Achi news desk-
Rebranded as “Voltswagen”. Close Trader Joe’s. Sending food delivery confirmation for $750.
The variety of April Fool’s marketing pranks gone wrong is as varied as their reception. Met with everything from smiles and social media shares to confusion, derision or even outrage and falling stocks, the scrappy promotion tactic represents a risk that can endear customers to a brand as quickly as it can lose them.
“One person’s humor is another person’s offense,” said Vivek Astwanesh, a professor of marketing at McGill University.
As April 1 approaches, consumers would be wise to extend even more skepticism, as experts say artificial intelligence increases the potential for high-tech promotional gimmicks. Whether through creative text-to-video tools that evoke rich scenes from explicit instructions or chatbots that serve up endless ad ideas on command, AI raises new questions of authenticity and can make it even harder to distinguish between jokes, facts, and deep fakes.
“In the coming days, we will see many advertisements powered by GPT-4 or other AI tools,” Astwanesh said, referring to the latest version of OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT program.
Even before the AI breakthroughs of the past 16 months — OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022 — the power of technology to surpass human ability played a role in corporate hijacking.
On April 1, 2019, Google announced that it had figured out how to communicate with tulips in their language, “Tulip”. He proposed a translation between the petals of the perennial plant and dozens of human fangs, citing “major advances in artificial intelligence.” The video closes by stating that Google Tulip will only be available that day, leaving few in doubt about the joke.
But past misunderstandings suggest that future misunderstandings can lie ahead, amplified by the capabilities of AI.
Ahead of April 1, 2021, Volkswagen AG issued a news release that its American division will change its name to “Voltswagen”. Several news outlets reported the statement, despite some doubts about its authenticity. The confusion that greeted the announcement grew even more when the company told reporters who asked if it was a prank in April that the auto giant was completely serious — only to admit to the prank hours later.
The joke fell like an old tire following the Volkswagen “diesel” scandal several years earlier, when US authorities discovered that the company had installed software on more than half a million cars that allowed them to cheat on diesel emissions tests.
Other April tricks that have backfired include when Yahoo News mistakenly reported in 2016 that Trader Joe’s would close all 457 of its stores in less than a year, and when British food delivery company Deliveroo sent its customers a fake confirmation email in 2021 for orders. of $750, leading thousands to think their accounts had been hacked.
Now, the ready accessibility and low user cost of many AI tools is opening the door for more companies to embrace the technology—including for April Fools’ fun that might go sideways.
“GPT-4 can instantly create a number of campaign contents, which can be video or still images. Then in a very short period of time and with very little expense or investment, the internal advertising or marketing team can filter the outputs that GPT-4 was produces,” said Astavansh. All that’s left is to pick one, tweak it with edits, and publish it.
To guard against fraud, Astwanesh said disclosure of both methods and intent will be key, especially on April 1.
“I hope they state or they give some information in their content that the Seed idea or the Seed content was generated by a generative AI tool,” he said.
Digital watermarking – embedding a pattern in AI-generated content to help users distinguish between real and fake images and identify who owns them – is one method of disclosure.
“It’s basically making sure that the images or videos that are produced by these platforms are labeled in such a way that when they appear on the Internet, they are labeled so that … users know that what they are seeing is AI,” said Sam Andrey, CEO of Dais, a think tank on the subject. Public Policy at Metropolitan Toronto University.
The technology’s potential for trickery is already well established. Watch for scams that use a loved one’s voice to convince their partner to wire money to scammers, or recent robocalls impersonating prominent political figures. Combine these with sophisticated images or digitally created figures and the result is the potential for deception on a massive scale, including by corporate actors.
“Even just a year ago it was more cartoonish,” Andrei said of AI-generated graphics.
“If it produces innocent, normal media and it lowers production costs, that’s less of a concern,” — for example, if AI were applied to Tim Hortons’ square Timbits, IKEA Canada’s meatball vending machines, or Jeep’s flannel interior Canada. Keeps you as cozy as a lumberjack in the Canadian wilderness.” They were all April Fools pranks last year.
“But we don’t need to use artificial intelligence to deceive people,” Andrey said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on March 30, 2024.
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