Partnership Series: Rise Partners Leverage Conversational AI to Drive Digital Marketing Innovation

AI is transforming the digital marketing industry, and conversational AI is playing a huge role. Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, the prevalence of conversational AI has grown exponentially, and many Rise partners have joined in on the fun. Microsoft, Google, and Meta, as well as Snapchat, quickly followed OpenAI’s lead by launching their own large language model tools, and our agency-level partnerships with these innovative companies mean Rise can best serve clients with new tech solutions in the digital media landscape as they emerge. 

What is Conversational AI?

Conversational AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that are able to engage with users through voice and text-based communication that mimics human conversation. You are probably familiar with applications like chatbots and virtual/voice assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. These, and other, innovations all utilize conversational AI technologies of natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLM), and machine learning to understand users’ unique inputs and provide customized responses. Don’t believe us that these technologies really do produce human-sounding results? The first sentence in this paragraph was produced after we gave an AI platform the prompt of, “what is conversational AI.” Pretty cool, huh?

Conversational AI is driving innovation in digital marketing through tremendous levels of personalization, data collection, and automation. These capabilities are enabling businesses to enhance customer service and engagement, deliver targeted marketing messages, and improve sales. And as AI continues to advance, we can expect to see even more creative applications of this technology in digital marketing.

Boost Your Digital Marketing with Rise Partners and AI

Rise’s formal relationships with many leading brands that have launched their own AI offerings uniquely position us as the premier digital marketing partner for future-forward success. And, as AI technology rapidly evolves, brands that evolve with it are better positioned to meet the needs of their customers and stay ahead of their competition. 

As of this blog's publishing, Microsoft is the only company mentioned that currently offers paid media or advertising options within their AI platform. However, as this technology develops and increases in maturity, we expect to see other AI platforms begin to offer their own in-platform ad options.

Here’s a brief overview of the conversational AI tools our partners have launched:

• Google's Bard

  The search giant has a whole suite of AI tools, but its latest offering is called Bard, which is a conversational AI chatbot based on Google’s proprietary LaMDA large language model (LLM). Developed shortly after the release of ChatGPT, Google says the goal of Bard is to make information and computing more accessible, and to help users further their understanding of topics and help them make decisions. Bard operates similarly to ChatGPT in that it creates unique text-to-answer queries in a natural, conversational way.

  As of this blog’s publishing, Bard is still described by Google as an experiment, and operates as a standalone utility. However, there are plans to eventually integrate the tool into Google Search. It was also recently announced that Bard can now generate, debug, translate, and explain code, in addition to other programming skills.

screenshot taken from Bard

• Microsoft's New Bing

Microsoft’s new Bing builds on the company’s existing search engine with a built-in AI chat feature that’s powered by ChatGPT’s LLM. Like other conversational AI programs, users of new Bing get human-sounding and detailed answers to questions and creative prompts (like writing a story, or even creating a graphic image).

Microsoft has also developed Prometheus, an AI technology that combines the Bing index, ranking, and search results with OpenAI’s GPT models. This means there’s more real-time content and data to use for its LLM training, and it also allows users to refine results, ask follow-up questions, and receive footnotes with citations to original sources.

Bing Chat is available in-browser at Bing.com, on the new Bing mobile app, and in the Microsoft Edge sidebar (which lets you use Bing Chat on any webpage). The Edge sidebar option is especially useful if users are on a webpage and need more information, as they can then open up the chat feature instead of a new tab. It also allows you to compose content on any site you visit within an Edge browser. For example, you can compose messages in Slack with its integrated ChatGPT feature, but you are limited to messages that occur in the Slack app. With Edge’s shortcut button for the Bing Chat sidebar, that is not the case— everything is integrated into the same platform.

screenshot taken from new Bing

• Meta's BlenderBot

BlenderBot is Meta’s conversational AI prototype that uses its own language model and was created to integrate into the company’s proprietary services, such as Messenger. Like other chatbots, it can search the internet to talk about any topic with users in a conversational way. Currently in the “research product” stage, BlenderBot is designed to improve itself through conversation and feedback from users— but not just any users: Meta has implemented technology that allows BlenderBot to identify and learn from helpful teachers, and specifically not learn from trolls who are just trying to negatively influence the model say unhelpful things.

Meta is also betting that the next generation of AI will be multi-modal; therefore, they are experimenting with AI-aided filters and ad formats, as well as video and other modes of communication, to provide an even more creative and enhanced experience for users. Meta says its BlenderBot research has made progress in combining conversational skills like personality and empathy with long-term memory and knowledge to carry out longer, more diverse conversations.

screenshot taken from BlenderBot

• Snapchat's MyAI

Snapchat’s chatbot, MyAI, is powered by ChatGPT and is customized for Snapchat. With a customizable Bitmoji to put a face to the tech, MyAI is essentially a personified, mobile-friendly version of OpenAI’s service within the Snapchat app— making it more like a friend than a search engine. It is also more restricted in what it can answer vs ChatGPT’s web-based platform, as Snapchat has trained the LLM to adhere to the company’s guidelines.

Snapchat is also one of the first enterprise clients of OpenAI’s Foundry, which is a GPT model designed specifically for large workloads. And the company has said it has plans to incorporate other LLMs besides OpenAI in the future and that it will use the data gathered from MyAI to inform its broader AI efforts. 

screenshots taken from MyAI

It’s clear that conversational AI systems are becoming an integral part of our daily routines and are rapidly reshaping digital marketing as we’ve known it. Through our top-tier partners, Rise is able to help bring the power that these AI technologies have to offer, directly to our clients, to help them make the most of today’s (and tomorrow’s) marketing innovations. 

Contact Rise to learn how we can help your business harness conversational AI to personalize customer interactions, improve engagement, and optimize your marketing strategies.