From sexy to earthy : how AI product marketing could evolve

In typical Linkedin jargon, I specialize in product marketing. The function aims at translating product features into customer value through product positioning and messaging. A product feature in an engineer’s mind can be quite different from the value a customer or user perceives, that’s where people like us enter the stage. Looking at how generative AI centric companies do their product marketing is quite intriguing as, and that’s an hypothesis, every product attribute seems to mirror divine characteristics. Let’s have a look. 

“No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limit!” Recall this summer hit from 2 Unlimited when we were teenagers ? Anthropic, OpenAI and friends have been there too and this song could be their original soundtrack. Meta about their AI Studio says that the possibilities are endless. Or Sam Altam about the technology : “The technology has limitless potential... ”. Another example is Cohere referring to the “unlimited potential of AI”. You get the idea, the sky is the limit, or not even that ! I found one exception about Meta AI : “Our latest models bring mixture-of-experts architecture, native multimodal capabilities, near limitless context windows, and billion-scale performance.” Still to be defined where the “proximity of limitless” actually sits, probably at the frontier, another term used to define state-of-the-art large language models, as the outer edge of a known or settled territory. 

Anywhere, Anything, Anytime. Another product attribute that can be found in generative AI marketing is the notion of ubiquity. The tech can add value everywhere, even anywhere. Meta AI is available everywhere : “Easily use Meta AI wherever you need it, from the new mobile app, to desktop web, Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and our family of apps.” When it comes down to the question of use cases, it’s very simple: you can do anything. “Learn anything”, “Build anything”, “Make sense of anything complex” says Anthropic’s Claude. Last but not least, very often the newly published large language models are deemed “best in class”. Models are often the latest. Gen AI product marketing is simply full of superlatives. That’s a race and everyone wants to be the first one. An adjective that would gather all this above ? Probably “universal” as in the “universal AI platform” (Dataiku). 

Is God an LLM ? If we summarize, Generative AI tech shares a lot of some of the most prevalent divine attributes as Gods are, as well as LLMs : Omniscient “Ask anything”, Omnipotent “Get anything done”, Omnipresent “Gather information from everywhere”, Perfect “best in class frontier model”, Eternal “limitless potential”, good and just : OpenAI builds “safe and beneficial AGI”. OpenAI even positions itself as an entity above or distinct from the humanity it serves as stated in its mission : “Our primary fiduciary duty is to humanity.” If holiness was another attribute, here it is ! Missing in the picture : love and mercy that can be found in cultural references (“Her” etc…). Divine is definitely sexy.

Now, it’s challenging to get God incarnated or to get a LLM used and deployed. I don’t know for you, but I found this superlative and all encompassing vocabulary overwhelming the way God can be intimidating, if you’ve ever crossed paths with him/her. That's the 1M(B?)$ question of the use cases. Great tech but what for ? The potential is here for sure but how will it materialize? In the end, everyone is trying to take this God-like Tech down to the earth and I see three patterns for that purpose : (1) Incarnated  / Applied tech : think use cases, consultants, case studies, product experiences. A tech scales because it generates actions and material outcomes humans can grasp the benefit of. St Thomas etc…(2) Anthropomorphized / humanized : think voice, dialogue, interactions, interface, ELIZA effect. A Tech gets adopted because you can interact with it like with a human, (3) Personalized / contextualized : think personalized AI using your data, contextual conversation using your history. A tech is useful because it is tailored to your personal needs. Meta AI refers to “Intelligence made for you” and offers to “Talk to your personal AI”. 

I’ll stop here for fear of blasphemy also because the comparison doesn’t fully work : God (in theism) is distinct from its creation when an LLM is so dramatically entangled with its creators, to the point where it reproduces their flaws (bias etc…). One solution remains, set aside the sexy golden calf for a while and focus on the earthy product value props !