Crowd DNA’s Dr Jennifer Simon celebrates all the good news about AI at the MRS Semiotics and Cultural Insights Conference
Commercial Semiotics, like other industries, is experiencing trends toward automation – with similar hopes and trepidations. So when I was asked to speak at the MRS Semiotics and Cultural Insights Conference 2024, I wanted to focus on how we determine the optimal balance between human and AI involvement – the good signs, as it were.
The three following themes here were my introduction at the event to how semiotics and AI can begin to unlock new dimensions in research, creativity, and – most crucially – customer understanding:
Leveraging AI: Enhancing our rigour and breadth of our Storytelling and Analysis
While commercial semiotics is an established and rigorous methodology, AI supported semiotics can provide added robustness to our approach. By increasing the amount of source material we analyse, it gives us hundreds of visual and textual evidence across categories – to further validate, enhance and innovate aspects of our storytelling and analysis for even richer insights.
Demystifying AI: Bridging the Knowledge Gap and Establishing a Common Understanding
In the market research industry in general, as with semiotics, there needs to be education on what AI is exactly to demystify it, as we don’t have a common understanding of it. We at Crowd DNA and the wider Strat7 Group have developed an AI working group where we provide cross agency show and tells and internal webinars to sensitise team members to what generative AI is, its capabilities and limitations.
A partnership. Our Human Expertise and Technological innovation
Semiotics can be enhanced with AI, but human creativity and insights is still very critical – especially when advising clients on business decisions and providing strategic and credible recommendations and outputs.
Undoubtedly, AI is beginning to reshape how we work as Semioticians. And at Crowd DNA, it is part of our offering and we aspire to use it to give better, more scope to our outputs (whether that means strategists have time freed up for more creative tasks, or clients use it to analyse vast amounts of data efficiently). We know there’s lots of areas of integration between semiotics and AI that are just beginning to be explored…
The MRS Semiotics and Cultural Insights Conference 2024 is on 1st February 2024. For more information go to https://www.mrs.org.uk/.
If you’d like to learn more about how we use semiotics to reach real cultural insights, or more about our AI solutions – powered by strat7.ai – please get in touch: hello@crowdDNA.com