AI-powered tools and techniques can enhance efficiencies, personalization and data-driven decision-making. However, implementing them in your organization involves carefully upholding ethical standards, maintaining customer trust and supporting a responsible workforce transition.
Below are critical ethical considerations that marketing leaders must address when adopting AI, from enterprise governance and data privacy to customer consent and bias mitigation.
Enterprise considerations
First, consider these key areas for review across the enterprise, focusing on marketing and marketing operations. Your industry may have additional specific needs, but here are some to begin with:
Transparency and explainability
Customers should have a clear understanding of how their data is being used. This involves making AI decision-making processes transparent and providing explainability features that allow users to comprehend how specific outcomes are derived.
Intellectual property
If you are using AI tools trained on pre-existing data, it is critical to understand who owns that data and what permissions you have to use it. As we’ve seen with recent high-profile examples of IP issues, it’s not enough to just trust that another company thought this through.
Gain a clear understanding of the chain of ownership, and where possible, use tools that train on only your own enterprise’s data to mitigate some of the risks.
Compliance with regulatory standards
Compliance with regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and any other regional or national regulations that apply is non-negotiable.
Keep in mind that AI regulations are also slowly but surely being implemented in the EU. Marketing leaders must continually stay updated on regulatory changes and adapt their AI strategies accordingly.
Start small and grow
Pilot projects are a great way to start with AI projects to test their efficacy and gather feedback. This iterative approach allows for adjustments and enhancements before full-scale implementation.
Effective adoption of AI in marketing operations starts at the enterprise level. Work with other leaders and teams to share knowledge and adopt best practices from outside marketing so the organization can grow its AI maturity together.
Dig deeper: How to do an AI implementation for your marketing team
Customer considerations
Next, let’s look at how the ethical use of AI affects our customers. Transparency is crucial, along with customer privacy, consent and compliance with data privacy and AI regulations. Keep the following in mind when introducing AI into your marketing operations.
Acknowledge AI usage
Don’t make your customers guess whether the messages and interactions they receive are human or AI-based. While most customers are not averse to interacting with artificial intelligence, they will likely appreciate a disclaimer when it is being used and when an option to communicate with a human is made available as an alternative.
Proactive consent management and disclaimers
Customers are generally open to enhanced experiences driven by AI, but obtaining explicit consent from customers about how their data will be used is essential. This can be achieved through clear and concise privacy policies and opt-in mechanisms that respect user choices.
Most companies already have a headstart due to consumer data privacy regulations already in effect. However, there are additional considerations when incorporating AI, which may involve training your datasets on customer data or the potential for AI content to contain some inaccuracies.
Bias audits and correction
Bias can be introduced early and often into datasets and machine learning. It is important to have methods to detect and correct bias, so look for this when purchasing off-the-shelf platforms and work with your internal data and IT teams when creating internally created platforms and systems.
Dig deeper: How to fight bias in your AI models
Data anonymization techniques
Training AI models can benefit businesses and their customers when used correctly (and ethically). However, those models don’t always need to include personally identifiable information to be useful. Consider anonymizing data.
Inclusivity
Diverse viewpoints and a critical examination of data are vital for maintaining the ethical use of AI with customers. Make sure your use of AI — whether it is for personalization, prediction or other uses — is inclusive, not exclusive.
Your customers stand to benefit greatly from your greater adoption of AI in marketing operations. Still, the right processes need to be in place to protect their privacy and ensure an inclusive approach to AI-based improvements to the customer experience.
Employee considerations
Incorporating AI in marketing operations could bring a potential host of challenges, including job displacement and transparency issues.
While it is true that some sectors may see a reduction in traditional roles, the broader narrative is more nuanced. AI can create new opportunities through the democratization of highly technical tasks that open up new opportunities to existing employees.
To ensure a smooth integration of AI into marketing operations, leaders should consider the following steps.
Putting guardrails in place
Provide guidance on when AI is a good idea and when it should be avoided. Simply forbidding the usage of AI tools is unrealistic, but putting clear guardrails in place can help focus your employees’ energy and help the company avoid risk and other unforeseen consequences.
Investing in employee training
Equip your teams with the necessary skills to work effectively with AI tools through continuous learning programs, which can help employees stay updated with the latest AI advancements.
To remain efficient and competitive, marketing teams might need to be upskilled or reskilled to work alongside AI, not be replaced by it. AI should enhance the focus on strategic priorities, enabling teams to achieve better results by analyzing vast data sets and prioritizing actions.
Democratization of roles
Consider how AI tools can streamline tasks that require highly specialized skills and considerable time for your marketing teams.
Whether it is quickly generating ideas, writing first drafts of marketing copy, or querying an analytics platform for a detailed analysis of marketing results, AI can democratize highly skilled roles and diversify the roles that a single individual might be able to play.
Focusing on both employee and customer experience
While end customers stand to benefit from using AI to personalize interactions and anticipate their needs, ignoring the employee experience is a missed opportunity. Consider how making an employee’s job easier by automating repetitive tasks and focusing team members’ time on more valuable work can benefit customers and employees while driving more value to the business.
While much focus has been put on how AI can improve customer experiences and their direct relationship to the bottom line, employees and their experiences are a critical factor that is often overlooked. Finding ways to augment your internal teams’ work with the strategic adoption of AI in marketing operations can benefit all parties.
Conclusion
Just as AI is a technically complex area to implement, many nuances make it complex when implemented in marketing operations. We’ve explored the enterprise, customer and employee angles, though your organization might have additional considerations and stakeholders to consider.
In this series, we’ve covered a comprehensive view of integrating AI into marketing operations — from laying the groundwork, selecting platforms, implementing strategies, to navigating ethical considerations and future trends.
One thing we can be certain of is that the landscape will continue to evolve. Maintaining ethical practices and embracing new trends will be paramount as this happens. By keeping the insights we’ve discussed, you and your organization can harness AI’s potential responsibly and innovatively while ensuring that your marketing strategies are effective, principled and forward-looking.
Contributing authors are invited to create content for MarTech and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the martech community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.
