Introduction: In the surge of artificial intelligence (AI), its impact on leading platforms such as Amazon and Instagram often overshadows its longstanding presence. In this guest column, Purple Communications Director James Brown explores AI’s invisible prowess and its transformative role in travel retail. From the proliferation of AI tools to the evolving landscape of generative AI, Brown advocates for seamless integration, underscoring the indispensable human touch amid the tech revolution.
This is the year that artificial intelligence went supersize. But it can be easy to forget that AI has been around for years – and it powers some of the world’s leading companies. Look at Amazon’s recommendation list, which according to some reports fuels up to 35% of the ecommerce leader’s sales.
On the other hand, take the Instagram algorithm, where a small tweak on the backend last year resulted in mass outcry from the platform’s most influential users. The key outtake here is that the best AI feels invisible.
As Communications Director at integrated retail design and communications agency Purple, I have been a strong advocate for the role of technology in streamlining processes and enhancing creativity.
In March, I wrote a guest column for The Moodie Davitt Report (click here for access) that discussed the potential impact of ChatGPT and generative AI on the travel retail industry. The main argument of the piece asserts that while these tools can enhance creativity, the human touch, oversight and understanding remain key to engaging consumers in travel retail.
Since March, the market has been flooded with AI tools, workshops and consultants promising to accelerate your business’s AI revolution. In fact, more than 5,000 AI tools have been launched in 2023 so far. The key developments in terms of generative AI to take note of can be seen in three broad categories:
Evolution: The next wave of tools from the market leader – ChatGPT has gone multi modal and can now see, hear and speak.
Integration: Established players Google, Adobe and Meta enter the market – plugging into their existing ecosystems such as Gmail.
Localisation: Companies such as Salesforce are incorporating GPT technology into their own systems to drive productivity.
And business is responding. AI terms saw record mentions during the second-quarter earnings season this year, totalling more than 7,000 between all companies in the S&P 500 index. So, business leaders in travel retail are right to wonder: How should we implement this technology ourselves?
My mission is to convince you that the best AI seamlessly integrates into your business and functions as an unobtrusive but effective partner – the invisible AI.
The invisible AI experience
For organisations looking to adopt this approach here’s what the experience should look like:
Unique to your business: There is no one-size-fits-all in terms of what technology-mix will be most effective.
Feeling frictionless: AI should feel simple, efficient and even fun to implement.
Drives efficiency: Your teams would be able to manage larger workloads.
A silent partner: Supporting delivery of work at comparable quality without being noticed.
The Invisible AI can increase human productivity and directly support the bottom line. Taking the example of Purple as a creative agency, the new Adobe Firefly suite of tools has really caught our attention. Why? Because of the increased efficiency these tools can bring to the delivery of creative services:
Text to image: Deliver a mood board in half the time.
Generative background: Save a half-day rigging in an event space.
Generative recolour: Extend the life of digital assets, for example use one image across different seasons.
Text-based video editing: Halve the editing time.
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What’s next?
Looking ahead, the race is on between new and established technology players alike to bring the most powerful, user-friendly and creative generative AI software to the market. So, we can safely assume that today’s tools will become more sophisticated, capable and ultimately rewarding to those who master them in the workplace.
Are you curious about how generative AI could support your business? Here are some golden rules to get started:
Create an AI taskforce: Someone in your team is already experimenting with these tools – find out from them what works for your business and build up from there.
Build a culture of experimentation: Start with clear metrics – are you looking to save time, money or resources? Remember to test, track and learn to drive constant improvement.
Data, data, data: The topic of data has been discussed for a long time within the Trinity and today’s AI tools are powered by data – so it could be set to become even more important in the future.
Have fun: There is a good reason why ChatGPT has over 180 million active users – it is inherently fun, intriguing and thought provoking.
Having reflected on The Trinity Forum 2023, I believe that generative AI has the potential to go beyond use in purely creative scenarios, and play an instrumental role in addressing some of the key challenges discussed during the two-day forum:
Increasing consumer centricity
New advertising tools such as Meta Advantage+ are aimed at helping advertisers achieve better results through automation. For instance, the creative and caption can be adapted by AI based on performance – creating up to 150 variations of the same advert. In this era of renewed focus on the individual traveller, these developments help to deliver more personalised digital communications.
Increasing spend per head
We are starting to see image generation tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E help create more engaging traveller experiences that can drive spend per head. In terms of digital clienting, imagine how a virtual AI beauty consultant that analyses selfies on-the-go could engage travellers pre-trip. Or personalised retail environments which create ever-more meaningful connections with the shopper – and at scale.
Increasing collaboration between the Trinity
Beyond image and text generation, which have claimed most of the headlines around the rise of AI and generative AI this year, data analysis is equally exciting. In the world of travel retail, AI models could be used to crunch large amounts of data independently, anonymously and with less bias. In the mid- to long-term, this could encourage the Trinity to share more data to get a clearer understanding of the channel dynamics as a whole. ✈
