No Brainer - An AI Podcast for Business

In today's podcast, the conversation centers around Google's deprecation of third-party browser cookies, its impact on marketers, and whether AI might be part of the plan for moving digital marketing forward. Greg Verdino and Geoff Livingston discuss the importance of first-party data, the challenges of unifying data, the role of AI and machine learning in data cleaning and personalization, and -- of course -- the need for a strategic approach to data, marketing, and AI.What to Listen For00:00 Introduction and Setting the Stage09:00 How Google's Deprecation of Third-Party Cookies Impacts Marketers20:00 The Importance of First-Party Data and the Challenges of Unifying Data33:30 The Role of AI and ML in a Post-Cookie Marketing Environment42:00 AI Depends on Strategy and Strategy Depends on Data Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Taylor Swift is taking over the world... Fake Taylor Swift is taking over the Internet (and hawking Le Creuset pot and pans). In this episode of No Brainer, Greg and Geoff explore the effects of AI-generated deep fakes, misinformation, and disinformation on brands.In the second part of the show, the guys flip the script to look at how some brands are using the same technology behind deep fakes to put synthetic spokespeople to work for their own marketing purposes.What to Listen For:00:00 Intro05:10 (Not) Taylor Swift, Le Creuset, and Fake Celebrity Endorsements12:00 (Not) Jason Aldean, "Go Woke Go Broke," and AI Narrative Attacks22:50 Fake News! And How AI Generated Clickfarms Steal Ad Dollars33:10 How Virgin Cruises and Cadbury Use Synthetic Celebrities Right38:58 Levi's and Volkwagen Generate Controversy with AI47:30 Brainer and No BrainerVisit https://nobrainerpodcast.com/ai-brand-fakes for the full show notes, including links to the stories we discussed on this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Verdino and Geoff Livingston, principal analysts from CognitivePath run down the most important AI news stories from this year's Consumer Electronics Show and give their take on what they mean for marketing decision-makers.Correction: During this episode, Greg refers to the FTC banning Walgreens from using facial recognition technology for five years. He misspoke. The correct retailer is Rite Aid. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/rite-aid-banned-using-ai-facial-recognition-after-ftc-says-retailer-deployed-technology-without Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's our big year-end blow-out! For this episode, we're joined by AI expert extraordinaire, Jeremiah Owyang, as we each make three bold predictions for AI in 2024. Anyone who knows Jeremiah knows that he's made a career out of being a step or two ahead of just about everyone else when it comes to making sense of the intersection between business and technology. For anyone who doesn't know him, Jeremiah is a long-time industry analyst turned entrepreneur and venture capitalist whose Llama Lounge events have become must-attend soirees in Silicon Valley's AI startup scene.Geoff and Greg first met Jeremiah back in the early days of social media. So, what happens when you get three veteran martech monsters together to share their takes on what lies ahead for artificial intelligence? Fireworks!00:00 Start of Show03:40 Prediction #1 (Jeremiah) -- AI agents in your email09:10 Prediction #2 (Greg) -- AI startup bloodbath (bye-bye, GPT wrappers)15:21 Prediction #3 (Geoff) -- The race toward multimodal AI sparks an acquisition frenzy20:36 Prediction #4 (Jeremiah) -- Google loses search market share to generative AI tools24:36 Prediction #5 (Geoff) -- OpenAI feels more fallout from its recent drama30:30 Prediction #6 (Greg) -- The rise of small or "specialized" language models35:56 Prediction #7 (Greg) The end of aimless experimentation as marketers get strategic with AI39:32 Prediction #8 (Geoff) D.C., the presidential election, and the rising rhetoric about regulation (and more) will make us "hate" AI.43:05 Prediction #9 (Jeremiah) Hyper-personalized content gets real Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A year! That's right -- it's been a full year since ChatGPT came onto the scene and sent the world into a tizzy over generative AI. To celebrate the occasion and because 2023 is winding down, Greg Verdino and Geoff Livingston taking a look back at the "Year of AI." What trends, tech, big news, and boo-boos caught and kept our attention during a year that was (shall we say) eventful? Listen or watch this pipin' hot episode of No Brainer to find out.As a bonus, you'll also find out why Geoff regrets buying a fancy new webcam!What to Watch For00:00 Start05:50 Geoff's Trend 1: AI Euphoria – Business communities were abound with excitement during the first half of the year.07:10 Greg's Trend 1: AI Hype Cycle — From Euphoria to existential risk, and everything in between.15:05 Greg's Trend 2: The Generative AI Horse Race — Open AI has opened the door, and it is a dynamic market with many competitors, including Claude and Google.18:40 Geoff's Trend 2: Fake AI — From shrink-wrapped GPT solutions masquerading as new solutions to bolt-ons, we saw a lot of masquerades.24:20 Geoff's Trend 3: The Struggle for Ethical AI — From data sourcing and public figures to government regulation and Open AI’s board scrap, ethical AI is a constant discussion point.31:20 Greg's #3: Coca-Cola's Bain and OpenAI Partnership — Coke has paved the way for corporate marketing AI innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Around mid-day on Friday, November 17, Sam Altman -- the high-profile CEO of OpenAI -- was fired without notice by the organization's non-profit b0ard. CTO Mira Murati was elevated to interim CEO, president Greg Brockman lost his own board seat and subsequently quit, and several senior AI researchers resigned too. Word on the street is co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever was the man behind the moves and put the debate between speed vs safety, profit vs purpose at the heart of the decision. Or was it rumors that Altman was planning a new AI company and hadn't been forthright with the board about what he's working on?But by Saturday, the company's blindsided investors (including Microsoft) were jockeying to reinstate Altman and demanding that the board resign instead. Will Altman return? Maybe. Maybe not.Is this a battle for the soul of generative AI? What does this mean for ChatGPT and all the tech startups that built their solutions on top of OpenAI's large langauge models? And what -- if anything -- should marketers make of the shakeup?In this "emergency edition" of No Brainer, Geoff Livingston and Greg Verdino summarize the unfolding drama (as of Sunday, 11/19 at 9am Eastern), and share their takes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At their first-ever DevDay, OpenAI announced GPT-4 Turbo with a massive new context window, training data through April 2023, and more cost effective API calls. But the news that most marketers latched onto was the launch of GPTs – a new way for anyone to create a tailored version of ChatGPT to be more helpful in their daily life, at specific tasks, at work, or at home. And then share that creation with others on ChatGPT paid plans (and eventually through a GPT store).With a week or so of thinking and tinkering, Greg and Geoff offer up their take on whether GPTs live up to the hype, what it’s like to build them, where they fit into the larger AI story, and what they mean for marketers.What to Listen For:00:00 Start10:40 What are GPTs? And why should we care?20:41 Is this Open AI’s App Store moment?36:43 The Low-Code, No-Code Future49:01 The End of Shrink-Wrapped Apps?54:17 Brainer/No BrainerGet the full show notes, including links to resources and articles mentioned during the show: https://nobrainerpodcast.com/openai-gpt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This one's for the photographers, the artists, the agency creative directors, the designers, and anyone who likes to dabble with visual creativity.We go deep into the rapidly evolving world of AI image generation. What might have seemed like a two-horse race between Midjourney and Stable Diffusion is now a four-horse (or more!) race in which major players like Adobe and OpenAI are betting on easy access and massive distribution to compete against quality. Listen (or watch) as we run down some of the latest news and developments in AI image generation, and discuss (even debate) what all of this means for marketers and the creative people that work in marketing.If that's not enough for ya, we take a look at what artists are doing to protect their work from being incorporated into Big AI's training data without permission or compensation. It's a battle for the soul of the artist -- and it's just getting started.What to Listen For(Time stamps are approximate.)0:00:00 Intro0:08:29 - Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are AI image generators to beat 0:15:21 - Adobe and OpenAI make some big moves with Firefly (better quality, now available in all Adobe Creative Cloud apps) and Dall-E 3 (integrated into a more powerful, multimodal ChatGPT for Plus and Enterprise customers), but are the moves big enough to catch up or leap ahead? 0:34:30 - Amazon launches an AI image-maker for Marketplace advertisers in a smart vertical play. What does this mean for Amazon advertisers and the agencies that service them?0:54:00 - A new tool called Nightshade offers artists a 'poison pill' that can infect generative AI models that scrape their work without permission, but how likely is it to do the trick?0:64:03: Brainer and No Brainer image generator takeaways for marketers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this special episode, Geoff Livingston interviews Forum3 co-CEOs Adam Brotman, of Starbucks and JCrew fame, and Andy Sack, a Satya Nadella advisor about their new AI crowdsourcing platform Hive3. Hive3 aims to let brands run ‘creator content’ contests to source creative for marketing campaigns. AI-powered creators are encouraged to enter contests with AI works for brands.It’s a fun concept. The three dive into how it works for brands, why brands might be motivated to experiment here with AI first, some of the cool things creators have already done on the beta platform, and much more. Then they turn their eye to the larger AI marketing world and the changes technology is making on the sector.A bonus segment features a top 5 listing of the greatest AI ghouls for Halloween as ranked by Bard, Claude, ChatGPT, and human-in-the- loop Geoff Livingston. What to Listen For:00:00 Start02:50 Introducing Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, Forum304:10 How Forum3’s Hive3 AI-powered creator community works11:32 Why brands should consider working with AI creators22:32 How Hive3 Uses AI29:20 How AI has subsumed Web3 and the Metaverse49:40 Halloween Special: AI Villains Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every week offers a whirlwind of AI announcements fueling the hype wave. And last week was no different: from ChatGPT's multimodal features to Amazon's billion-dollar bet on Anthropic and everything in between. But let's pump the brakes for a second.In today's No Brainer, Greg Verdino and Geoff Livingston digest some of last week's big announcements -- and warn marketers (and AI enthusiasts in general), let's not forget to question the narrative. How much of what Big AI announces is real innovation, and how much is just hype amplified by media and influencers? It's like a flashback to the dot-com era, where every press release was treated like the gospel.And here's the kicker: We're in uncharted waters. Journalism has taken a hit, and influencers are filling the void with quick takes and retweets that only amplify press releases. The result? A public that's easier to sway and a hype cycle that's even wilder than before. This podcast analyzes this trend using the bigger stories from last week to explore the line between noise and signal in the AI hype cycle.What to Listen For00:00 Intro08:45 On the AI Hype Cycle27:16 OpenAI says ChatGPT can now "see, hear, and speak," but can it?41:03 Seed round superstar Mistral AI releases its first open model47:29 Amazon’s strategic "not $4B" investment in Anthropic.54:28 Meta drafts AI for play, not productivity, with GenAI social chatbotsFor complete show notes, including links to the stories discussed in this episode, visit https://nobrainerpodcast.com/ai-fact-fiction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices