How can a brand that uses AI in its products effectively get across the message about how AI makes those products better?

Chris Hook, senior group director of communications and marketing at Cadence Design Systems, was recently faced with that challenge when his firm unveiled the first AI enabled supercomputer for design, which was notable for its ability to accurately model using computational fluid dynamics.

"Now, I think it gets arcane really quickly when you start talking about CFD and what that means," Hook tells Simon. "As you start to bring that to a broad audience, really what you're talking about is how we're making things, making consumer devices, buildings, cars, automobiles, better, faster, and cheaper, using AI."

The key factor, Hook says is "how are we going to democratize it? But do it in a way that keeps engagement. So, we have to simplify it, but if we don't keep it really concise, we're going to lose a broad audience."

But keeping the smaller, more specialized audience for each product in mind is also important. "A lot of our narrative really is focused on, it's the automotive manufacturers or it's the aerospace and defense companies. So, a lot of our narrative is very trade-focused, it is very technical-focused."

Hook also talks about the role that AI is playing in product development. "We have a technology called Cerebrus that allows chip designers to use AI to develop semiconductors. So, what I do whether I'm talking to, family members or a broad, marketing audience, I say, look, you understand ChatGPT. Think of what we're doing here as ChipGPT using large language models, natural language command to sort of simulate and optimize chip designs."

AI's effect on employement numbers also comes up for discussion. "We have to be very careful," Hook says. "It's not that you take the human element out, but AI is sort of becomes your copilot, your assistant."

He also advises creators to keep a close eye on the source material being using to train their AI. "You never want to be in a situation where you've leveraged AI to help you create a piece of content, but then you find out later that it's done something in violation of a copyright. "

In addition, communications pros marketing AI from a B2B perspective, he says, "always have to have this parallel track of, let's not confuse our customer message with our press message. Let's make sure that whatever we're doing, sort of from a core user marketing perspective, that we can abstract that up and tell it to a broad audience."

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