Faith Dais Neto, Communications Officer (Brand and Content), shares her journey with AI and how she’s been researching and using tools to best support our communications activity.

Everyone everywhere is talking about AI. It’s changing our landscape, not just from a marketing and communications perspective, but in almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. Whether it's generating content, automating processes, or answering our questions, AI is doing it all. Or, so it seems. The popularity of ChatGPT is undeniable and it’s as though there’s always a new app promising to save time and make our lives easier. But when it comes to our work life, should we be using AI at all? Isn’t it cheating? Are we risking our jobs by embracing these tools and inviting AI to work for us?

Professionally I sat on the fence with AI. I was partially scared, partially sceptical. I couldn’t fully understand it, didn’t really want to learn about it and I definitely didn’t want it to replace me and steal my job. What would I do if AI did all my writing for me? I decided I’d leave it alone and carry on as normal.

It wasn’t until I attended a webinar hosted by the Arts Marketing Association (AMA) and heard something along the lines of “AI won’t replace you, the person who knows how to use AI effectively will” that I sat up. My mind opened to the potential of AI and its capability to support and enhance the work I am already doing. I began to see AI as a potential companion instead of a competitor and was intrigued to start learning more.

Learning the possibilities

Research was the key starting point of my journey with AI. I went through notes I’d written previously in seminars and webinars. I dug into various resources. I questioned everything. What does this term mean? How can this tool help me? Should I bother learning about this?

One fantastic resource was last year’s AMA’s series led by Jocelyn Burnham (AI for Culture) which presented AI in a more digestible and practical way. AI no longer felt like a beast to conquer but something I could grow to use in my timeframe.

It wasn’t long before I realised that there are so many powerful tools available for marketers. I felt ready to dip my toe in and test the waters a little…

Testing the tools

As I learned more about the tools out there, I noticed that I was already using AI in my daily work more than I realised. As a writer, I regularly use tools like Grammarly and Hemingway to improve my writing. Then there are platforms such as Buffer and Hootsuite that help us to stay on top of our social media activity by scheduling content in advance.

I started to experiment with tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to support our digital accessibility goals with tasks such as proofreading and generating alt texts. This meant that I could produce alt text quickly, ensuring our social media and website images were more accessible. I could be more creative and spend time carefully selecting images that best fit the story we’re trying to tell about our work and AI would save time generating the accompanying alt texts.

As someone who enjoys creating video content, Veed has been great for auto-generating captions as well as pulling snippets of longer videos into shorter forms for social media. This was extremely efficient in saving time again and meant that I could focus more of my energy on the creative side of video production instead of spending hours transcribing.

I’m still currently learning about new tools and the best ways to apply them.

Looking to the future of AI in the arts

I’m very interested in seeing where AI will be in the next few years and though there are limitations and clear shortcomings, I’m seeing how AI can support your creativity and get more out of you when you let it. At OL, our AI working group is currently working on a policy to outline our use of AI in the organisation.

Although I’m now open to using AI in my work, it’s important to me that any content generated always aligns with our values and reflects the work we do.

If you're still sceptical, I’d recommend taking that first small step. Start by exploring simple tools or attending relevant webinars. AI will never replace the human touch, but it can support what we already do. It can help us work smarter and communicate with our audiences in more innovative ways. And, if you still don’t want to jump in and use AI, keeping informed will ensure you're not left behind in this evolving field.

Useful resources

• AI for Culture
• In A(i) Nutshell
• The Single ‘Most Useful Thing’ Cultural Organisations Should Learn About AI