Media Buying Briefing: Could virtual interns and brand safety bots be the future of AI for media agencies?

Artificial intelligence may not be taking over media agencies’ jobs yet, but some of this technology is already sitting, and working, next to you.

While machine-learning tools have saved time and brain-crunching for many on the data/research side of the industry, AI tech took serious steps just recently into the content and even creative side of media. Some agencies and digital studios are creating virtual influencers for social media and brands, claiming younger audiences share a strong connection to these fictitious characters.

Digiday has also reported on agencies using AI to innovate for clients and train machines to detect brand safety issues – from automating creative and segmentation processes to cutting down on tedious tasks that can save time and money. The creative work stream has been a popular area for agencies to test AI capabilities, some of which can help teams generate content and art within seconds.

Perhaps the larger question for agencies now is whether generative AI can adequately take on the work humans don’t really want to do. The tentative and early answer seems to be yes.

One agency, New York City-based integrated marketing shop Codeword, is currently experimenting with developing an internship program with two “interns” created by artificial intelligence. The AI coworkers have names (Aiden and Aiko), identities and managers to report to for performance reviews.

Codeword’s three-month internship program launched this month for the first time doesn’t train human interns. Instead, Aiden and Aiko help out the firm’s creative team of 106 people, with the equivalent of their hourly pay donated to pro-women in computing organization Grace Hopper Celebration. Codeword, which is part of WE Communications, said the goal is to explore what human and AI collaboration could look like in the agency world.

“Basically in late November, we were working on a big project and someone suggested maybe we can use generative art, because we were under a really intense deadline,” said Kyle Monson, founding partner at Codeword. “Is it taking away any jobs? No, it’s actually really helpful and saves everyone a lot of time.”

While the interns won’t produce client-facing work, they will start handling tasks machines are good at – producing content at scale. For example, they can create volumes of rough concept thumbnails for moodboards, do news and trend research or analyze voice and tone for the editorial team. The idea is to pass on this “grunt work” over to AI and integrate them to streamline the creative process, Monson added.

Provided by Codeword

The internship program provides a learning experience for the agency. Aiko (left) and Aiden were designed to look androgynous and realistic, somewhat inspired by virtual influencers. Their names were the first to get generated based on names starting with “AI.” The trainees report to the senior art director and senior editor on the team, and both will get internal creative assignments and share their experiences on the company blog and social media. They will also get performance reviews over the …read more

Source:: Digiday