AI Appreciation Day: Q&A with NielsenIQ
Victor Hidalgo, BASES Australia & New Zealand Lead, NielsenIQ (NIQ) explains what challenges and opportunities lie ahead as Gen AI is set to transform the market research and insights sector.
What excites you about AI innovation in your industry?
AI has immense potential to revolutionise the market research industry and turbocharge the innovation process for consumer goods manufacturers. Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM) are already being applied broadly in data collection and quality checks, conversational consumer surveys, reporting automation and real-time learning. AI will almost certainly make the insight generation and innovation process faster, cheaper and better.
I currently believe the most exciting and impactful use cases for AI in the industries NIQ works across are:
(1) Creating new products and services
(2) Predicting consumer behaviour using synthetic data and/or big data sets
(3) Creating marketing content.
Of course, all of those activities are interconnected. NIQ, which is now finalising its merger with GfK, invests heavily in developing industry-leading solutions. In collaboration with our clients, we've already created and launched several AI-enabled solutions that are generating industry buzz.
For example, BASES Creative Product AI, built using over 100 models and algorithms, is an AI engine that can predict performance and identify new ways to optimise products. It's the most significant advancement in product formulation testing since the 1950s, but it's not likely to get much media or public attention. Nonetheless, new AI-enabled tools such as this are industry game changers – in this case, for R&D teams in CPG companies across the globe. A process that took months, sometimes years, and involved significant outlays can now be completed at a very affordable price in mere days.
What are the challenges around AI innovation in your industry?
There are three issues any organisation building AI-first applications at scale will face:
- First, ensuring the confidentiality of their clients' intellectual property and brand assets.
- Second, preventing hallucinations.
- Third, bias.
While all those things are serious issues, we are at the early stage of the Gen AI development cycle, and I'm optimistic that those challenges will be dealt with in time. At NIQ, and most other organisations, those dangers are front of mind when developing and implementing AI-enabled solutions.
Why celebrating AI Appreciation Day matters
AI has already profoundly disrupted several high-profile industries – such as marketing – and will likely start transforming almost all of them soon. I believe the guiding principles of AI should be the 3Ps: Positive, Practical and Purposeful.
Being positive relates to actively engaging in exploration and iteration to identify areas where generative AI can operate independently and those that require human oversight or involvement. Being practical is about assessing the benefits and limitations of the technology on a case-by-case basis to maximise usability and minimise risk.
The purpose part of the equation is a call to action for the industry to be value-driven, not hype-driven.
If everyone sticks to those principles, AI Appreciation Day could soon become one of the year's most celebrated days!
