Author: markdegrasse

The following is a future historian’s view of potential events that might occur today or in the near future. It is intended to give some insight into the potential uses, applications, and consequences of the use of AI in the marketing industry and beyond.

In mid-2024, a startup called FuturaFashion.ai launched a new custom fashion application that allowed users to upload or select photos in order to create custom clothing based on an aggregated style created by AI.

The photos could be of the user themselves, but more often it was pictures of other individuals.

The key to making new styles of clothing was not simply an aggregate of the pictures themselves, it also incorporated the style of the user by integrating with their most-used social media platform to determine patterns in the user’s current style and the style of pictures they engaged with.

This information was combined with the porportions, skin tone, hairstyle, environment, and profession of the user to create sets of custom clothing.

While the user could simply choose a single item, FuturaFashion would maintain a “virtual closet” that would update as further input of the user was collected.

The virtual closet also included a gallery in which photos of the user in each piece of clothing could be viewed.

The pictures included standard full length views of the user in each piece of clothing, but also included lifestyle pictures as well, featuring vacation photos, family photos, important events, and even private activities like book reading, yoga, cooking, and other situations that rarely warranted a photo in real life.

This allowed the user to truly picture themselves using the clothes without involving their imagination. The company also planned a future version of application that included videos of the user, but that was still in development as of the writing of this entry.

Once an item was chosen, it would be automatically 3D printed and delivered within 24 to 48 hours. FuturaFashion partnered with Ministry of Supply to produce their products on demand.

The following is a future historian’s view of potential events that might occur today or in the near future. It is intended to give some insight into the potential uses, applications, and consequences of the use of AI in the marketing industry and beyond.

By the end of 2023 Bing surpassed Google as the top search engine in the world. 

Utilizing its new ChatGPT function called Bing-AI (BAI), users were provided with custom taylored articles that succinctly answered their queries in the style in which they preferred.

Rather than choosing a link from thousands or millions of search results, BAI displayed a landing page with the resulting content in a style, length, and reading level consistent with the preferences of each user.

Preferences were determined by the browsing habits of the user and the way in which they asked questions. 

Initial results were determined by “old style” analytics such as Time on Page and Average Page Depth, but as soon as a user opted into BAI-Preferred ($7 per month for basic access up to $50 per month for prioritized access, speed, and reduced ads), the system would create content based on prescriptive, predictive, diagnostic, descriptive, and cognitive analytics.

The new analytical drivers built a unique query engine called a System of User-centric Online Search Logistics (SOUL for short). A user’s SOUL was essentially a learning and evolving AI itself, essentially becoming an avatar that would communicate with BAI to deliver increasingly taylored results.

When BAI was initially launched, the best sources of content related to the search could be found underneath the summarized result. While some people found this feature helpful, very few actually scrolled the page long enough to consider or click on those links.

Within six months of initial launch, the practice was abandoned. In its stead was placed additional customized content pieces based on what BAI predicted a user would ask next based on their SOUL.

As expected, BAI essentially became a commercialized and monetized version of ChatGPT. Initially, ads were displayed similar to old style search results, with advertisements integrated into text within the summarized piece and banners in the side column, header, and footer of the resulting page.

What was unexpected was the eventual abolition of traditonal advertisements altogether. Rather than rely on vendors to create advertisements and pay for their placement, BAI would simply create content that guided the user’s content consumption and browsing towards commercial solutions.

Since a user’s SOUL would essentially track all aspects of a user’s behavior, including their emotional, mental, and spiritual status (physical status couldn’t be determined until BAI-VR was launched in 2028), creating content that subtley shifted their minds towards products and services became automated.

Rather than bidding for placement, vendors would go through an intensive process of product qualification in order to determine their “ad” placement and pricing.

Microsoft had an ethical and financial imperative in ensuring that only the best products could be advertised on the network. Obviously, the subtle (some would call subliminal) creation of commercially guided content creation had the potential for misuse, which would be much more obvious if low quality, dangerous, or immoral products were being promoted.

For this reason, BAI would price advertising based on their ADLIFE score, which qualified a vendor based on the quality, reviews, longevity, customer service, and positive results of the product and company.

These metrics were determined by scraping the vendor’s website and online precense on social media networks and professional organizations, massively increasing the importance of vendor content creation, branding, product creation, and customer service.

By mid-2024, automated content creation techniques had improved to include customized videos, podcasts, courses, and infographics in search results. This was a pivotal event in the exponential growth of data creation, distribution, and consumption, which we now identify as the start of The Inflection Point, a moment in history that still has major ramifications in our lifestyles today.