But are computerized systems any better, and can they detect spoofed voices?
Well, in the same way that fingerprint readers worked to overcome gummy bears, voice readers are working to overcome deepfake voices.
This is only the beginning of the war against voice spoofing. Other companies will pioneer new advances that will tell the real voices from the fake ones.
As for independent testing:
ID R&D has participated in multiple ASVspoof tests, and performed well in them.
I’ve performed product marketing since 2015 (arguably earlier), and I performed that other similar-sounding role, product management, from 2000 to 2009. The two roles certainly have similarities such as customer focus, but they may be different.
Or may not. There’s no standard job description for a product marketer, and product marketing needs vary between companies.
Ignoring your prospects is NOT a winning business strategy. But a lot of companies do it anyway by not communicating regularly with their prospects.
If you ignore your prospects, your prospects will ignore you.
Meetings and money, via a third party
Of my three Bredemarket meetings (so far) today, the second was the most promising.
A person at a large company needs consulting services from me. All we need to do is work out the mechanics. The large company relies on a third party to manage its indpendent contractor relationships, including onboarding, time cards, and payments for hourly work. I wanted to learn about the third party, but I ran into walls when seeking current information about the firm.
The third party’s website is static
The third party’s website talks about its services, some unique aspects about the business, the story of its founder (a fascinating story), its technology partners, and its call to action. It provides ALMOST everything…with the exception of CURRENT information.
Luckily for me, I knew where to find current information on the company. Since the company is a B2B provider, I assumed that the company has a LinkedIn page. And I was right. But…
The third party’s LinkedIn page is also static
As you probably know, company LinkedIn pages have several subpages. The “About” supage talks about the third party company’s services, and the “People” subpage links to the profiles of the company’s employees, including the founder. So I went to the “Posts” subpage for the third party…
Use other social media outlets: TikTok, X, YouTube, whatever.
Pay attention to your prospects by providing current content.
If you ignore your prospects, your prospects will ignore you.
Are you ready to stop ignoring your prospects?
If you need help creating content for your blog, your social media platforms, or your website, Bredemarket can help you regain credibility with your prospects and customers.
Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
This post talks about the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service, describes why your firm would elect that service over three of my other services, and explains how the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service works.
Four ways that Bredemarket provides written content
I know that the experts say that you’re NOT supposed to give your prospects a multitude of choices, and that you should keep your offerings simple. Sometimes REALLY simple.
But I’ve ignored the experts (again) and I’m giving Bredemarket’s prospects four options for content creation. I’ll briefly touch on three of them before describing the fourth one, the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service. Once I’m done, you’ll know when you want to elect Bredemarket 2800, and when you’ll want to elect one of the other three options:
Bredemarket 4000 (by the hour),
Bredemarket 4444 (by the month), or
Bredemarket 400 (by the small project).
One: by the hour (Bredemarket 4000 Long Writing Service)
Sometimes you don’t know the parameters of your project, or perhaps you may have multiple projects that require Bredemarket’s assistance. In those cases, Bredemarket bills by the hour using something I call the Bredemarket 4000 Long Writing Service.
Whether it’s proposal work or something else, I do the work (however much work there is) and bill you for the hours that I worked.
Two: by the month (Bredemarket 4444 Partner Retainer)
Perhaps you have ongoing needs and just need me to be available for a certain number of hours each month, yet you’re not ready to hire a full-time person to do the work. In that case, the Bredemarket 4444 Partner Retainer is the package that is best for you. With this level of commitment, I am embedded as part of your organization.
As I assert in the post “Three Levels of Engagement With Your Content Creator,” a retainer offers a happy middle ground between full-time employment and single project work. It gives you work flexibility, budget predictability, and consultant accessibility.
Three: by the small project (Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service)
But what if you know the scope of your project, and it is a single simple project? If you only need between 400 and 600 words of text, then the ideal package for you is the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.
If your project only requires 400 to 600 words (give or take), the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service is ideal for you.
But what if you need more words than that? A lot more?
Why would you need 3,000 words?
There are a few cases in which your firm may need roughly 3,000 words of text, rather than the roughtly 500 words of text described above.
Longer blog posts. Often blog posts are pretty short and fit well within a 400 to 600 word limit. But sometimes you need longer, more detailed blog posts that delve into a topic more deeply. If you need 3,000 words to tell your story, tell it.
Longer LinkedIn articles. In most cases, social media postings will not hit the 3,000 word mark. (For some social media platforms it’s near impossible to hit that limit anyway.) One notable exception is LinkedIn articles, which can enter into the same detail as a long blog post. If your audience is on LinkedIn, then place your content natively on LinkedIn (repurposing it to your blog for your non-LinkedIn prospects if you like).
Longer case studies. Case studies can vary in length. As it turns out, the case studies that Bredemarket has written for its clients are simple two-pagers (including graphics) and fit well within the Bredemarket 400 parameters. But perhaps your case study demands richer detail.
White papers. While one may debate about the semantics of what is a white paper vs. what is not a white paper, you may demand a document that requires around 3,000 words of detail.
The content type that you know about, but I don’t. You may require a particular piece of content that doesn’t fit into the nice neat categories above, but requires text of between 2,800 and 3,200 words.
In these cases, the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service provides the content you need.
But is Bredemarket 2800 the same as Bredemarket 400, with more words and a higher price?
No.
Longer content requires a slightly different process.
How the Bredemarket 2800 process differs from the Bredemarket 400 process
Admittedly there are some obvious similarities between Bredemarket 400 and Bredemarket 2800.
The kickoff is an important part of the content creation process, since the questions I ask during the kickoff (since expanded) ensure that I produce the right content at the end of the process.
The kickoff ensures that the final written content (a) answers the WHY/HOW/WHAT questions about you, (b) advances your GOAL, (c) communicates your BENEFITS, and (d) speaks to your TARGET AUDIENCE. It is both iterative and collaborative.
The beginning of the Bredemarket Kickoff Guide that I use. There are many, many more questions that I haven’t disclosed. Do you want to learn them? Buy the service.
The basic work during the kickoff is pretty much the same as for Bredemarket 400, although you and I will probably go in-depth on certain items, and there is a higher chance that the content specifications will be more detailed (for example, goals for each subsection of the content).
You and Bredemarket agree upon the topic, goal, benefits, and target audience (and, if necessary, outline, section sub-goals, relevant examples, and relevant key words/hashtags, and interim and final due dates).
For complex content requiring input and approval of multiple subject matter experts, you and Bredemarket agree on a preliminary list of tasks, assigned persons, and due dates.
For content that must be incorporated into your content management system, you and Bredemarket agree on the necessary format and other parameters. Otherwise, the final copy will be provided in Microsoft Word docx format, including (as appropriate) callout indicators, hyperlinks, key words, and/or hashtags.
For projects requiring multiple related pieces of content, you and Bredemarket agree upon the desired frequency of content.
The Bredemarket 2800 prework
Sometimes one or two additional things will happen before I start writing the first draft.
I may need to interview one of your customers or subject matter experts—for example, to obtain the facts necessary for a case study or white paper.
I may need to conduct additional research, as agreed upon by us during the kickoff.
The Bredemarket 2800 drafts
Once I’m ready, I start writing.
Between you and me, I create a draft 0.5, sleep on it (sometimes literally), and then create a much more succinct draft 1.0. See “Your writers (in this case me) should be succinct,” in my post “Which Words Should Your Marketers Use? My Four Suggestions.”
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that it takes longer to write 3,000 words than it takes to write only 500 words. Therefore, I allow myself up to seven days (actual days, not working days) to produce the first draft. (Contrast this with Bredemarket 400, in which I commit to create a draft within three days.)
Then I hand the draft over to you for the first review.
After I receive your review comments, I work on the second draft (again, taking up to seven days) and hand it over for the second review.
Then (if necessary) I work on the third draft and hand it over for the third review. Unlike Bredemarket 400, which only includes two reviews, Bredemarket 2800 includes three reviews because of the higher complexity of the content.
At the end, I provide you with the final copy.
But what if you need your content much more quickly than the 1-2 months it may take to go through all three of the draft and review cycles?
Then we’ll mutually adjust the parameters (and the billing) accordingly.
However, remember that when I adjust my deliverable schedule, it also affects your deliverable schedule as described below.
The Bredemarket 2800 reviews
As decribed above, you will receive up to three review copies during the process.
Because this is a collaborative process, your participation is important to ensure that I create the proper content for your firm. So be prepared to spent the time necessary to ensure that the content is right.
I realize that you probably don’t have a lot of time to review consultant content. If you did have a lot of time, then you’d probably write the content yourself rather than asking a consultant to do it. For this reason, I give you seven days to review each draft, rather than the three days that I give to firms that elect the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.
Of course, if you require a more rapid turnaround, then you’ll need to review the drafts much more quickly, in the same way that I’ll need to write the drafts much more quickly.
The Bredemarket 2800 end product
After the kickoffs, drafts, and reviews, I’ll provide the final copy in Microsoft Word docx format, unless we’ve agreed on some other format. This will give you the content you need to put in your blog, in an article on your LinkedIn page, or in whatever content you need.
This coming year will be the fourth year of Bredemarket’s existence. I started in August 2020, but it took a few weeks for the city business license and other paperwork to complete.
Now while the City of Ontario (California, not Canada) business license renewal entitles me to conduct business in the city as Bredemarket (when coupled with the Fictitious Business Name statement I filed with San Bernardino County), it is not an official endorsement of my activity by the city, and is definitely NOT an endorsement of the call to action at the end of this post.
More importantly, the City of Ontario has imposed four significant restrictions on the way that Bredemarket conducts business. Do they affect how I do business with you? We’ll see.
First: I must post the business license in a conspicuous place
Done.
City of Ontario business license, posted in a conspicuous place in an undisclosed location. And no, I don’t wear my glasses all the time.
Although as we will see when we get to the third restriction, the whole meaning of “conspicuous place” is irrelevant to Bredemarket’s business.
Second: I can’t conduct just ANY business
The business license is issued “for consulting services, including marketing and writing services.” The license does NOT allow me to bake pies, perform auto maintenance, launch rockets into space, or perform heart surgery.
You won’t see the Bredemarket 33410 Aortic Valve Surgery Service any time soon. The city won’t let me offer it. (33410, by the way, is the medical code for Under Surgical Procedures on the Aortic Valve.)
Dang guvmint.
Third: No visitation from clients
Remember how the city requires that I post my license in a conspicuous place? Well, the city also prohibits me from having clients visit me at my work location. This makes sense, since residential neighborhoods aren’t really built to have a bunch of cars park outside a house where business is conducted.
No, Bredemarket clients cannot park their cars in front of my house. And no, this is not my house. (And they’re not your cars either.) Fair use. The Verge, “Multimillion-dollar Ferraris, Jaguars, Astons, and a fine cup of tea.” The cast of cars and characters from the first Goodwood press day in 1993. Lord Charles March is by the front door of the house with his light blue AC 16/80 designed by his grandfather.
This means that when I do have a person-to-person meeting (rather than a videoconference) to conduct business, the meeting has to be offsite. For example, a couple of years ago I met with an advisor at Brandon’s Diner in Upland. (And the lunch was tax deductible!)
Fourth: No signage permitted
Again, because my work location is in a residential neighborhood, I can’t put a huge neon sign in my front yard with the Bredemarket logo.
Imagine this in my front yard.
And no, I can’t put a small neon sign in my front yard.
Or any neon sign.
I wonder if the city will let me put signage on my mailbox? Actually, the UPS Store probably won’t allow that either.
Bredemarket’s mailing address is 1030 N Mountain Ave #259, Ontario CA 91762-2114. If you read my previous post, you know that “MBE” stands for Mailboxes Etc.
So what?
The reason that these city restrictions don’t matter to you is because (since we still have the Internet) Bredemarket is perfectly capable of conducting its business online.
You don’t have to look for my business sign, or a parking place in front of the place where I conduct business. Why not? Because I can meet with you via Google Meet or another videoconferencing service, or we can talk on the phone, or even exchange emails with each other.
I’ve worked from home since March 2020—first for IDEMIA, then for Bredemarket, then for Incode Technologies, then for Bredemarket again. During that time I’ve been able to meet all of the needs of Bredemarket clients remotely, despite no public parking and no signage.
Well, almost all the needs. I haven’t been able to perform aortic valve surgery for my clients.
Dang guvmint.
The city does not endorse this call to action
Do you want to use the marketing and writing services of a government-licensed consulting firm?
I wasn’t going to labor on this Labor Day, but I ended up renewing my City of Ontario business license. (This coming year will be the fourth that Bredemarket has conducted business in Ontario.)
The UPS Store, 1030 N Mountain Ave, Ontario CA 91762.They WERE closed for Labor Day (but boxholders have keys).Bredemarket’s mailing address is 1030 N Mountain Ave #259, Ontario CA 91762-2114.
Now most people don’t interact with Bredemarket via my physical mailing address. The few that do include the City of Ontario, and three of my clients who have chosen to pay me via paper checks. (I’m flexible.)
This got me curious.
What if?
What if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow? What if the only way my clients could interact with Bredemarket was through my Bredemarket physical mailing address? Could Bredemarket still conduct business?
Possibly.
Some of my business would disappear overnight. Blog posts, for example, are meaningless in a non-Internet world, unless companies choose to post long text-based communications on utility poles. Or in laundromats.
This used to be my laundromat. 454 N Mountain Ave, Ontario, CA 91762.
Even if the Internet were to disappear, I could still write text for case studies (maintaining my Inland Empire case study writing business) and white papers. I could send my client a Microsoft Word file (perhaps an old version of Word), and the firm could send the file to their printer. But how would I send the file? Put a CD in the mail?
Let’s address two items before we continue. Trust me; it’s important.
The Gender Shades study evaluated only three algorithms: one from IBM, one from Microsoft, and one from Face++. It did not evaluate the hundreds of other facial recognition algorithms that existed in 2018 when the study was released.
The study focused on gender classification and race classification. Back in those primitive innocent days of 2018, the world assumed that you could look at a person and tell whether the person was male or female, or tell the race of a person. (The phrase “self-identity” had not yet become popular, despite the Rachel Dolezal episode which happened before the Gender Shades study). Most importantly, the study did not address identification of individuals at all.
What does AdvoLogix say about using AI in the workplace?
AdvoLogix’s post is clear in its intent. It is entitled “9 Ways to Use AI in the Workplace.” The introduction to the post explains AdvoLogix’s position on the use of artificial intelligence.
Rather than replacing human professionals, AI applications take a complementary role in the workplace and improve overall efficiency. Here are nine actionable ways to use artificial intelligence, no matter your industry.
I won’t list ALL nine of the ways—I want you to go read the post, after all. But let me highlight one of them—not the first one, but the eighth one.
Individual entrepreneurs can also benefit from AI-driven technologies. Entrepreneurship requires great financial and personal risk, especially when starting a new business. Entrepreneurs must often invest in essential resources and engage with potential customers to build a brand from scratch. With AI tools, entrepreneurs can greatly limit risk by improving their organization and efficiency.
The AdvoLogix post then goes on to recommend specific ways that entrepreneurs can use artificial intelligence, including:
AI shopping
Use AI Chatbots for Customer Engagement
Regardless of how you feel about the use of AI in these areas, you should at least consider them as possible options.
Why did AdvoLogix write the post?
Obviously the company had a reason for writing the post, and for sharing the post with people like me (and like you).
AdvoLogix provides law firms, legal offices, and public agencies with advanced, cloud-based legal software solutions that address their actual needs.
Thanks to AI tools like Caster, AdvoLogix can provide your office with effective automation of data entry, invoicing, and other essential but time-consuming processes. Contact AdvoLogix to request a free demo of the industry’s best AI tools for law offices like yours.
So I’m not even going to provide a Bredemarket call to action, since AdvoLogix already provided its own. Good for AdvoLogix.
But what about Steven Schwartz?
The AdvoLogix post did not specifically reference Steven Schwartz, although the company stated that you should control the process yourself and not cede control to your artificial intelligence tool.
Roberto Mata sued Avianca airlines for injuries he says he sustained from a serving cart while on the airline in 2019, claiming negligence by an employee. Steven Schwartz, an attorney with Levidow, Levidow & Oberman and licensed in New York for over three decades, handled Mata’s representation.
But at least six of the submitted cases by Schwartz as research for a brief “appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations,” said Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York in an order….
In late April, Avianca’s lawyers from Condon & Forsyth penned a letter to Castel questioning the authenticity of the cases….
Among the purported cases: Varghese v. China South Airlines, Martinez v. Delta Airlines, Shaboon v. EgyptAir, Petersen v. Iran Air, Miller v. United Airlines, and Estate of Durden v. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, all of which did not appear to exist to either the judge or defense, the filing said.
Schwartz, in an affidavit, said that he had never used ChatGPT as a legal research source prior to this case and, therefore, “was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.” He accepted responsibility for not confirming the chatbot’s sources.
Schwartz is now facing a sanctions hearing on June 8.
Inland Empire companies are asking the same question that other companies are asking: “Should my business use ChatGPT (or another generative AI tool) to quickly generate content?”
Bear in mind that I have a vested interest in the answer to this question, because Bredemarket’s business is content generation for other businesses. So I don’t have a natural inclination to tell you not to buy my services and use ChatGPT or Bard or whatever instead.
Nevertheless, I’ll outline the advantages and drawbacks of using automation (in this case generative AI tools) to create written content. Then I’ll look at the three options for your business’ content generation needs. (Surprise! One of those options is to contract with Bredemarket. You’ve been warned that a call to action is coming.)
An “exchange” of questions
As I mentioned in my post about creating and populating Facebook business pages, yesterday afternoon was the first time in years that I had attended a monthly Ontario IDEA Exchange meeting. For those who aren’t familiar with these meetings, they allow small business owners from the Ontario, California area to meet and…um…exchange ideas.
One of the attendees asked me what I thought of ChatGPT.
If you’ve read the Bredemarket blog or the Bredemarket LinkedIn page, you know that I have some thoughts on this. (If you haven’t seen my thoughts, I’ll share them later in this post.)
It turns out that the attendee had a reason for asking the question that went well beyond generative artificial intelligence (generative AI), and touched on automation in general.
Should we use ChatGPT, Bard, or another generative AI tool to generate text content, or should we contact a content marketing expert?
Similarly, should we use a generative AI tool to generate image content, or should we contact a graphic design expert?
Going beyond generative AI, should we use tax preparation software, or should we contact a tax preparation expert?
You can ask this same question about a variety of business services. Should you opt for the (sometimes) cheaper automated solution, or should you get a real person to perform the service?
This can be a loaded question. After all, I can’t tell you that you should always use a person for these tasks when I personally use Freepik and a well-known tax preparation software package.
So, returning to content, let’s take a (probably non-objective) look at the pros and cons of using generative AI tools for content creation. After all, some of my best friends use generative AI…and they’re still my friends (and obviously not my customers).
Generative AI content advantages
While generative AI isn’t as trendy a topic as it was a few months ago, people are still talking about using generative AI to create text content. And there are clearly some advantages to it.
It’s very fast. No, you won’t create your text in a minute. But with properly written prompts (commands to the generative AI tool) and by using a few iterations, you can probably get generative AI text content in five minutes. You won’t get text content of any length from Bredemarket in five minutes.
It’s (usually) free. In most cases, you can obtain your text at no cost to you. Again, Bredemarket doesn’t work for free.
It’s easy. You don’t need to know how to write. Sure, you need to know how to write the prompt, but you don’t need to worry about the mechanics of writing the text itself, and when to use “its” or “it’s”. You don’t want to sound like a looser, after all. (That was wrong.)
It’s “good enough.” Under most circumstances, the text created by a generative AI tool gets the job done, and is obviously better than no text at all.
Generative AI content drawbacks
Perhaps I’m biased, but I think that we can all agree on the drawbacks that I’ve listed below.
Potential accuracy issues. Generative AI content is sourced from the Internet, and you know how accurate the Internet can be at times. For example, when I was working for my former employer, I asked one popular generative AI tool to tell me the weaknesses of my employer’s product. The tool returned two responses, one of which was plain wrong.
More potential accuracy issues. The way generative AI tools work, most of them provide their answers as if they were most certainly true, with no attempt to provide the probability that the response is correct or incorrect. In essence, Mr. Gen AI is an automated know-it-all with complete certainty in its answers, even when they are obviously wrong.
Potential relevancy issues. Depending upon your generative AI tool, you may not have access to the latest data and may instead rely on older data that was available when the generative AI tool was trained. At one point, several of the popular generative AI tools were trained on data from 2021 or earlier, which meant that they knew nothing about events that happened last week.
Potential privacy issues. When you feed prompts to a generative AI tool, the prompts are stored by the tool. What if you’re using a public tool, and you’re feeding confidential data from your company to the tool? What’s going to happen to your company’s private data? (This is especially critical when the data crosses international borders, something that gave Samsung serious concern.)
Potential tone of voice issues. If your company feeds a prompt to a generative AI tool, and your competitor feeds the same prompt to the same tool, you will get similar or identical responses. If both companies use these responses, then the companies will sound like bland “me-too” providers, with no differentiation.
I’ve touched on a number of these issues in more detail in pieces that I’ve written on the Bredemarket blog (and in one case on LinkedIn). These explain when I use generative AI, and when I do not.
Depending upon your business needs, your budget, and your marketing direction, you have three choices.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Use a generative AI tool to write your content. It’s fast, it’s free, it’s easy. It may be good enough.
Use a low-cost writer to write your content. If you want to spend a little money, you can find writers who will work for pennies per word. That’s more than a generative AI tool, but you have a better chance of getting the content you want.
Use Bredemarket. I cost more than pennies per word (the cost for my standard 400-600 word writing package is in the brochure on my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service page), but Bredemarket’s collaborative kickoff process, including the opening six questions that I ask you, helps to ensure that your firm will get the content that you need.
Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
Bonus: here’s what Google Bard says on the topic (written by Google, not by me)
Sure, here are three advantages and three drawbacks of using generative AI to create written content:
Advantages:
Speed: Generative AI can create content much faster than humans. This can be a major advantage for businesses that need to produce a lot of content quickly, such as content marketing agencies or news organizations.
Cost-effectiveness: Generative AI can be a more cost-effective way to create content than hiring human writers. This is especially true for tasks that are repetitive or time-consuming, such as writing product descriptions or blog posts.
Accuracy: Generative AI can be very accurate in generating content that is factually correct. This is because it is trained on large datasets of text and code.
Drawbacks:
Creativity: Generative AI is not as creative as humans. It can only generate content that is based on the data it has been trained on. This means that it may not be able to come up with new ideas or insights.
Bias: Generative AI can be biased, depending on the data it is trained on. This is a concern because it could lead to the creation of content that is inaccurate or harmful.
Plagiarism: Generative AI can sometimes plagiarize content from other sources. This is because it is trained on a variety of text data, including some that may not be properly cited.
Overall, generative AI can be a valuable tool for creating written content. However, it is important to be aware of its limitations and to use it responsibly.
Here are some additional things to keep in mind when using generative AI to create written content:
Always fact-check the content before publishing it. Generative AI can sometimes make mistakes, so it is important to double-check the information.
Be clear about the purpose of the content. Are you trying to inform, persuade, or entertain? The purpose of the content will help you determine the tone and style of the writing.
Be aware of the audience. Who are you writing for? What are their interests and needs? Tailor the content to your audience.
Use generative AI as a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Generative AI can be a great way to get started with a writing project, but it is important to put your own unique spin on the content.
Bredemarket 