In a month where AI remains high on the agenda, we also look at the upcoming switch to GA4, the future of Google Search and celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
As we move towards the midway point of the year, it’s hard to believe that as the Christmas decorations were being packed away, ‘AI’ was a term that most of us rarely spoke of.
ChatGPT and its monumental rise has changed all of that. In the space of just three months, it recorded more than 120m monthly active users.
AI has placed itself firmly on the agenda for businesses and the public.
The use of AI is nothing particularly new, various tools we use from day to day rely on some form of AI or machine learning to make them work; not least the search engines we turn to daily to find information online.
The new wave of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have changed the game though. There are, of course, still wrinkles to iron out, but based on the current rate of development, things have probably improved in the time it has taken me to write this sentence.
Indulge
Launching our AI service
In light of the growth of generative AI technology and the questions those we speak with ask us, we’ve responded by launching a new Artificial Intelligence service. The new service is designed to help our clients to understand the new tools that are becoming available, how to use them and how to set effective policies.
It’s clear that AI has the potential to disrupt, but quite how it will cause its disruption is yet to be determined. That’s why our new service provides three solutions for clients:
- AI Consultancy - board-level support in understanding and planning for the use of AI in your organisation
- AI Solutions - working with clients to design and build AI-driven solutions
- AI Policies & Training - delivering training and policy documentation to make use of AI safe and effective
The launch comes off the back of Pat’s appearance on the panel at the IoD Mid Term event in Guernsey; “Rise of the Machines – What does AI Mean for Business and Boards in 2023?”
The team has written various articles on the subject of AI, you can find them here:
The importance of aligning AI with human values by Pat
How AI will change the future of UI design by Russell
Using AI to Assist Development: A Developer's Experience by Alastair
Team updates
They’ve both been here for a long while, but it’s high time we introduced the latest members of the Indulge team, Luke Smith and Phoebe Nisbet.
Luke joins the team in our Guernsey studio as Junior Developer and Phoebe has joined our studio in the UK as Digital Marketing Executive.
In addition, the Indulge board has been strengthened with the arrivals of long-term partners, Gareth Healey and Barnaby Molloy, both acting as Non-Exec Directors supporting business strategy.
Digital marketing
BrightonSEO
April played host to BrightonSEO; the twice-yearly gathering of search marketing professionals, now billed as the largest of its kind in the world.
Paul attended for the first time since speaking at the 2020 edition of the event. Key themes included automation, AI (of course) and the continued power of content as part of a marketing strategy.
You can read all of Paul’s notes here.
GA4
Outside of the event, perhaps the most important piece of digital marketing news on most organisation’s agendas right now is the imminent transition to the new version of Google Analytics. The new platform is known as GA4 and replaces the outgoing Univeral Analytics.
Expect to see an increasing flurry of messages and alerts from Google warning you to be ready for the switchover - the key date being 1st July 2023 which is when the old version of Google Analytics becomes obsolete.
If you are concerned or would like your settings reviewed, contact us at [email protected].
Google's I/O event
Google’s annual developer conference, I/O took place and with it came some announcements about the future of Google’s search engine.
Any such announcement is big news for our team concerned with SEO. As expected, this announcement mirrored Bing’s recent noises about introducing an AI-powered chat interface into its search engine.
The new Google interface was demoed and showed how the user can ask the search engine complex questions, the search engine then responding with conversational results, curated information and recommendations.
We’re yet to get our hands on the new system, but the key questions we’re hoping to get more information on are:
- How will Google give credit and link to information sources? - So far it looks as if referenced sites will be featured alongside chat results, but the final format will determine how brands generate web traffic from Google moving forward
- How will Google Ads be incorporated into the system? - It’s unlikely that Google will be comfortable just bumping the ads further down the page, so we’re keen to see how the new approach works with advertisers
Technology & production
It’s been all AI on the technology front and this has included the opportunity for Pat to run some experiments using the ChatGPT API.
The experiment is a celebration of what’s possible with AI whilst also highlighting Guernesiais; Guernsey’s language, also known as Patois or Guernsey French.
The experiment uses GPT 4 to produce a fully automated weather report, complete with Guernesiais.
View the experiment at weather.indulge.digital.
It’s a fun piece of work that has allowed our production team to learn more about the workings of the ChatGPT API and will be joined by similar experiments soon.
Want to speak to our production team about how you can use the API for your own applications? Contact us at [email protected].
User experience
18th May 2023 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day. In one of our meetings recently someone suggested that web accessibility is a boring subject and in many ways, they’re not wrong.
Just try reading the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and see how ironically difficult to comprehend they are.
It’s a good reminder that it’s not our job to only build accessible web experiences, but we also need to remind people of how important the subject is.
So, how do we make the subject of web accessibility less dry?
As it happens, one of Queen Elizabeth II’s final acts as monarch was to pave the way for an unexpected reminder of the importance of web accessibility.
On her passing, brands across the land (including Indulge) rolled out greyscale versions of their websites; a tribute that resulted in web users having difficulty using websites and online platforms when the colour contrast on pages became weak.
When the Queen died, the whole world became colour-blind.
