Alex Schultz, Meta's CMO and VP of analytics, says marketing leaders need to focus past the hype and towards the long-term trajectory of AI to see where the industry is headed. He was interviewed by Business Insider at the Cannes Lions 2024 International Festival of Creativity.
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00:00The thing I'd focus on with AI is actually looking to the future.
00:03Probably the best thing that I've found to get past hype
00:07is to be in the place where you look for real results.
00:15Since 2007, when we ranked News Feed, our AI has been absolutely core to our success.
00:20And it's kind of a joke that when it becomes productionalised,
00:23it's machine learning, and until that point, it's AI.
00:26And so that's kind of true.
00:28In terms of concrete things people can use today,
00:30I think we have some amazing creative tools out there.
00:34There's two ways to look at them.
00:35We have the inspirational tools, the ones where you can go and you can ideate.
00:39They're not for going out and actually creating creative that you ship,
00:43but stuff like Meta.AI's Imagine project or our Meta.AI Flash,
00:48where you can see the AI update an image in real time.
00:50That's a really great thought starter and way to be creative
00:53and get yourself going, but not necessarily producing an ad.
00:57And then in our actual system, we have concrete stuff that I use,
00:59like expanding background images. That's a very concrete one.
01:02You ship something that is in a 9x16 format and you want it in a 16x9 format.
01:07Well, we can do that with expanding the background today with tools that we offer.
01:10So those are two concrete ones you can use right now.
01:12The thing I'd focus on with AI is actually looking to the future.
01:16I think we're bound to go through some kind of trough of disillusionment at some point.
01:21And I'm worried that people will dip in, dip out,
01:24and not get the most out of this technology because of that.
01:27Whereas if you take the long-term view and you try and skate to where the puck is going to be
01:31and ignore the wobbles of hype and disillusionment on the way,
01:36passing hype from tangible stuff is really, really, really hard,
01:39which is why I think it's important to take a big step back and look at the long-term trajectory
01:44and make sure that you're skating towards the long-term trajectory.
01:47Probably the best thing that I've found to get past hype
01:51is to be in the place where you look for real results.
01:53And you see actual things that have happened because of that project.
01:57And I tend to find that to be the best way to cut through the hype.
02:01And for my marketing side of my job, that's the right way to be
02:05because I adopt things that are beginning to work,
02:07not things that have not worked yet.