‘Having the right balance between human touch and AI is a critical thing’

At the eighth edition of e4m TechManch held in Mumbai on Friday, a group of experts shared insights on the topic ‘Beyond Automation: How AI is Transforming the Art of Marketing’. The panel explored the transformative power of AI in understanding customers, how AI can craft personalised experiences and more. During the panel discussion, the expert panel also discussed how AI is transforming the art of marketing, how it unlocks deeper customer insights to build emotional connections and drive brand loyalty and how to leverage AI for hyper-relevant experiences.

The panellists at the e4mTechManch session included Rajesh Chopra, Senior VP, Head of Data & Services, South Asia, Mastercard; Sandeep Verma, Country Head- India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka Consumer Health, Bayer; Ankit Goenka, Senior Vice President & Head Customer Experience, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance; Ankit Banga, Chief Business Officer, FCB Six; Akshat Singhal, Head - Dangal Play and the panel was moderated by Ramesh Padala, Managing Director, BCG.

At the panel discussion, the leaders shared how AI transformed their brands to match the evolving needs of their customers and what the future of AI looks like in the years to come. Describing the benefits of AI, Ankit Goenka, Senior Vice President & Head - Customer Experience, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, said, “The voice bot has been very helpful to us and the farmers. Today, 94% of the claims are registered through the bot, with 61% handled entirely by the bot. Any arising issues are quickly escalated to a human who resolves them promptly".

Agreeing with Goenka, Ramesh Padala, Managing Director, BCG, said, “AI has taken over the world. In the last year, we've seen generative AI make a huge impact”.

While discussing about will AI kill creativity, the panellists echoed the same sentiments and said that if AI is used the right way, it will help brands in the long run as AI takes away all the repetitive, mundane tasks and has the potential to create scalable content very fast.

“If you look at AI as your friend and creative partner, it can help you in many ways because it is automating and augmenting work for you, but if you get into a situation where you expect it to create a long-term strategy for your brand, that is not going to happen”, Bayer’s Sandeep Verma stated.

“One of the biggest risks with AI is homogenisation. If you start creating all your campaigns using AI, they will all start looking very similar as it is based on what has worked in the past, on historical trends. Due to this, you will never get too many out of the box ideas, because it will not register to the AI. So that's where the human touch is important. So, having the right balance between human touch and AI, is the critical thing to use”, he added.

Ankit Banga, Chief Business Officer, FCB Six, agreed with Verma and said, “Human brain cannot be replaced. All the tools will co-exist and will complement, but cannot replace the human mind and its creativity. AI is a technology and it can never replace a human brain”. Similarly, talking about the growth of AI, Rajesh Chopra, Senior VP, Head of Data & Services, South Asia, Mastercard, said, “The market for AI in India is approximately $12.6 billion. It is expected to grow 5 to 6 times in the next 4-5 years, at an annual growth rate of around 25% or more”.

Talking about the ill-effects and cons of AI in marketing, Rajesh Chopra, Senior VP, Head of Data & Services, South Asia, Mastercard, said, “If there's a continuous usage of AI, it will really take us far from the reality as excessive usage of AI completely removes the emotional connect. We all will agree that empathy is the emotional connect and I think those are the areas where AI should not be leveraged. In fact, the ethical AI component is where it will really be compromised”.

“There are three key areas where AI should not be involved – Crisis Management, Complex problems involving moral and ethical dilemma and the third area is on negotiation. These three areas should be kept away from AI”, Verma added.

The session ended with the panellists further discussing the pros and cons of AI. Akshat Singhal, Head - Dangal Play, said, “In data analytics, AI is great at sorting the data, but the analysis should not be left to AI because it can miss out some point and give you a wrong analysis. AI can do great sorting, but analysis should be done by humans”.

“The way we are searching and exploring the internet, the way we are doing everything in our lives, is going to get changed in the future with AI. It is going to get a lot transformed with AI coming in”, Amit Banga stated.