10 Predictions for the Future of AI in Content Marketing and Beyond

AI Trends for Future-proof Marketers and Teams

I’ve been working in the space of content marketing and technology for 10+ years, I’ve been helping to build one of the best AI content creation platforms for the past two years, and have been fascinated by human development, storytelling, and technology and its impact on society for all my life.

If you’re in marketing, copywriting, content creation, growth, and/or leadership — and you’re interested in this sort of thing: here are my top 10 predictions about AI for content marketing and beyond, over the next 5–10 years.

Chapters

The Future of AI in Content Marketing

1. AI Content Deluge

Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Expect a complete maelstrom, a sea, of near-impossible to discern AI-generated content (what’s amazing to me at this point is that AI-generated voice-overs in short video format seem to perform better than human voices!).

2. A Necessity for Continuous Growth Storytelling

Expect a growing necessity for people, companies, brands, to find a unique narrative. And a necessity to stay relevant, and to do so by staying in development of that narrative in co-creation with partners, customers and the market. The narrative that you keep work-shopping and evolving, and that helps you to achieve your desired levels of growth, is something I like to call your Growth Story and you can read more about this future-proof approach to content marketing, here.

Brands who don’t follow this line and somehow manage to still be successful, will be far and few.

3. A Weird AI Content Detection Arms Race

Expect a next boom of tools after the (current) boom of AI content generation tools to come up, which are designed to help humans figure out what content is actually made by or with the help of AI, and what is not — think; plagiarism-check for AI, but also deep fake detectors, AI-content blockers, and the like. Expect this to create a weird arms race.

4. Shift in jobs: higher-order consciousness processes

Expect jobs to shift, with potentially some job loss — but no, AI isn’t going to take over your job — although people who use AI smarter than you, and you not catching up or pivoting, might end up making you obsolete. Expect jobs to shift and people to follow suit, towards more strategic, empathy-driven, creative, and higher-order consciousness processes in marketing and other customer-facing departments, operations, and functions. And both in business and outside of it, in our personal and communal lives.

5. AI Humanizer/Editor; AI Democratic Ethics Officer

New jobs will be created, a lot of which are pretty much impossible for us to predict now, but I’m betting on a new role of AI content editor/humanizer: someone who checks, edits, and improves AI-generated content to make it more on-brand and human before publication. Another role is the — in some places already existing but much more important in the future — AI Ethics Officer. This person will not be operating in a philosophical bubble, but rather be co-creating ethical policies, guidelines, and processes together with the rest of the organization and its partners, prospective customers and current customers/users.

6. Surprise: humans are still going to be humans

After the AI hype blows over a bit, people will want what they’ve always wanted: an authentic human connection. Expect to see personal, deeply human creators and content flourish — and the creators and brands who are able to use AI in such a way that it strengthens the perception of their humanity and authenticity.

7. Macro trends will push AI further, not slow it down

Expect to see some weird, unexpected change in the macro that’s going to mean something unexpected for all of our jobs and companies — like a new war, a new pandemic, a new economic crisis, or something more Black Swan-ey. Whatever it is, expect it to not change the direction of the trends; expect it to make the same trends simply push harder.

8. AI will create macro Black-Swan trends itself

Expect to see some weird change in the macro as a consequence of AI getting better and better and more omnipresent and omni-necessary for success. This could mean odd things like massive layoffs in marketing departments or global (content) marketing professional strikes — or it could mean something more Black Swan-ish. One weird thing to bet on is the creation of AI-generated profit-sharing to employees, as a potential alternative for AI-taxes and/or government UBI and/or pension funds. It’s feasible to me that some very innovative companies might start doing this, and attract mainstream attention, kudos, and enthused new workers in a shrinking global workforce… and then who knows, it might become the new standard.

9. More Focus on Human Consciousness

Expect to see more and more humans drifting up to the top of the Maslow pyramid of human needs — partly because of AI’s presence in their reality and in the macro — and expect one of the (necessary) consequences of AI growing and evolving toward human-like consciousness, to make it much more common for us to want to understand our own consciousness better.

10. Surprise: More Emphasis on Writing and Presenting Skills

Expect to see writing and presenting drift back into the core of what are viewed as necessary human skills, in education, personal branding, and all manner of professional environments. Writing and presenting are ways to not only think, and improve our thinking, but also ways for us to show our thinking process — which will be ever more necessary in places where humans collaborate, if only simply in order for us to know how someone arrived at certain conclusions, strategies, storylines, content, and even finished products — and what parts AI played in that process.

Do you want to get ready for the future of Branding, Storytelling, and Content Marketing?

If you want to learn more about this subject, and you really want to future-proof yourself, your brand, or your marketing team and processes — you might want to check out our AI Content Marketing course at StoryLab.ai.

This AI Content Marketing course is for you if you’re a marketer, content creator, or leader in marketing or business, and want to start thinking more strategically and holistically about AI and how to integrate it into your content marketing strategy and processes.

Yes, we talk about how to get the most out of AI for smarter, faster, and more cost-effective content creation processes. Yes, we talk about trends and the different tools you could use, and we talk about prompt engineering.

But more importantly, we talk about what this new disruptive technology really means for your company and for your brand — and help you think about how to use the emergence of AI (or any disruptive technology) to redefine what success and growth signify for you as a professional, for your team, and your company — in the context of marketing.

If this sounds like just the thing you and your team need, check out the course and sign up today — gaining one month of free access to the StoryLab.ai Community + one month StoryLab.ai Unlimited, as a bonus!

Author bio:

Erwin Lima: What inspires Erwin is helping people, teams and brands to become the best version of themselves. Guiding them with curiosity, empathy, and Growth Storytelling.

Over the past 10+ years as a copywriter, author, consultant, and coach, he’s helped dozens of Brands, Teams, and individual human beings to grow their sense of motivation and focus, but also their reach, engagement, and revenue— through the power of their own story. You can find Erwin on LinkedIn and on his website.