Use cases for AI Blogging
I know, I know — I can’t call it “AI Blogging.” My daughters would never use it.
But they Instagram and SnapChat all day long and I can’t help but feel that a new kind of tool is needed for them. After all — isn’t this the era of AI?
What would a blogging tool that had built-in AI look like?
When blogging came along 20+ years ago (I was there — sitting next to Dave Winer — rolling the joints) we had no idea what was coming. Monica Lewinsky, Trent Lott, Arab Spring! Who’d a thunk?
Dick Costolo (bless his heart) even came up with a way to make a fortune off of RSS. And Boing Boing gave birth to Internet Ads, John Battelle hustled the HELL out of that — and here we are…..
But Blogging has been given a bad name, despite Wordpress’ success, Tumblr, Wix, SquareSpace, etc. The kids want to have NOTHING TO DO with Blogging!
Then 10 years ago — along come YouTube and BAM — video now found itself a place on the web! Steve Garfield became a superstar and Vlogging became “a thing.”
Who’d a thought that Twitch, PewDiePie and IHasCupQuake were even possible? Sure — I knew the likes of Leo Laporte and Chris Pirillo were gonna figure it out — but theHill88 rapping about LazyDork making fun of LonelyGirl? Really? Its up to 4.2m views now.
What happened with Video on the Web has reassured me that despite the tech press, social media pundits and visionaries declarations — new tech ALWAYS gets used for creative purposes — typically tied into ego, narcissism and marketing.
You may THINK that your eCommerce, marketing App is a better mousetrap — but nobody cares. They LOVE Vines, SnapChat and Instagram!
That’s called “self-expression” and its NOT a business model.
So what’s up now?
AR/VR and ChatBots
I’ve leave the wacky 3D shit to my friend Robert Scoble — but ChatBots fascinate me. I’m convinced that the same thing that happened to Blogging and Video-on-the-Internet — is gonna happen with ChatBots.
We got an early taste of that with the MessinaBot — but it’s more or less just a Resume Bot.
There’s more coming — I’m telling yah!
Imagine these following use cases:
Teenager
- “OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG — Jaida — did you see this?” says my daughter Lucy Canter, as she stares into her Instagram account. All day long, it’s Jaida this, Jaida that — her entire life is tied up in Instagram.
- What if,,,,,,,,
Lucy becomes convinced that she can get the attention of that cute guy by creatively sending him a series of short videos that have “intelligence” built into the videos?
What if some sort of “intelligence” figures out what’s inside of Lucy’s videos, and then uses those keywords and phrases to begin a “conversational messaging” kind of experience in the comment field with the boy?
What if the conversation not only mentions the boy’s name, but automagically tracks the boy’s baseball team’s results, where their next game is, who’s pitching in this next game and where their team is — in the standings?
What sort of intelligent commenting are we talking about? Some sort of new ChatBot thingie?
Lucy would then record a 2nd intelligent video which would talk about 21 Pilots — ‘cause she REALLY wants to go to the upcoming concert — with the boy. This 2nd selfie video would have Lucy circling around the upcoming 21 Pilots concerts talking about how she would absolutely AWESOMELY love to go to this concert — with someone she “cared about!”
Imagine how awesome it would be for Lucy to mention 21 Pilots in a love video she sends to the boy, and then have the backend intelligence automagically look up the 21 Pilots concert date and venue, finds good seats and offer them to the boy — to purchase?
Or maybe Lucy would create a 3rd selfie love video that mentions a project they’re both working on in school. The backend intelligence could go off, do some research and find relevant web links, photos and term papers — on the project’s subject matter — and hand this info to BOTH Lucy and her “guy.”
Would THAT get the boy’s attention?
These 3 videos would then get wrapped up in an “AI Blogging” package and sent to the guy.
I (as Lucy’s dad) would much more prefer to see her using her intelligence, creativity and AI backend, than have her “throw herself” at the guy in some “sexy manner.”
I vote for intelligence and wit over makeup and tight clothes — anyday!
Techie
- This guy is a fanboy who’s been blogging for years, watches Apple launch events over webcast, buys every Apple product there is — as fast as possible — and prides himself on knowing Elon Musk’s net worth.
One day his best friend shows him a new AI Blogging web site with built in intelligence. With what little tech knowledge this geek has (he never finished his MOOC on Ruby) our hero whips out his iPhone and records a video talking about the potential of HyperLoop in Dubai. For :07 minutes.
After he finishes his short video — he then realizes that he SHOULD have made a video on the new iPhone8 and all the claims that Robert Scoble has made about it being an transparent AR device. That video lasts 04:00 mins.
Finally it occurs to him that a third video is in him, lambasting one of the guys at the local Apple store who didn’t know how to access a printer via his iPhone. “This guy calls himself a Guru?” That video went on for only 01:30 mins.
With these three videos on his iPhone our techie hero downloads this App his friend told him about, which calls itself an “AI Blogging” tool. Our Techie attaches the three videos he’s recorded and about a minute later the tool comes back and says “ready for publishing.”
The dude selects WHERE he’d like to send this video (his Twitter, Facebook, Tumbly, Instagram AND SnapChat accounts) and he previews the output — before he hits the “Send” button.
The software comes up and says “this tool creates a new kind of interactive experience. It can ONLY be tested with other people. So please sign-up some testers or just make it live — and see what happens.”
Tap — away it goes……
Our techie then immediately goes over to iMessages and txts his BF.
“OK dude — lets try my thingie out”
What the two friends discover is an intelligently driven Chat conversation which automagically finds and insets relevant links and media — from the various things mentioned on the three videos.
First they watch one of the videos, then they’re thrown into a chat conversation.
Up comes a picture of the famous noose from the HyperLoops lawsuit.
There’s an article estimating the value that Dubai will get from a HyperLoops system — and an opposing article, lambasting the Dubai government for employing slaves to BUILD the HyperLoop.
Built into the chat conversation comes links on various wireless printers and which exact screens one has to navigate to — to set it up on their iPhone.
And there’s the Scoble post on the iPhone8.
All of this portends to what’s possible once we combine video, AI and blogging.
Its fate that I’m writing this post on the day that it was announced that Twitter is killing Vines. Vines amazed me that people could get into the video equivalent of 140 chars and become so popular.
Vines proved (once again) that we often don’t take into account how wacky new kinds of technology can drive not just behavior patterns, but also incredible new art forms. But Twitter never figured out what to DO with all those Vines.
I believe there’s a need for a new way to “string together” short clips of videos. That’s what we’re working on.
Hey Ev Williams and Matt Mullenweg! You made your fortunes off of Blogging — aren’t you at all concerned about going beyond commenting? Tying videos in — in some effective and innovative manner? AI?
And what about Knowledge Bases, Machine Learning, contextually relevant dynamic updating and — well you know! Tagging can be a lot more than #HashTags and “who’s in this picture?”
Yes — I know the Semantic Web failed — but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done — in another guise, under a different name or different approach.
Tim B-L invented the semantic web after HTML — ‘cause he knew describing what something is — can be really powerful. This current explosion around ChatBots and AI gives us a NEW opportunity to launch AI driven Blogging.
I know, I know — we can’t call it blogging!
Steve Garfield — what say you?
And then — of course — there’s Dave Winer — the father of Blogging? What say YOU?
