Confessions Of An AI Necromancer
There’s something I have to admit: I’m a necromancer. No, I’m not just talking about a class that I play whenever I load up a video game or play a tabletop RPG with my friends, I’m talking about experimenting with AI Chatbots like ChatGPT to resurrect master copywriters and business people who are no longer with us (Check out other ways I’m using AI as a marketer)
Choosing The Right AI Candidates
In order to approximate someone who is no longer here, you should ideally find someone who is well-known and whom a great deal of online content has already been written about. I started off with two figures 1) David Ogilvy and 2) Steve Jobs.
David Ogilvy, for those who don’t know, was a British advertising executive who is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of advertising. He founded the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather in 1948 and went on to create some of the most memorable and successful ad campaigns of the 20th century. Ogilvy was known for his emphasis on research, his focus on the customer, and his belief in the power of storytelling in advertising. His ideas and methods continue to influence the advertising industry today.
Steve Jobs, on the other hand, likely needs no such introduction. He’s one of the most iconic business figures of the last 50 years.
I chose these two figures because their influence is still widely felt in the marketing and advertising industries today. I also chose them because their personalities, backgrounds, and areas of expertise are wildly different, making any potential insight that AI-powered executives can offer much more diverse and insightful.
How to Raise the Dead Using AI
Start off by asking ChatGPT or your favorite AI chatbot what they know about the person you are trying to replicate. Ask the AI chatbot to create a full psychological profile – including known positive and negative traits. Ask it to add the subject’s belief systems, including beliefs about whatever you want to explore.
Once you’ve done that, if there are multiple prompts that you used to create the profile of the individual in question, ask the AI to condense it while ensuring that the key points are maintained.
Once you’ve done that, ask it to act as the person. Voila. You’ve now become an AI necromancer. I’m sure you feel 100% spookier.
What Can You Do Now?
Here are some ways I’ve used my AI-powered versions of Ogilvy and Jobs:
Asked it what it thought about a blog post. Yes, some of the blog posts I’ve posted recently have been modified after obtaining feedback from these two industry titans.
Asked it what it thought about my ad copy. The Ogilvy AI specifically had some great criticisms and oftentimes could output a high level of ad writing itself. It won’t ever come nearly as close to the real David Ogilvy but can stand in if I’m ever feeling like I’m not being my best ‘copywriter self’ on any given day.
Ask it for advice.
Ask it to provide possible solutions to problems you might face.
Ask them both to generate a brainstorming session
…these are just some examples of what can be done once you’ve set up your AI-powered execs. The possibilities are quite nearly limitless with what scenarios you can place them in and what sort of insight you can glean from speaking to them.
The best thing is that if you find a limitation in the way you’ve set them up, you can just do some manual research and edit the prompt you used to generate their personality. Or, if you know better than the AI how one of them would act, you can patch up any ‘holes’ in the way they output text, continually improving them and making for better insights and contributions over the long-run.
The Ethics of AI Necromancy
No discussion of raising the dead should be complete without speaking about the ethical considerations here.
Firstly, AI necromancy raises questions about consent and privacy. Would these individuals have consented to have their personality and likeness recreated through AI? Even if they did, would their families or estates be comfortable with it?
Secondly, it raises questions about the accuracy and authenticity of the recreated personality. How accurate would the AI recreation be, and how much of it would be based on assumptions or incomplete data? Would it truly represent the individual's personality and beliefs, or would it be a distorted version?
Thirdly, it raises questions about the potential impact on society and culture. Would the recreation of these personalities perpetuate an unhealthy obsession with ‘big personalities’ (e.g celebrities) and the past, or would it offer valuable insights and inspiration for future generations?
I don’t pretend to know the answers to all these questions. In fact, it’ll likely be a long time till society reckons with the implications of technology used in this fashion. What I will say is that these are AI based on ‘facets’ of David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs’ lives – their public, business-focused personas. They chose to live public lives and publish their opinions with the world. The AI is than simply taking those opinions and making logical leaps and conclusions based on what they may think.
If that still sounds like something which is icky to you then rename them ‘Steve Bobs’ and ‘David Fogilvy’ if you’d like.
I don’t personally think that considering that the AI-powered personas are built on public data, there’s that much of an ethical concern here, but I’m willing to entertain arguments to the contrary.
If you, like me, see value in this exercise then you’re in luck: I’m giving away the prompts I used to bring Steve Jobs and David Ogilvy’s public personas back with AI-powered magic. Simply enter your email address in the form below and I’ll pop the instructions to your inbox within seconds.
And, hey, if you end up making improvements to my prompts I want to see them. Feel free to email me via the contact form on Marketing Ronin with your feedback.
