Launched in November 2022, AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT has been rapidly impacting workflows across various sectors – and this is only the start of AI’s potential. So what does ChatGPT mean for the future of the meetings and events industry?
The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has been evolving at an ever-increasing pace and hit a major turning point in November 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, an advanced AI-powered chatbot that can respond to and engage with text-based prompts on virtually any topic.
Until now, AI in events has largely been limited to event technology tools to power features such as personalized matchmaking. However, ChatGPT has farther-reaching implications. It has been lauded as the fastest growing technological novelty in terms of adoption, and excitement around its potential to revolutionize workflows is carried on an undercurrent of concern around the looming obsolescence of some jobs.
ChatGPT can be leveraged to streamline workflows and enhance the event planning process in several ways, and learning to effectively use the tool is a wise move for planners and venues as this technology will only become more prevalent moving forward.
ChatGPT and meetings
When it comes to meetings, planners can use ChatGPT to automate repetitive or low-complexity tasks, such as creating agendas. It’s also useful for summarizing key points from the meeting minutes or, if the meeting was virtual, from a transcription of the call.
For collaborative or brainstorming meetings, organizers should consider adding ChatGPT into the mix by prompting it for suggestions. Depending on the topic, it may come up with interesting responses or spark ideas and discussions from the humans in the room.
ChatGPT and event planning
There are numerous use cases for ChatGPT in event planning, many of which are still being explored. It can be used to generate content ideas, create session titles and descriptions, suggest activities, and find appropriate venues in a given city. In addition, ChatGPT can streamline poll and survey creation to make it easier for planners to get feedback from attendees and increase personalization at their events.
The key to using ChatGPT as effectively as possible is to continue to prompt it and tweak requests as needed until it provides the information you’re looking for. For example, if it generates longer session titles than what you’d like, you can simply ask it to shorten them and it will comply. In general, it’s best to be as specific as possible.
ChatGPT and marketing
Event marketing is arguably the area in which ChatGPT can be of most use to event planners, at least currently. It can be deployed for various marketing tasks, including email communications, social media promotions, and website copy.
ChatGPT can be prompted to write in a certain tone, target a certain audience, or tailor its copy to a specific social media platform. It can even be used to help generate a marketing plan or come up with an event theme. Its responses may require some touch-ups and should always be reviewed for accuracy and adherence to branding, but the results are impressive.
Challenges and limitations
While helpful for certain tasks, ChatGPT is far from perfect, and it should be used with a degree of caution. Currently, one of its biggest limitations is its somewhat outdated knowledge — the data it was trained on only goes up to September 2021, so it can’t help with queries that rely on more recent information. Any list of venues it provides, for example, would not include those that have opened in the last year or so (and, conversely, may include spaces that have since closed).
In addition, some of its responses may be inaccurate or may not make sense for the given prompt, so it’s important to take everything it says with a grain of salt. It will still require a planner’s expertise to interpret its responses, vet them, and ultimately execute on them.
Future of ChatGPT in the meetings and events industry
The events industry has been resilient through financial crises and a global pandemic, and it now faces another potential disruption in the form of AI. AI-driven innovation is still in its very early stages, and the full extent of its capabilities are unknown. ChatGPT will likely continue to learn and get better and faster at responding to different prompts — in fact, it has already gotten several updates and upgrades since it was launched.
A recent report by Goldman Sachs economists hypothesized that up to 300 million jobs globally could be subject to automation as AI improves. It’s unclear to what extent event roles will be impacted, but there’s no reason for eventprofs to be worried about their jobs in the very immediate future — AI still very much requires a human touch.
ChatGPT undoubtedly presents significant implications for the future of events, but for now, planners should regard it as a new tool to add to their tech stack. It will remain a bit clunky until more event management tools provide integrations, but it’s nonetheless a powerful tool that can help event professionals become more efficient and design better experiences for their audiences.
This article first appeared on Allseated.com
