ChatGPT – Impacts for the Future of Thought Leadership

If you read the news, use social media or talk to anyone here in Australia, you’ve probably heard about ChatGPT. It’s no surprise. ChatGPT had one million users within a week of its launch in November 2022. By January 2023, ChatGPT had 100 million users. Today, it has 13 million daily visitors. It is, without a doubt, the biggest online breakthrough since the internet.

Many experts, consultants and thought leaders who rely on content creation in their work wonder what impact ChatGPT and AI will have. Expert opinions are mixed, but Josh Bersin, founder of Bersin by Deloitte, welcomes ChatGPT and AI due to its ‘enormous possibilities’ while acknowledging that we can’t yet ‘fully predict the impact’.

We may not understand all the impacts that AI will have. But it is clear that it will have major impacts on content creation for thought leaders, creators, coaches, consultants and experts.

Let’s dive in on what some of those impacts might be.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer. It’s a ‘chatbot’ developed by Open AI that is capable of performing as both a content creator and a search engine.

Open AI’s mission is ‘to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity’. ChatGPT produces AI-generated content based on what its (human) user types in. So, if you ask it to ‘write an 800-word blog post about turtle care’, it will produce something that is researched (to some degree) and readable.

I wanted to test this out myself. So, I asked ChatGPT to design a social media calendar for the next 12 months. This would normally take me an hour of work. ChatGPT did it in two minutes, giving me something fairly usable. Of course, it needed my input to make it truly brand-focused and to implement my own thought leadership, but it was a place to start.

As you can see, ChatGPT is a bit of a blunt instrument. While it will produce something, it can’t replicate new thinking. It can only scrape what’s already been done and written about somewhere else on the internet. It can’t replace the finesse, input and experience of thought leadership.

What about visual AI

Visual AI generative tools can give us prompts for content and even design entire book covers. The proliferation of AI-generated images has prompted technology companies such as Microsoft and Canva to create their own generative product features:

• Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator asks users to ‘describe what you’d like to create’, with image examples including a ‘lemon surrealist painting’. It’s available to Microsoft 365’s 345 million subscribers.
  
  

• Canva has created a text-to-image generator, where its 100 million monthly users can type what they would like to see and wait for Canva to generate an image (their example is ‘A panda surfing a wave’).

The benefit of using visual AI generators is that you can quickly create unique images for your practice with no prior design experience – and for free if you choose to use Canva. This opens the door to endless possibilities for content creation, from social media tiles to book covers.

Content Creation Bootcamp – we tested ChatGPT

We tested ChatGPT at our recent Content Creation Bootcamp. Some attendees were reluctant to use it as it felt like cheating – or they wanted to rely on their own thinking.

Most were excited and surprised by the way ChatGPT could help them. It’s a tool that’s particularly helpful for locating research and creating metaphors to use in your written content.

Up to now, people have been consuming more content than we’ve been able to create. It’s a rapidly growing industry, with an estimated value of over US$13 billion. ChatGPT is a tool that can help close that gap.

Four impacts of ChatGPT for thought leaders to consider

1. The impact on Google and SEO

ChatGPT will significantly increase the amount of written online content. More people will find it easier to create written content, crowding every field of expertise.

But it’s important to remember that AI-generated content is considered plagiarism when used exactly as provided (because it will be scraped from other sources). In addition, Google can detect AI-generated content, so it can’t be used as is on your website. That being said, ChatGPT is a great way to start your content, which you can then finesse and build on.

A helpful model

Remember that ChatGPT can only create content based on the user’s input. People often get stuck on what to type into ChatGPT (maybe the blank page and blinking cursor are a little confronting). The quality of the user and the quality of the thinking still matter. A helpful model to use ChatGPT is:

It’s vital that you are moving into quadrant D if you want to use ChatGPT as an effective tool in content creation.

2. ChatGPT means more videos and reels

With the rise of written content, video content will become more important than ever. It’s the video that will allow you to rise out of the crowd of content creators.

However, as with written content, ChatGPT can help you create video content quickly and relatively easily (depending on your video editing skills). First, generate a script from your descriptive input. The AI-generated script can then be copied and pasted into an AI video generator to create a video narration (which could be narrated by an AI avatar). Finally, you can have further creative input through editing your video or reel by adding music, imagery or text. It will then be ready to embed on your website or share on social media.

3. Books

The rise of AI-generated content will make having a publisher (rather than self-publishing) more important. More readers will look for the rigour, authority and trust that comes from having a known publisher and book distribution chain. Places like Amazon may become less trusted, as they are known for accepting anything for publication.

4. Your thinking remains paramount

ChatGPT cannot replace your original thought, innovation and expertise. Nor can it replace your experience, reputation and trust built up through human networks and connections. You must continue to be a thought leader and critical thinker and produce innovative, original content with your own unique perspective.

AI can only help you start the writing process – you still must know what you want to say and what you want the result to be.

Ways to use ChatGPT

ChatGPT can be a fantastic tool for supporting your content creation endeavours. It can help you to:

• Brainstorm your initial thoughts or ideas for an article.

• Write a first draft.

• Rewrite your own first draft.

• Find a title for an article.

• Find a good metaphor.

• Locate appropriate research (this will need to be confirmed/checked).

I’d love to hear your thoughts….