The backlash was immediate, but it didn’t stop the BBC from using text generated by LLMs—and purportedly checked and copy-edited by a human before approval—in two marketing emails and mobile push notifications to advertise Doctor Who. But now, the corporation will stop the experimentation entirely after a wave of official complaints pushed them to offer a response to concerned audiences.
There’s nothing wrong with using an LLM to help you brainstorm or write a draft of something. But, the end product needs to be original, or it will be obvious. Tools are tools. You don’t stop copy editing because a computer can check your spelling and grammar, so you can’t let “AI” have the final say.
Their mistake was thinking AI would be a good thing to mention.
The best way to handle LLMs is to treat them like an intern. They’re useful and can get a lot of work done, but you need to double check their work.
Backlash over marketing…emails and texts? Y’all are trolling me, right?
There is no mention of the quality of the marketing.
If it was made by an LLM, checked and it was at the quality of a human then what’s the issue?
BBC from using text generated by LLMs—and purportedly checked and copy-edited by a human before approval—in two marketing emails and mobile push notifications to advertise Doctor Who.
If they’re telling the truth then I don’t really get what’s wrong about that particular use
They weren’t just being cheap, they wanted to take human-written ads, auto-generate a million variations to send to individual people, then feed the ones that got clicks back in to train an AI clickbait generator. It also means the variations would be functionally watermarked so if anybody posted part of their text on Reddit or something the BBC could track who they sent that variation to.
How the mighty has fallen.
That sums up the current AI situation pretty well. It‘s especially sad because so many (former) flagships of creativity like Wacom, LEGO, Disney or WotC are being caught using it, effectively burning down what was left of their legacy.
Ironically I thought AI would be used by smaller teams or even single users like me to brainstorm or get new ideas, but it us being shamelesslu used by croporations who could afford to pay a full team of artists and still gain a lot of money, while indipendent artists and creators just refuse to use it up to that extent.
