Interview: IBM marketing lead Dawn Liu on how to ethically work alongside gen AI

Earlier this year, when generative AI was just starting to creep into our professional and personal lives, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out to professionals in the media industry to ask them if they really thought that tools such as Chat-GPT had the potential to take over jobs and to infiltrate the workspace. 

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Surprisingly, the industry professionals we spoke to were of the belief that AI will not fully overtake the industry or certain roles in the business. In fact, a spokesperson at Publicis Groupe notably said that while the platform is revolutionary, it "won’t be changing the industry dramatically just yet".

Months later, in March, we reached out to them once again and asked them GPT-4 for dummies: 101 on the even more powerful version of ChatGPT considering the evolution of the platform and how it has been adopted by Microsoft, schools, offices and more.

Responses were only slightly different with some saying that while they were not convinced that it would outright eliminate or pose a full-on threat to writers and marketers but that it would be helpful in basic advertising material such as blog posts, PR communications and newsletters.

Fast forward to today and AI has become such a staple in our lives that some companies such as Pizza Hut are even using it to create full on ad campaigns and many are seeing how it can simplify processes and contribute to more efficient processes. But, as we all know, it is important that we are cautious when using because AI is not always safe and accurate.

According to Dawn Liu, the marketing and communications lead for data and AI Asia Pacific at IBM, generative AI has been a perfect example of how humans and machines can work together to complement and bring out the best in each other, she said.

"In the case of art, tools like DALL-E and Dream Studio have brought art to entirely new dimensions. Yes, there might be cases whereby some artist takes the AI generated work as their own. But they will be the average Joe in time to come," she added.

Saying that, Liu explains that as much as we leverage AI to augment the work we do in marketing and communications, today, it’s the responsibility of marketers to validate and fact check the data and content prior to usage or release.

"When leveraging generative AI tools and foundation models for our work, I think it is also critical for us to ask key questions," she said. These questions include if the model data is trustworthy, what the source of data is, if training data has been filtered for objectionable content, if it has been benchmarked against internal and external models to help enable responsible deployment and if it addresses key issues including governance, risk assessment, privacy concerns and bias mitigation.

It is also important that the data used is accurate and filtered for privacy concerns, which is a big threat particularly when you use an AI model which doesn't have AI guardrails, said Liu.

At the end of the day, when it comes to using AI as a comms professional, it is in your best interests to leverage AI as your productivity assistant and add your own flavour to it to augment what you do, said Liu.

Check out more of what Dawn Liu has to say at #PRAsia #Singapore on 2 November at Paradox Singapore Merchant Court where you will be able to connect with 100+ PR and communication leaders worldwide to share ideas, forge partnerships, and unlock endless possibilities.

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