Does Sales Offer an Eliza Effect?

TL;DR: No. Reign the AI content gen in.

Who knew the world's first ever chatbot was from a mid-1960s MIT lab?

Named after the fictional Eliza Doolittle, taught to drop her cockney accent to gain high society acceptance.

The 'effect' relates to how, despite knowing them to be inanimate, we humans happily anthropomorphise our AI chatbots.

As Prof Kate Devlin says, 'humans are evolutionary wired to find patterns and project human traits onto anything that communicates with us'.

I've heard her speak on our need to find connection. Which although such AI can sate, we still know it is not real and so shall ultimately not provide the true connection we yearn.

As ever, there are exceptions that prove this rule.

Yet here's the rub. As temptingly simple as it may be, if we use AI to generate 'content' for our potential customers it can actively push them away from us.

Because we already know buyers have quickly developed 'AI radar'. Prospects have started to spot AI-generated deal collateral.

Yes, lines may get ever more blurry towards disappearing. But it may well be that the more they sense the output provided is not our own authentic voice, the more they withdraw from likelihood of buying from us.

I've blogged before on this, as it's termed today The Uncanny Valley.

Other 'inverse-Eliza' labels touching on this include the Frankenstein Effect, the Uncanny Echo and the Kasparov Effect. Each evoking algorithmic pastiche/fatigue, 'syntactic claustrophobia' and semantic emptiness.

Whatever we call it, we must avoid it. Our prospects insist.