The technology evokes strong emotions

We used Brandwatch Consumer Research to look into the emojis used in public posts relating to ChatGPT on social media, forums, blogs, and review sites between November 1 2022 and January 18 2023.

Exploding head, robot, crystal ball emoji? Our emoji cloud practically spells out the conversation around how this mind-blowing AI chatbot has got people discussing what the future holds.

And notice the index finger pointing down and the spool of thread emoji (roughly translating to “read the full thread” in emoji language) suggesting long discussions about this topic.

Of course, emojis only paint part of the picture. We also wanted to understand how people are feeling about ChatGPT.

As our analysis of emotion-categorized mentions shows, things are calming down a little over time. The initial excitement and thrill have started to wear off, leaving room for the emotions of fear and sadness.

In the previous seven-day period, mentions of joy had seen the largest percentage increase as commenters shared their excitement about the new tool and its many uses.

Grappling with the implications

We’re seeing the conversation evolve in a fairly natural way – a way that’s almost reminiscent of the change curve in which initial shock (stage one) leads to depression and experimentation (stage two), and eventually acceptance and integration (stage three). It feels that, as a collective, we’re in stage two and are grappling with the implications of ChatGPT for the present and the future.

In this context, we’re able to understand common words and topics emerging in conversations about the chatbot across public posts on social media, forums, blogs, and review sites between November 2022 and January 2023.

Several topics stood out. Online authors commonly mention writing, coding, questions, and answers, with ‘time’ and ‘free’ framing these discussions. This signals that people are seeing the potential of using a free tool to help them manage some of their manual writing tasks.

The word ‘people’ came up incredibly frequently and represented a larger conversation, hinting at the rising anxiety in many internet users who questioned the future of jobs, especially in tech.

The impact on marketers

Marketers are chief among white-collar workers that could see huge changes due to ChatGPT’s success.

Reviewing the most popular themes in discussions coming from marketing professionals showed that, first of all, free help that can save hours of work is always welcome. Marketers mentioned useful “prompts” they can use with ChatGPT to generate the most accurate answer.

Here’s one example shared by a marketer, Uddalak Das: “I need a persuasive product description that will convince my target customer, [ideal customer persona], to purchase my unique [product/service] by highlighting its benefits and addressing any potential objections they may have.”

On the other hand, many marketers voiced their concerns over the future of SEO. Given that Google still prioritizes relevant content, ChatGPT may drastically change the art and science of content creation.

The future is uncertain, so we thought we’d go to the source. We asked ChaptGPT: “Are marketers getting replaced by ChatGPT?”

We’ll leave you with the answer.

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The Brandwatch Bulletin team