AI companies seem to promise the world, but all that glitters is not gold. While AI is at an exciting point in its development, there are still many legal and ethical pitfalls. Some companies have begun to integrate AI into their day-to-day routine, including marketing, but what about the cannabis industry?
Compliance Standards Change Regularly - Sometimes Abruptly
No matter the state, cannabis regulations change frequently. At the time of this writing, most AI learns by information fed to it. However, cannabis regulations regularly change, rendering past information fed to AI out of compliance.
In some instances, regulations can change abruptly with emergency rulings. At the end of the day, AI cannot keep up with regulation changes for all legal states.
AI Does Not Fact Check
When it comes to cannabis marketing, education is a key element. Fighting against misinformation and negative propaganda is part of the job. However, as great as AI sounds, there are some pitfalls when it comes to misinformation.
For example, an Australian mayor filed a defamation lawsuit against OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. According to a Feb. 2023 article from Reuters, the mayor "became concerned about his reputation when members of the public told him ChatGPT had falsely named him as a guilty party in a foreign bribery scandal involving a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia in the early 2000s."
However, he was never convicted of any crime, nor did he serve jail time, despite what the falsified information written by ChatGPT claimed. The lawyers representing the mayor sent OpenAI a letter, giving the company 28 days to fix the error before they proceeded with the defamation lawsuit.
No Human Touch
When it comes to marketing, the main goal is to connect and resonate with your target audience so they will purchase your product or service. AI lacks a human touch and often will recycle points in prompts. This results in impersonal marketing material with zero brand tone.
At the end of the day, AI really has no place in Cannabis marketing. There are too many pitfalls that could result in legal trouble for cannabis brands. Additionally, it could alienate a brand from its customers. AI may be taking the world by storm, but it is not ready to tackle as complex an industry as cannabis.