On a recent episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast, HubSpot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah sat down with hosts Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan to discuss the rise of AI agents.
When I hear the term “artificial intelligence agents,” I think of little robots that sneak around like spies, running errands for marketers.
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Obviously, this is not entirely true (they don’t wear suits), but they are a great help to traders and are predicted to greatly improve their efficiency and productivity.
AI agents are the latest AI trends to increase sales and marketing, but are they worth it? Let’s get into some of the points covered in the episode:
What is an AI agent?
According to Shah, an AI agent is a piece of software that uses AI to achieve a goal in multiple steps.
“There are different definitions of what an AI agent actually is,” he says. “There is a range of possibilities. You have very simple agents and sophisticated agents that do multi-agent things and think.”
But whether we’re talking about simple AI agents or more complex ones, a prominent feature is their ability to execute multi-step goals that require different functions. According to Shah, this capability separates them from AI tools like ChatGPT.
Think of it this way: when I use an AI tool like ChaGPT, it’s a simple back-and-forth interaction. I make a request, and the chatbot responds.
“Whereas with an agent, you give it a higher-order goal and it might need to call Language Modeling (LM) or multiple LMs and use other AI tools and some classical tools to pull together whatever goal you’re trying to achieve.”
A simple way to think about it is that AI agents are the next generation of automation tools to streamline marketing workflows and tasks.
When to use AI agents
So when should you use an AI agent instead of a standard AI tool like a chatbot? This is actually what I find most interesting about the AI agent podcast discussion.
When we think of AI, it’s hard to shake the thought (fear) that it will replace humans. However, Shah explains that an AI agent is most helpful when a human is needed to start a task, but many steps can be taken without human intervention.
For example, say a small business owner wants to drive leads into their CRM using ChatGPT. They could plug user data into ChatGPT to see what the chatbot generates.
However, if they want to take it a step further, they could use an AI Agent to fetch them the latest company numbers added to the CRM to conduct research.
They could then write the rules for how they want the writing to go.
“This is all doable with today’s technology and AI agents,” says Shah.
Essentially, AI agents should be used when “you know what to do manually, and you could do it manually — but you want to automate some of those steps instead of trying to do this kind of one-shot with ChatGPT,” says Shah.
AI agents in content marketing
If you’re a content creator and marketer like him, you’re probably interested in how AI agents can help in the realm of content marketing, such as creating blog content, SOCIAL MEDIA posts, videos, and graphics.
I’ve said in the past that marketers should think of AI as a digital assistant. If that’s the case (and it is), think of AI agents as your digital team.
“The really exciting thing about these agents is that they can actually use each other,” Shah explains.
Shah mentions generative AI tools as an example, and the need for images to be generated for your business to adhere to the style and color palette specific to your brand.
“So I created an agent called Color Palette Extractor,” he says. “It’s a very simple agent. All you do is give it a home page or any website. It will take a screenshot of that web page, determine what colors are being used, and give you a palette proportional to the percentage of real estate that color takes up.”
In other words, the AI agent will generate a color palette based on the web page you give it.
You can then take the color palette produced by the agent and pass it to another agent who will incorporate that palette to generate images or other content.
“So it’s putting together two agents who didn’t know anything about each other until you creatively put them together,” he says.
From there you can take an image and run it through the LinkedIn post generator, including the results of the previous two agents. It’s three agents working together as a team to create content for your business.
Concerns about AI agents
Listening to the podcast, Shah, Bodnar and Flanagan’s excitement at the possibilities presented by AI agents was impossible to ignore.
The Shan event mentions a future where AI agents could be treated almost like paid employees and a natural part of marketing teams.
“One day, agents will have a salary that is, say, $2.00 a month, or whatever the price is,” he says.
While I mentioned earlier that humans are still needed when using AI agents, there are concerns about what the human role might look like if we’re talking about teams of AI agents.
Personally, I think the explanation would be that marketers will still be an integral part of the marketing process even with the addition of AI agents, they just need to improve their skills and consider a supervisory role.
Think about it: even the biggest teams need a leader and a supervisor.
Jeremy Kahn, AI editor at Fortune magazine, seems to share my opinion in an interview with Fortunate Magazine.
“We need to redefine human roles, focusing on higher-level skills to oversee systems. “I foresee humans overseeing multiple artificial intelligence systems simultaneously, serving as both guides and judges of these systems’ results,” says Kahn.
So are AI agents worth the investment?
I think any technological advancement that can streamline processes, free up marketers’ time and keep their business competitive is worth the investment. However, with great advances in AI comes great responsibility.
In almost every post I’ve ever written about AI (and I’ve written a lot), I’ve said that AI best practices include overlooking, verifying, and adding a human touch to every AI-generated output. And that doesn’t change with the use of AI agents.
In fact, I think it’s even more important to monitor your team of agents and AI tools because more machines involved means more chefs in the kitchen.
So yes, take a look at AI agents and think about the ways they can make your life easier as a marketer or business owner. Just make sure you supervise your team of agents.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/ai-agents
