• by Adam Weinroth , July 7, 2016

In a recent Atlantic piece about training A.I. to write in her voice, reporter Adrienne Lafrance cited instances where A.I. has successfully created content. The L.A. Times is using A.I. to report on earthquakes, NPR tried it out on a Denny’s earning report and Wired used A.I. to write the obit for A.I. pioneer Marvin Minsky.

Of course, it’s not just publishers that are utilizing A.I. for high-volume, low-cost content creation. Allstate, Samsung and Dish Network’s SlingTV are using A.I. solutions.

Initially offering box score reporting to newspapers, modern CMS, blogging and digital publishing tools have expanded A.I. capabilities. Essentially, these tools can create content from almost any table of data, producing everything from real estate to workout recaps.

It’s not hard to imagine how data-rich companies like Fitbit, Quicken and Schwab could use this tech.

Of course, as Lafrance noted, A.I. has a ways to go to capture the humanity of writing. But that may not matter much as most people can’t tell the difference between content written by a person and a machine.

Not surprisingly, A.I. can do more than create content, it can also distribute it.

Several months ago, when IBM bought the digital assets of The Weather Channel’s parent company, including Weather.com. Well, it was recently announced Weather.com will soon be rolling out Watson-powered banner ads, where site visitors can verbally ask the A.I. questions.

GSK Consumer Healthcare, Unilever and the Campbell Soup Company will be the first to utilize the new ad format when it launches in the fall.

In an Adweek interview, The Weather Company’s global head of sales Jeremy Steinberg said: “One might ask [by voice interaction], ‘What can I make for dinner tonight?’ Based on its machine learning and reasoning ability from the data it has ingested, Watson can sort through ingredient and flavor profiles to make recommendations based on the weather, time of day, location and even ingredients users have on hand."

Being able to offer quick and easy meal solutions in real time is what attracted the interest of Campbell Soup Company. The Campbell’s ads will allow site visitors to interact with “Chef Watson,” much in the way SXSW attendees did back in 2013.

As one-to-one marketing becomes the norm — and with the rise of true personalization — these examples show how marketers can use A.I. to create and deliver incredibly relevant content on the fly.

While A.I. implementation is in its infancy, the use cases above demonstrate the surprising impact A.I. can have today. It’s not hyperbole to think it could be the biggest content marketing tech innovation since the introduction of WordPress.