Generative AI in Marketing and Principles for Ethical Design and Deployment

Generative AI (GenAI) is breaking new ground in emulating human capabilities, and content generation may only be the beginning. In this work, the authors systematize and illustrate promising areas of application of GenAI in marketing. They lay out a conceptual framework along two dimensions: (1) GenAI impact (i.e., human enhancement, human replacement) and (2) the marketing cycle stage (i.e., marketing research, marketing strategy formulation, marketing actions related to the marketing mix instruments). Based on the AI ethics literature, the authors then introduce a set of principles (i.e., ASSURANCE: A utonomy, S ecurity, SU stainability, R epresentativeness, A ccountability, N onbiasedness and nondiscrimination, C rediting, E mpowerment) to enable marketers to address the risks and challenges of GenAI and thereby achieve beneficial outcomes for companies, consumers, and society at large. Finally, they delineate the public policy implications for each principle and illustrate avenues for future research.