Imagine the printing press, photocopier, mobile phones, and the teasmaid all being invented at the same time. That’s how I feel about the arrival of ChatGPT and its impact on creativity.
Next week, the PRCA will be running one of the first workshops in the world featuring ‘Creativity and ChatGPT’ and it’s a wake-up call and phenomenal opportunity - but only by having the right foundations and framework place to realise its true potential.
Here are seven key pointers for how to realise the tactical and strategic potential of ChatGPT and wider AI on creativity in communications and public relations:
1. People need to be better master craftspersons in PR and communications
ChatGPT despite its wonderful capabilities is still essentially a tool. Like any tool it can be used well or poorly, in a limited capacity or realise unlimited possibilities beyond your wildest dreams. The more you can become a master of your craft, the greater your capability to be a skilful architect or engineer of making great creativity happen with ChatGPT.
There’s no one in the PR and Comms world with a GCSE in ‘Creativity’. The better you understand the dimensions of creating great ideas the greater potential benefits from ChatGPT.
2. Insight is even more of a God
With a massive availability of answers generated through ChatGPT the more profound is the need for greater insight - asking the right questions. ChatGPT provides opportunities to rapidly research and gain readily-presented information to exercise your sagacity.
3. More promiscuous ideation: deeper and wider integration of idea development
Great new ideas will often emerge from the fleshing out of an existing idea. ChatGPT offers idea iterations on speed. The faster you generate wider ranging alternatives the bigger the picnic of selecting which ideas to dine out on.
4. Use more tools to exploit your tools
Already we are witnessing not just the emergence of ChatGPT as a tool but a whole raft of supporting tools to aid more sophisticated or further tools to extend the boundaries of your creative performance.
5. Better managed serendipity
Serendipity, the art of chance discovery of ideas is a vital quality of the exceptional creative practitioner. And yes, it is possible to make yourself luckier in finding chance opportunities through managed serendipity; by being mindfully curious, embracing dialogical thinking, and embracing the new and unexpected.
6. Greater humanity with colour and narrative
If a machine can instantly generate content, the human needs to be a curator and narrator of this content, adding stuff the machines cannot currently do. You need to add a thumbprint of humanity to your communication. You need to instil greater emotional depths within the content, and more powerful narratives around the wider significance of the content.
7. Greater humanity with a human accent
In an age of instantly generated content created from mainstream culture, will this spark a cultural trend of counter-machine alternatives? The traditional London vernacular of Cockney rhyming slang for example, where alternative words are used that rhyme with the intended word, is a story of a community developing a language - in the Cockney’s case the police and establishment - that is not understood by outsiders. Will the creative ear make greater use of the nuance of accent or counter-culture to stand out in a world of ChatGPT content?
“We are witnessing a game-changing development with the arrival of ChatGPR. PR and Comms practitioners need to be changing their game to go beyond just surviving to realise phenomenal competitive advantages that ChatGPT provides. If they don’t they will be left behind, alongside history’s switchboard operators, VCR repairers, video store employees, and lamplighters. Help however, is at hand.” said Andy Green of AndyGreenCreativity who is running the PRCA Creativity workshop,
There are a few remaining places on the PRCA Creativity workshop next Tuesday (Feb 21st) book here.