Good morning, Marketer, genAI: hype or hope?
That was a question posed to a panel at Zeta Live, a one-day conference hosted by Zeta Global at the New York Times Center in Manhattan last Thursday. The panel was unanimous: Neither of those. GenAI certainly isn’t all hype and there are better descriptions than “hope.” Exciting and scary were words that came up.
AI dominated the day, of course. Earlier in the day, Janet Balis, marketing practice leader at EY, joked that she was on the “obligatory hype panel for AI.” As an observer, I was pleased to see some speakers affirming that the use of genAI, by marketers and others, won’t be all clear sailing. Brandon Purcell of Forrester warned of the possible impact of regulation (much as I did here). Dave Penski, CEO of Publicis Media, spoke about the “human-in-the-loop”: “When you have 1,000 assets how do you approve them? How do you put governance around that?”
That’s a question I’ve been asking for months and I still haven’t heard a persuasive answer. But we’ll keep having the conversations.
Kim Davis,
Editorial Director
