Image this: It is 2025. Your advertising and marketing intern used an AI instrument to generate content material on your greatest consumer and by chance included hallucinated product options and hit ship earlier than anybody may evaluation it.
Gave you a chill, didn’t it?
Because the creator financial system races to undertake generative AI instruments, taking a pause to construct a correct content material governance ought to be the next step.
Fortunate for us, the creator 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, try the video beneath:
Contained in the trade with Kate O’Neill
Your newest guide, “What Issues Subsequent,” addresses future-ready decision-making. Are you able to inform us how this is applicable particularly to content material danger administration?
I believe future-ready choice making is an idea or a mindset that includes a stability between enterprise aims and human values. This performs out in tech as a result of the size and scope of tech choice making is so enormous. And quite a lot of leaders really feel daunted by how advanced the choice making is.
Inside content material danger administration, what we’re taking a look at is a necessity for governance and a type of coverage to be put in place. We’re additionally taking a look at a proactive strategy that is past simply regulatory compliance.
The hot button is understanding what issues in your present actuality whereas anticipating what might be necessary sooner or later, all guided by a transparent understanding of what your group is attempting to perform and what defines your values.
I believe the deal with growing strong inner frameworks will actually profit folks on the subject of content material danger. And people frameworks ought to be based mostly on goal and organizational values. It is extremely necessary to have a extremely clear understanding of what it’s the group is attempting to perform and what it’s that defines their values.
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Speaking about content material dangers, what are essentially the most important hidden dangers in content material methods that organizations sometimes overlook, and the way can they be extra acutely aware sooner or later?
Once I labored for a big enterprise on the intranet group, our focus was not simply on content material dissemination but additionally on sustaining content material integrity, managing laws, and stopping duplication. For instance, completely different departments usually stored their very own copies of paperwork, just like the code of conduct. Nevertheless, 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 type of work course of getting instantiated after which codified into documentation. However that doc represents one particular person’s quirky preferences, which develop into ingrained in documentation even after that particular person leaves. This results in sustaining non-essential info and not using a clear motive. And so I believe these are the sorts of issues which are very low-key type of dangers. These are low-harm dangers, though they add up over time.
What we’re seeing within the higher-risk stakes will not be 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 type of governance over documentation.
A complete content material technique that addresses these points at regulatory, compliance, and enterprise engagement ranges would go a good distance towards mitigating these dangers.
With content material methods turning into international, how regulatory variations throughout international markets have sophisticated content material danger administration, significantly with the emergence of generative AI. What particular compliance points ought to organizations be most involved about?
We see this so much in lots of fields of AI. We’re seeing how generative AI, significantly due to its widespread use, is clashing with international laws. Particularly in areas just like the U.S., the place deregulation is distinguished, corporations face challenges in establishing efficient inner governance frameworks. Such inner governance frameworks are essential to make sure their resilience in international markets and to stop points just like the dissemination of unrepresentative content material that might misalign with an organization’s values or positions, probably compromising security and safety.
We want to consider resilience and future readiness from an organization management standpoint. And meaning having the ability to say, “We want the perfect type of procedures for us, for our group.” And that is most likely going to imply being adaptable to any market. In the event you do enterprise globally, you want to be ready on your content material to be consumed or engaged with by international markets.
“I believe specializing in growing worth pushed frameworks that transcend particular laws is the suitable solution to go.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and CEO of KO Insights
We have to suppose proactively about governance in order that we will create the type of aggressive benefit and resilience that may assist us navigate international markets and altering circumstances. As a result of as quickly as any specific authorities adjustments to a unique chief, we might even see full fluctuation in these regulatory states.
So, by specializing in long-term methods, corporations can defend their content material, folks, and stakeholders and keep ready for shifts in governmental insurance policies and international market dynamics.
I see that you simply’re very lively on LinkedIn, and also you discuss 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 assumption that human-centric or values-driven frameworks stifle innovation, I consider they really improve it. When you perceive what your group is attempting to perform and the way it advantages each inner and exterior stakeholders, innovation turns into simpler inside these well-defined guardrails.
I like to recommend utilizing the “now-next continuum” framework from my guide “What Issues Subsequent.” This includes figuring out your priorities now, partaking in state of affairs 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 way of a human-centric lens, is definitely the perfect factor I can consider to facilitate innovation as a result of it actually lets you transfer shortly but additionally lets you already know that you simply’re not shifting so shortly that you simply’re harming folks. 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 try this in a approach that advantages the enterprise and the people which are in and outdoors of the enterprise on the identical time.”
Kate O’Neill
Founder and CEO of KO Insights
Wanting forward, what abilities ought to content material groups develop now to be ready for future content material dangers?
Content material groups ought to deal with growing abilities that mix technical understanding with moral concerns till this integration turns into second nature. The opposite factor needs to be proactive management and actually serious about how there’s quite a lot of uncertainty due to geopolitics, local weather, AI, and different quite a few subjects.
And given the uncertainty of this time, I believe there is a tendency to really feel very caught. As a substitute, that is truly the perfect time to look forward and do the integrative work of understanding what issues now and what is going to matter sooner or later — from one 12 months to 100 years forward.
The hot button is pulling these future concerns 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.
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Comply with Kate O’Neill on LinkedIn to know extra about AI ethics, content material governance and accountable tech.
Edited by Supanna Das
