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What are the risks associated with using GenAI in ABM?

Opinion
Published June 14, 2023

With GenAI inventors lobbying governments to provide safeguards and guidelines as the technology evolves, I want to look at the risks involved in using it as ABM-ers today.

What are the risks associated with using GenAI in ABM?

Using GenAI can offer numerous benefits, such as increased personalisation and efficiency. However, it’s essential to be aware of the potential risks involved. Here are some of the key risks to be aware of when using GenAI in ABM.

  • Quality and Accuracy: GenAI models, including language models like GPT-3, generate content based on patterns and examples from the training data they receive. While they can produce impressive results, there’s a risk that the generated content may lack accuracy or contain incorrect information. This can be particularly problematic in account-based marketing, where precision and reliability are crucial.
  • Compliance and Legal Issues: When using GenAI in marketing, there’s a risk of inadvertently generating content that violates legal or regulatory requirements. For instance, the generated content might infringe copyright, violate privacy laws, or breach advertising standards, particularly when working across countries for global accounts. It’s crucial to carefully review and vet the generated content to ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
  • Brand Reputation: GenAI models can occasionally generate content that may not align with a brand’s values or messaging. This can harm the brand’s reputation if inappropriate, offensive, or misleading content is generated and disseminated to target accounts. It’s important to have robust quality control mechanisms in place to prevent any negative impact on brand reputation.
  • Bias and Discrimination: GenAI models are trained on large datasets, which may inadvertently contain biases present in the data. These biases can be reflected in the generated content, potentially leading to discriminatory or unfair practices. It’s crucial to carefully analyse and mitigate biases in the training data and implement measures to ensure fairness and inclusivity in the content generated.
  • Lack of Control: GenAI systems operate based on learned patterns and examples, and there can be instances where the generated content deviates from the intended purpose or messaging. This lack of complete control over the AI-generated output can result in unexpected or undesirable content being presented to target accounts. Regular monitoring, testing, and refining of the generative AI system are necessary to mitigate this risk.
  • Overreliance on AI: Relying too heavily on GenAI without human oversight can lead to missed opportunities or misinterpretation of account-based marketing strategies. While AI can automate and streamline certain processes, human experts need to be involved to provide strategic direction, evaluate results, and make informed decisions based on a holistic understanding of the marketing goals and context.

To mitigate these risks, it’s important to have appropriate safeguards and quality control mechanisms in place. This includes carefully curating training data, implementing thorough review processes, conducting regular audits, and ensuring human oversight throughout the generative AI-powered marketing campaigns.

NB: This article was created with the help of ChatGPT.

Bev Burgess

Bev Burgess

Bev Burgess is passionate about the critical role marketing can play in building deep customer relationships, strong reputations and sustainable growth. She is best known as a worldwide authority on account-based marketing (ABM) and her latest book, Account-Based Marketing: The definitive handbook for B2B marketers explains how to use ABM effectively in your business (Kogan Page, 2025). She is co-author of Account-Based Growth: Unlocking sustainable value through extraordinary customer focus (Burgess and Shercliff, Kogan Page, 2022) and A Practitioner’s Guide to ABM: Accelerating growth in strategic accounts (Burgess with Munn, Kogan Page, 2021). Her other books include Executive Engagement Strategies (Kogan Page, 2020) and Marketing Technology as a Service (Young and Burgess, Wiley, 2010).