Prompting the future: Synthetic media transforms creative and enterprise outputs
Elizabeth Wu, Tensility Intern and MBA candidate at Northwestern Kellogg School of Management
Wayne Boulais and Armando Pauker, Managing Directors at Tensility Venture Partners
Synthetic media refers to any type of media – such as images, videos, voice/audio, and text – that is generated by artificial intelligence (AI). AI-driven media employs algorithms trained on large datasets of existing media to learn and generate new content that can be near indistinguishable from human-created content. Synthetic media can provide two outputs: creative and knowledge-based content.
Before the advent of synthetic media, the process of producing media was initiated by intention and created by humans with tools, which brought about a final product.
Intention is the commitment to create a certain output. For the creative process, the source of the intention could be imagination, life experiences, or inspiration. For the knowledge-based content, the source of the intention could be a business goal, data, a medical procedure, or customer support.
Now, with synthetic media, humans and conventional tools are replaced by AI.
One unique aspect of synthetic media is the use of prompting to communicate human intention to the AI model. Certain parameters need to be defined for the model to provide a useful output.
These parameters include commands (what needs to be done), context (how), and task description (what the output should look like). Prompting is also unique in that it is done in natural language, not in a stylized code (like a SQL query). Lastly, prompting does not
necessarily require that the user understand the details and intricacies of the tool being used, i.e, the AI model.
Creative versus Knowledge-Based Outputs
For simplicity, we will categorize media into two types: either creative or knowledge-based.
Creative media examples include images, marketing/ad copy, or videos, which were traditionally created with tools such as Photoshop, Word, or Premiere Pro, respectively. Knowledge-based content, especially that pertaining to business processes, includes spreadsheets, presentations, or documents, now produced with Excel, PowerPoint, or Word, respectively. This type of content could transform data to images or ideas, for example, when numbers in Excel are collected and displayed as a visual graph that would in turn be embedded into PowerPoint.
With synthetic media, AI engines and prompting replace human-driven tools to produce a given output, but presumably with higher productivity. In creative processes, new AI tools such as DALL-E (images), ChatGPT (ad copy), and Synthesia (video presentations) can produce the same media as traditional applications that are near-identical to human-generated content. But in business, not many prompt-driven AI tools currently exist that meet enterprise output standards for software applications. However, Videate is the exception for customer training and product support videos.
Synthetic Media in Enterprise Video Production for Customer Support
The customer support benefits of videos are evident when we consider that most people do not want to read long product manuals or instruction guides because specific information is hard and time-consuming to find. Most people are relegated to searching YouTube or TikTok for videos that may be self-produced or outdated. Companies should make these videos, but they have been a heavy lift to produce.
One company, Videate, has created automated video production tools that give companies the ability to scale video production without manual video editing and human voice recording. Videate specializes in explainer videos for software content that automatically refreshes every time a new product version or UI change is released. This improves the quality of onboarding and decreases the “time to value” for a software user, who is able to learn more effectively and find answers to questions and troubleshooting issues without having to wait on support.
Consistent with other generative AI tools, Videate expects that eventually users will be able to use prompting to receive an AI-generated video for an up-to-date answer to any software
product question. There would be no lag time between the need and the video answer.
The Need for Human Verification
While synthetic media can enable creative and knowledge-based enterprise processes, it is not perfect. Synthetic media can be subject to errors and biases, just like any other form of AI. Hallucination issues with generative AI have been well documented and are slowly being understood. When used in any type of content creation workflow, we must continue to
incorporate human overseers for quality assurance (QA) to catch errors and ensure the content is factually accurate and meets all legal and ethical standards. Additionally, human QA can prevent the misuse of synthetic media, such as creating misinformation or harmful content.
By combining the power of synthetic media with human oversight, everyone can achieve greater efficiency and productivity while still ensuring that their content is accurate and trustworthy.