The Futuri Founder and CEO asks, ‘Will the company you work for be among those standing stronger as a result of AI?’
AI is going to usher in a new lineup of iconic companies in virtually every business category.
Some of these companies will be new entrants. Prior to recent C-suite drama, relative newcomer OpenAI was valued at $86 billion, a figure that appears to have held steady even after their ridiculous boardroom coup.
Some of the future’s iconic companies will be familiar names that aggressively adopt AI to revolutionize their business. Adobe has been a leader in massively evolving its products with generative AI tools, and its stock price appears to be benefitting from its embrace of the future. (It’s also helping them justify a ~10% increase in price for its popular Creative Cloud suite.)
Will the company you work for be among those standing stronger as a result of AI? Or are you going to sit on the sidelines and let others pass you by?
At Futuri, we’re passionate about using artificial intelligence to create innovative new possibilities to help broadcasters and communities connect in more meaningful ways. It’s not a new fascination of ours. We’ve been investing in machine learning and AI for years, and we have seen first-hand the types of opportunities and efficiency improvements that AI can bring to the table.
In this new Inside Radio column, I want to share what we’re learning with you, with the intention of helping this industry that we love grow and evolve into this new era of capabilities.
Unlocking New Opportunities With AI
There was a time when it was difficult to build a viable business based on AI. The technology was promising, but it hadn’t evolved to the point where it could fulfill its promise without extensive and expensive human oversight.
But things have changed. New language models like Claude and GPT-4 and image generation models like DALL-E and Midjourney are making AI much more powerful. They can enhance human creativity and improve our productivity. That can help us in broadcast radio, which is unmatched when it comes to providing meaningful companionship to audiences, creating even deeper connections with our listeners and followers.
Similar to how microchips greatly reduced the cost of computing and the internet made sharing content free, platforms like GPT-4 are now making it much cheaper and easier to create content. When something becomes this affordable, people tend to use it a lot more instead of less. This is called Jevons Paradox: when there's a huge increase in supply (like easy content creation), people's desire and usage of it grow rapidly, not the opposite.
What Does This Mean For Radio?
We're seeing a huge increase in content creation, thanks to AI. It's making it possible for big and small media companies to make lots of different content quickly. We’re seeing broadcasters who are creating content they otherwise wouldn’t have endeavored to create without AI. But the ease of content creation means there will also be more competition for our audiences.
Still, broadcasters can use AI and our human talent — our ingenious human talent! — together to make high-quality and authentic content. This is a chance to connect with all kinds of audiences in more cost-effective ways than before. AI can help personalize content and give our teams capabilities to innovate in their storytelling like never before, like interactive and personalized shows.
In the past, when new technology came along, it usually led to the creation of more job opportunities rather than taking them away.
There are more jobs today because of the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the automobile (although perhaps fewer jobs for horses), the computer revolution, internet, renewable energy tech, printing press, and aviation industry. Even the shift from film to digital photography created new opportunities in manufacturing, photo editing, software development, and digital photo storage. And to my earlier point on Jevon’s Paradox — in 2000, Kodak reported that about 80 billion photos were taken worldwide with film cameras. In 2023, it’s estimated that 1.4 trillion digital photos were taken this year. That’s an increase of 16.5X, and the population on the planet has only grown 29% in the same period.
We think AI will follow this pattern too. More content will be created. More jobs will be created. And iconic companies will be created, the ones that wisely and strategically adopt AI. The traditional barriers related to being able to create personalized, multi-platform, 24/7 content that enables our brands to be a true part of the fabric of our audiences’ lives are becoming less significant. The only limit that remains for radio is our ability to dream up exciting new ideas and bring them to life.
Daniel Anstandig is Founder and CEO of Futuri, whose AI-driven technology solutions are used by thousands of broadcasters worldwide to grow their content, audience, and revenue. He holds 20 published or pending patents in 151 countries worldwide. Reach him at linkedin.com/in/anstandig/.
Also read:
Unlocking the Power of AI: The Vital Role of Human Expertise.