Latest / Straight To Voicemail / Why Human Verification Beats Watermarks in the AI Era | Alex London, G2
Transcript
- Adam Sockel (00:01): Adam Sockel. Alex London knows a lot about trust. She's the chief marketing officer at G2. And if G2 is about anything, it's about trust. In fact, it is, as Alex describes in her own LinkedIn profile, the only thing that survives disruption. G2, if you're not familiar, is a platform where certified buyers and purchasers and users of platforms go in and leave reviews about that specific tool. It is something where people end up being brutally honest in both a good and a bad way about their experience with various platforms. It is so essential to perform well on G2 as an organization that they end up actually getting badges based on whether they're a market leader or the best tool for a specific segment of an industry. I remember at my previous job how big of a deal it was every single quarter where our G2 badges would get released to us and we'd be able to create social content around how beloved our platform was for our users. (01:17): This is something where in a world of AI, AI searches, AI tooling, it is more important than ever to be able to create human trust and for people to be able to fully be confident in the decisions that they're making. Now, recently, Claude released some really interesting information about how they will be watermarking the content that gets produced on their platform. And Alex wrote a very interesting post on LinkedIn about Claude and watermarking and ultimately just trust in general. So I asked her the actions and features that G2 is currently highlighting to double down on human generated trust. And you are about to hear some of the most fascinating data you could possibly find. Take a listen to how Alex is thinking about trust and what G2 is doing to make sure that that trust and that human element always remains prevalent. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. (02:19): At the tone, please record your message. Alex London (02:22): Hey Adam, it's Alex. Sorry I missed your call. As you mentioned, I posted something a few weeks ago about Claude using watermarks for AI content. And I think what stuck with me the most is more that folks are asking the question, I know something was AI generated, but who's vouching for it? As you think about it, look, a watermark tells you where something came from. It doesn't tell you whether you should believe it. And we're actually seeing this play out in our buyer behavior report. So our buyer behavior reports where we interview around a thousand B2B software buyers and 50 sales and marketing leaders. And buyers are using AI to build their shortlist faster than ever now. One thing that actually stood out was that 82% of source recommendations come from AI chatbots in the last two years. That is an astonishing number when you think about it, 82%. (03:14): But when you ask what's actually shaping that shortlist, it's the real reviews and AI chatbots come back as the top two sources. So what that means is with reviews are just edging ahead, it's still the natural human review component that is driving that shortlist. So the list gets built faster, but people trust it just as much really because I'd say a real person is behind it. It's what's their name? How are they using it? I use this because, or the pros and cons. It's not just because the algorithm said so. And once buyers, I'd say, move past that shortlist into actually deciding where to buy from, that's the part that's gotten longer and not shorter. So 40% of buyers now say evaluation is the longest stage of the whole process. So AI doesn't just make trust easier, it just pushed, I'd say the harder part further down the line. (04:08): And to that point, it's where someone actually still has to prove it. What we're seeing is the same thing with AI agents. So more than half of buyers are already using them somewhere in the buying process, whether it's research, comparisons, building out that shortlist. But when you ask how much control they'd actually hand over, almost none of them were comfortable letting an agent complete a purchase on its own. So people want the speed that AI gives them, but they don't want to hand over the actual call. And I'd probably say just yet, which really takes me to the point of, I think that's the whole reason why G2 exists is that every review on our platform is tied to a real verified buyer, not just disclosed. It's truly verified. And I think that's the distinction that CMOs need to start making right now. It's not that are you just using AI because I think we can all say everyone is. (04:59): It's what's actually holding up in the proof because if it's well written, anyone can copy it in five seconds and the watermark is leading to that if it's verified and it survives contact with whoever is actually checking it when it's the trust. And so I think that's the truth, whether you're a marketer trying to earn trust or a buyer trying to protect a decision that's going to cost real money, the tools underneath it all have to keep changing fast and you have to keep up with that. And so what people actually choose to believe in hasn't changed at all. And so anyways, we've got a whole report on AI agents in the buying process coming out this fall, and I have a feeling that it's going to make the conversation even messier, but in a good way. And so I'll leave you with that for now. (05:41): Talk soon. Adam Sockel (05:48): Thank you for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to our Big Little Wins newsletter because it's never just a podcast.