Why AI Isn't Up to Replacing This Digital Job

"The creator economy is alive and well, and countless small businesses and individual entrepreneurs pay their bills by making short-form videos appealing to the customer on the street. They project a personalized vibe, trying to connect to viewers in more direct and human ways than how endlessly focus-grouped, big-bucks corporate ad campaigns sometimes land. But AI, which is already impacting the job market, is also encroaching on this"

"Tmall (owned by China's giant Alibaba group) and compared the sales of hundreds of products before and after the particular retailer involved switched to using digital streaming salespeople instead of humans, news site TechExplore says. The results were shockingly clear: when a brand relied on human streamers to promote something, it "significantly" boosted sales. But digitally created streamers only slightly boosted sales compared to having zero streaming promotional efforts."

"In other words, even though AI-powered digital sales streamers can run 24-7-365, won't fall ill and don't need to sleep or take lunch breaks, they're more or less not worth the effort. Fallible, unreliable, quirky human livestreamers? They're great. The researchers did find one way that digital streamers could approach the level of sales boost that using humans achieves: by using super-smart, AI-powered real-time question and answer interactions, which allowed potential customers to feel like they were interacting with someone real."

Comparison of sales data from Tmall examined hundreds of products before and after retailers switched to digital streamers. Human streamers significantly boosted sales, while digitally created streamers produced only slight increases compared with having no streaming promotion. Digital streamers offer operational advantages such as continuous availability and no illness, but they generally fail to replicate human charisma and persuasion. Advanced, real-time AI-powered question-and-answer interactions can make digital streamers approach human-level sales by enabling customers to feel like they are interacting with someone real. Quirky, fallible human livestreamers remain more effective at driving purchases.

Read at Inc