Image this: It is 2025. Your advertising and marketing intern used an AI device to generate content material on your greatest consumer and by accident included hallucinated product options and hit ship earlier than anybody may evaluate it.
Gave you a chill, didn’t it?
Because the creator economic system races to undertake generative AI instruments, taking a pause to construct a correct content material governance needs to be the next move.
Fortunate for us, the writer of “What Issues Subsequent” and the founder and CEO of KO Insights, Kate O’Neill, shared her knowledge on navigating the wild west of AI-powered content material creation earlier than your group faces its personal content material disaster.
This interview is a part of G2’s Q&A sequence. For extra content material like this, subscribe to G2 Tea, a e-newsletter with SaaS-y information and leisure.
To look at the total interview, take a look at the video under:
Contained in the trade with Kate O’Neill
Your newest e-book, “What Issues Subsequent,” addresses future-ready decision-making. Are you able to inform us how this is applicable particularly to content material threat administration?
I feel future-ready choice making is an idea or a mindset that includes a stability between enterprise goals and human values. This performs out in tech as a result of the dimensions and scope of tech choice making is so big. And numerous leaders really feel daunted by how advanced the choice making is.
Inside content material threat administration, what we’re taking a look at is a necessity for governance and a kind of coverage to be put in place. We’re additionally taking a look at a proactive method that is past simply regulatory compliance.
The secret’s understanding what issues in your present actuality whereas anticipating what shall be essential sooner or later, all guided by a transparent understanding of what your group is making an attempt to perform and what defines your values.
I feel the concentrate on growing strong inside frameworks will actually profit individuals in relation to content material threat. And people frameworks needs to be based mostly on function and organizational values. It is extremely essential to have a very clear understanding of what it’s the group is making an attempt to perform and what it’s that defines their values.
Remodel your AI advertising and marketing technique.
Be a part of trade leaders at G2’s free AI in Motion Roadshow for actionable insights and confirmed methods to reimagine your funnel. Register now
Speaking about content material dangers, what are probably the most important hidden dangers in content material methods that organizations usually overlook, and the way can they be extra aware sooner or later?
After I labored for a big enterprise on the intranet crew, our focus was not simply on content material dissemination but in addition on sustaining content material integrity, managing laws, and stopping duplication. For instance, totally different departments usually saved their very own copies of paperwork, just like the code of conduct. Nonetheless, updating these paperwork may result in inconsistent variations throughout departments, leading to “orphaned” or outdated content material.
One other basic instance that I’ve seen so many occasions is a few sort of work course of getting instantiated after which codified into documentation. However that doc represents one individual’s quirky preferences, which grow to be ingrained in documentation even after that individual leaves. This results in sustaining non-essential data with out a clear cause. And so I feel these are the sorts of issues which are very low-key sort of dangers. These are low-harm dangers, though they add up over time.
What we’re seeing within the higher-risk stakes isn’t having readability or transparency throughout communications and never having the ability to perceive which stakeholders are accountable for various items of content material.
Additionally, with generative AI getting used inside organizations, we see lots of people producing their very own variations of content material after which sending that out on behalf of the corporate to shoppers or to outside-facing media organizations. And people aren’t essentially sanctioned by the stakeholders inside the group who want to have some sort of governance over documentation.
A complete content material technique that addresses these points at regulatory, compliance, and enterprise engagement ranges would go a great distance towards mitigating these dangers.
With content material methods turning into world, how regulatory variations throughout world markets have sophisticated content material threat administration, significantly with the emergence of generative AI. What particular compliance points ought to organizations be most involved about?
We see this loads in lots of fields of AI. We’re seeing how generative AI, significantly due to its widespread use, is clashing with world laws. Particularly in areas just like the U.S., the place deregulation is distinguished, corporations face challenges in establishing efficient inside governance frameworks. Such inside governance frameworks are essential to make sure their resilience in world markets and to stop points just like the dissemination of unrepresentative content material that would misalign with an organization’s values or positions, doubtlessly compromising security and safety.
We want to consider resilience and future readiness from an organization management standpoint. And which means having the ability to say, “We want the very best sort of procedures for us, for our group.” And that is in all probability going to imply being adaptable to any market. For those who do enterprise globally, you could be ready on your content material to be consumed or engaged with by world markets.
“I feel specializing in growing worth pushed frameworks that transcend particular laws is the precise solution to go.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and CEO of KO Insights
We have to assume proactively about governance in order that we will create the sort of aggressive benefit and resilience that can assist us navigate world markets and altering circumstances. As a result of as quickly as any explicit authorities adjustments to a distinct chief, we might even see full fluctuation in these regulatory states.
So, by specializing in long-term methods, corporations can defend their content material, individuals, and stakeholders and keep ready for shifts in governmental insurance policies and world market dynamics.
I see that you just’re very lively on LinkedIn, and also you speak about AI capabilities and human values intertwining. So, contemplating the stability between AI capabilities and human values, what framework do you suggest for making certain that AI-powered content material instruments align with human-centric values and never vice versa?
Opposite to the idea that human-centric or values-driven frameworks stifle innovation, I imagine they really improve it. When you perceive what your group is making an attempt to perform and the way it advantages each inside and exterior stakeholders, innovation turns into simpler inside these well-defined guardrails.
I like to recommend utilizing the “now-next continuum” framework from my e-book “What Issues Subsequent.” This includes figuring out your priorities now, partaking in situation planning about seemingly future outcomes, defining your most well-liked outcomes, and dealing on closing the hole between seemingly outcomes and most well-liked outcomes.
This train, utilized by means of a human-centric lens, is definitely the very best factor I can consider to facilitate innovation as a result of it actually lets you transfer shortly but in addition lets you understand that you just’re not shifting so shortly that you just’re harming individuals. It creates a stability between technological functionality and moral duty that advantages each the enterprise and the people linked to it.
“Take into consideration the stability between technological functionality and moral duty and do this in a means that advantages the enterprise and the people which are in and out of doors of the enterprise on the identical time.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and CEO of KO Insights
Trying forward, what expertise ought to content material groups develop now to be ready for future content material dangers?
Content material groups ought to concentrate on growing expertise that mix technical understanding with moral issues till this integration turns into second nature. The opposite factor needs to be proactive management and actually fascinated with how there’s numerous uncertainty due to geopolitics, local weather, AI, and different quite a few subjects.
And given the uncertainty of this time, I feel there is a tendency to really feel very caught. As a substitute, that is truly the very best time to look forward and do the integrative work of understanding what issues now and what’s going to matter sooner or later — from one 12 months to 100 years forward.
The secret’s pulling these future issues into your present selections, actions, and priorities. This forward-looking integration is the essence of “What Issues Subsequent” and represents the abilities many individuals want proper now.
For those who loved this insightful dialog, subscribe to G2 Tea for the most recent tech and advertising and marketing thought management.
Observe Kate O’Neill on LinkedIn to know extra about AI ethics, content material governance and accountable tech.
Edited by Supanna Das
