people send you messages on your Facebook business account, Instagram, whatever platform you're on, being able to automate those responses and not having to have somebody necessarily send out a response. I don't know exactly how that works, or how that'll work. I know, there's some, like the FAQs and frequently asked questions, but you kind of have to auto generate not auto generate, but generate those answers those questions and those answers ahead of time. So there's still some manual work there. But I think the future will be, you could send the hardened digital and design a message on Facebook and the chat bot will know everything about the business that could possibly be asked and will be able to automatically respond to that. So which is kind of scary. When you think about how are they getting all this information? You know, like? I don't? What's Riley's phone number? What's the CEOs phone number? Obviously, my phone numbers associated with the business already. So that's not a big thing. But you know, like, is there some scary features of what AI can dive into about your business? Like, how many clients does her own digital design have? What's their annual income, revenue, whatever it may be that kind of stuff, just now thinking about that, like if, you know, there's people out there that are gonna abuse the AI systems and everything, and try and find out and creep on you and all that stuff. So I'm sure that side of it's a little scary to think about what they could ask, hopefully, you know, like, meta and Twitter and Tik Tok and whoever else LinkedIn will put some safeguards in there. But again, it's AI, like, what can it run with, once it just teaches itself or learns different things. So that's, that's one of the scarier things to think about, just in general about AI in terms of running a business and how things can be communicated about your business. But I think overall, AI is going to save time in that with those different types of chat bots that are on that we'll probably continue to see moving forward on a bunch of these platforms, you know, saves time, you know, that raises the question, Will that get rid of the need for social media managers, if AI can create the content, right, different posts for you, it can respond to all the comments and all the questions on Facebook and messages and all that type of stuff, will that eliminate the need for a social media manager to kind of be doing all that? And, you know, I think that's a big fear. I think that's a fear for kind of everyone, no matter what industry you're in is how will AI kind of take over my job and do all these things that I get paid to do that now? This AI bot can do for free for the company, and then I get let go or fired or whatever it may be? How can we kind of safeguard ourselves against that? It's I'll speak specifically for social media managers that I don't think there's a way that AI bots will ever be able to fully replace a social media manager because you have to think about recording video. is taking pictures, doing all this other stuff that physically requires you to have a phone out, have a camera out and actually do the physical work in the office or out in the field or wherever you're located and getting content from, I don't think there's ever going to be a way that a bot on your computer on your phone can do that for you, there still has to be some human interaction there to get a lot of the content, yes, they can help the AI bots can help write the content for you, and write captions for you. But the physical act of getting content unless, you know, if you're just creating a bunch of graphics, which sometimes we do for our clients, because we're not local, or they don't have a lot of great content, opportunities, because they're just in an office all day, and we're not coming to their office, you know, we have different packages and different levels that we work with people. So sometimes we do use a lot of just graphics and images that they send us, you know, AI, probably, if I had to guess will be able to create graphics and do all that stuff for you. You know, if in that sense, I feel like those types of social media managers could be replaced with AI doubt in the future, or in the future. But overall, I think, especially, you know, well, I say, especially in developing a strategy, but I can literally go into chat GPT right now and type and create a social media strategy for a small marketing firm that works with other small businesses, and it'll pop out ideas, you know, maybe I shouldn't have admitted that. Because now anybody can just go in and do that for their business. But, you know, that's, you're gonna get what this robot AI system says, versus somebody who's been creating content for years and worked with small businesses and has that experience. So if you want to use AI, go for it to create a social media strategy. But overall, I think you'll still benefit from working with an actual human and developing that personal relationship with them. Because you know, if something happens, and why isn't this working? Or how can we better do this? Or do that with our social media and content creation? Having that human relationship is always going to be more beneficial, I think, than working with a chatbot. So yes, I think there is that overarching fear of will social media managers go away. But I personally don't think that'll ever happen. I think there's industries that could be completely replaced by AI and different robots and things like that. But short of actual robots being created and robots being able to take pictures on phones and being full time photographers and videographers and all of that, which, you know, what, maybe 100 years, 50 100 years down the road that might happen? I don't know. But for the foreseeable future, humans are still going to be required to take pictures, take videos, gather and create content on its own, or on our own. So I think we're safe for a while. Fortunately, it'd be a bummer for business personally, but I think we're good. So you know, I've talked about the downside of potentially losing jobs, the AI. Another one is that I can kind of see is another I guess, downside of AI? is the kind of manipulation of content and misinformation, the spread of misinformation by these content creators that are using AI. And you know, they're so good at crafting messages. And do the messages always have to be factual? There's no standard or regulation that's governing the AI bots that say, Yes, this information has to be factual by any means. So if you're just relying on, you know, write a statistical post or write a post with statistics from World War Two, I don't know why World War Two pops into my head, but you know, like, just thinking of stats or historical information or stats about, I don't know, vaccine efficiency. That's obviously been a huge topic in the past few years with COVID. But like, there's nothing that's telling these chat bots, that they have to be 100% factual, and if you're just relying on the chat bot too, are you just thinking that it is going to be factual that can definitely be a big concern when you have a bunch of people just relying on made up information and spreading made up information. You know, there's all this talk about misinformation and yada, yada, yada, I don't want to get too political. But there is a real concern. I think about trusting the AI too much with stuff without fact checking facts, checking it by yourself, in terms of what type of content and what type of information you're pushing out through social. So, you know, I think a way to avoid that, you know, if you're trying to stay on the ethical side of AI and social media content creation is that you only use it for creativity purposes, and not necessarily statistical, historical, or factual type of content more just opinion, or just like I said, creativity. Oh, what's the word? Just creative purposes, I guess, overall, but I think there are going to be people that try. There's always bad actors, like I said, but I think there will also be people that just don't think about that in general. And they just will be blind to it and deaf to it, and just, oh, well, I typed it into chat GPT, or this software's AI system, and it created a caption for me, and I just, I didn't think otherwise, I thought it just gonna be factual. And then you publish some crazy stat or crazy historical thing that's wrong, and it makes your brand or your business look like crap, because you posted something that's just not factually correct. And you get a lot of backlash and a lot of heat for it. So that's something to another downside that I could see moving forward. But, you know, I think overall, AI is going to be a good thing for social media managers. If you stay on the right side of it, and you purposely remain ethical, and think about these different issues that could arise and you stay on the right side of them, then you should be good to go. So I think that's kind of off in terms of the AI and social media, I think it's something that I'll probably be talking about a lot more down the road. But for now, it's just kind of test out these different chat bots, test out what you can say, and tell the the chat bots to create for your captions for I mean, it's a good idea of like, you're struggling for a content idea, and you don't have a strategy in place. You know, we always preach on creating a strategy so that on those days that you're like, I don't know what to post, you can then look back on your strategy. But if you don't have a strategy and you're struggling to come up with content, then be like, what type of content can I create for dental business today, or whatever industry you're in, and I'm sure it'll pop out some ideas. So yeah, I think like I said, we'll be discussing it more down the road, I'm sure. And you know, we've talked about social media with AI we've talked about photography and graphic design editing type stuff, I don't know if we'll do video because that's still kind of our least knowledgeable part of the whole digital world. Obviously, we do this, this podcast on video on YouTube and stuff and we create tic TOCs and Instagram reels but like long form video recording and different types of stuff like that, that's kind of out of my wheelhouse. So you know, like producing TV movies, whatever it may be, you know, video I'm just thinking of like, wedding videos that are like five minutes long and all that editing that goes into it and things like that i i Keep it real basic with my video editing so probably won't venture into that one. But if you have another topic related to AI and kind of digital marketing feel free to shoot it over to me Riley at hardened digital.com or tweet me on the hardened digital Twitter just at hardened digital be happy to talk about it or even want to come on the podcast and talk about AI and digital marketing, whatever it may be, be happy to have you on be happy to have you on in studio to which I think we're going to kind of transition real quick and talk about that to wrap up the show. So, you know, you've heard now to sound effects love and that one, just I'm going to probably use in transitions like this. But if you didn't hear or listen here or listen, that's the same thing if you didn't hear or watch the last episode with Kaylee. You'll see now if you go to the hardened digital YouTube, it's youtube.com/at, hardened digital, that I'm in a new studio have a new look. Have some new equipment here new mic, new mic stands new audio mixer that's down here on the desk that's out of view. But yes, episode two in the new studio, different angle from last time. So this new studio is great for helping us when we have two people on the show if Kaylee or Hannah joins me or if I bring in local guests, which we're going to start doing more of. But then also, I can have this straight on not necessarily straight on but this individual view as well and still have all the new gear and the new decorations and everything in the shot as well. So just a lot more versatile in what we're able to do. And a lot more professional looking instead of just having you know, we used to have the the hardened digital banner, which you know, it's a vinyl banner that you hang up at events or put on tables or fences, whatever it may be. That's what we used to have in the background. But looking forward to hopefully producing some more podcast for some of our clients. And you know, the space is available. We talked about this last episode. But the space here in Tipton is available if you are producing a podcast from home or you want to start your own podcast and you just need a studio to rent for cheap, you know, you want to knock out four episodes in a couple of hours. And you know, then you have your four episodes for the month or whatever you want to do if you're doing a weekly podcast. We have the perfect location for it. Now. It's not necessarily branded hard and digital, you can come in neutral brand, and it's just a nice studio to be in. And you can record your podcast, you can use our equipment to hook up your computer, if it's something that you want to have us produce. Absolutely, we can do that we can use all of our equipment, use my computer to record it. And we'll do all the editing and production for it as well. So there's just a lot of options for you. If you're wanting to either a start a podcast from scratch, or you want to have a more professional look and sound to your podcast, we can do audio, we can do video. And we'll leave it up to you. If you want to do all the editing and producing and recording and all that you can just plug in, you know all the equipment that we have here or will do it for you. Like I said, so really excited really liking the new studio. You know, these are super soft, leaned my head back and it's a nice little pillow. But the new podcast we're using rode pod mics and the new audio mixes the Rode Podcaster really good sound quality, I think after listening to the first episode, which is out now, if you want to go look it up at Again, that's youtube.com/at hardened digital. You know, and this week I even put in the new snowglobe not new but the snow globe from the old studio that sat on the desk out of frame now I had a chance to put it in here. So yeah, I think we'll do still some more tweaking for those interested I guess I know I've gotten questions about what what type of equipment we use and things but we'll do some more tweaking with equipment with you know, there's this space on the wall right here that's not being utilized for decoration. So I wouldn't say it's a final product, but it's definitely a lot better than what we had before and more professional and better sounding better looking so happy to help. I've really enjoyed podcasting. And you know, I never thought that I would get into offering podcast production as a service like a paid service. But I've learned a lot since I started Oh, what, a year and a half ago now I think with my podcast. And so just keep evolving and upgrading and making it better each week. So couldn't do it without the support of the show everybody who listens everybody who downloads each episode each week and who watch us on Youtube. Please, if you are interested in watching and checking out the studio, please subscribe to the YouTube so that you can get all of our videos pop up in your YouTube feed. If you do like to watch on YouTube, I think that was a thread with some of our machine and dog sled community got into on Twitter about why people actually watched videos instead of just listening to podcasts. And I really struggled to come up with a good answer. But I think people some there are some people that just do enjoy watching or listening. And instead of watching TV shows at night or movies at night, when they come home from work, they're watching YouTube videos. So there's definitely that market out there. And that's what we're trying to do with this is hit that market. And you know, somebody else in the networking group this morning mentioned that if you don't necessarily aren't or aren't able to listen, or you don't want to listen, but you'd rather read the captions or the closed captions, you can absolutely just mute the video and in read the closed captions instead of listening to it. So there's it just adds some more versatility and getting your content and getting your information out there. So that's why I branched into doing video or the start of this year, obviously, we had the office space and studio to do it. But I think it's just another avenue to get your name out there, get your brand out there, get whatever information you're trying to push. So if you need help, feel free to reach out. And again, I said thank you to all the support, if you do want to support the show, go to bit.li/digital Wrap up and you can make a monetary donation to the show. It goes directly to the show. You know, we just purchased some new equipment, it goes towards that it goes towards you know, just allowing us to both Kaylee and I and Hannah and I to continue creating content for you and hopefully helping you learn some things down along the way. So thanks again for all the support. Stay tuned for next week's episode. Yeah, not spoiling it. I'm not I'm done spoiling episodes from now on. So I know Kaylee and I talked about that. But it's I don't know why it's my tendency to do it is I just I have these ideas in my head and I want to talk about them now. So then I spoil it and then it doesn't happen. So tune in next week for another episode though. We'll be on vacation. I think everybody here at heart and digital, you know, it's a family business. So we'll all be on vacation and looking forward to some time away in Gatlinburg. So they'll still be a podcast episode, so don't worry about that. But we'll be taking a little time off so hopefully you're able to do the same as summer getaway I know it's just got up. I think it's supposed to hit 90 degrees today. So for the first time, so that'll be fun. Whoo. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for all your support and stay tuned for another episode of the digital wrap up next week. Take care