The main uses expressed by marketers in the U.K. for the adoption of AI was allowing them to create more personalized content (69%), to better understand customer needs (68%) and to provide a steady stream of relevant content (60%).

The crest of the first AI wave

Tom Head, founder and CEO of analytics firm Comparative Linguistics, told Adweek the survey stats were “pretty crazy” for a tool that had only been in the market for around six months.

“In general [marketers] are great at reviewing and experimenting with new tools—that’s part of the job, and because of the potential benefits to them—new ideas, research and time saved creating content, to name a few,” he explained.

“The stats back up what I’m seeing out there in the market, which is a considerable appetite to use the tools, quite a large number playing around but not many getting the most out of them just yet. There’s a difference between dipping your toe in the water and really working out how to use them for your business to gain a competitive advantage,” Head added.

In recent months, brands have begun to reveal the results of the marketing experiments of using AI with the release of Beck’s Autonomous beer in April. ChatGPT and Midjourney were employed by the brand’s marketing team to create the recipe for the brew as well as its bottle design, branding and marketing collateral.

Within weeks another alcohol brand, Absolut, released the “Mix Your Neighborhood” campaign in Canada using art generated by AI that was then given to bartenders to develop cocktail and mocktail recipes resembling those images.

Still, widespread awareness of the tool and its capabilities is a ways off. Among the general population, Gartner revealed in March that more than half (53%) of 320 respondents had not yet heard of ChatGPT.