Marketers in Canada who currently use Gen AI are using it to produce 54% of their social media content, according to Capterra’s GenAI for Social Content survey.

Nearly half (46%) of Canadian marketers believe that Gen AI-assisted content outperforms that which is created by humans, with a large majority (73%) seeing an increase in engagement and impressions and 90% reporting significant cost-savings. The survey was conducted in May of this year.

Capterra says the positive ROI of these tools is expected to lead to increased investment in Gen AI over the next 18 months. Marketers in Canada report that over the next year-and-a-half, 65% of their companies’ social media content will be created using Gen AI. Marketers still believe human intervention is crucial in the creation of social media posts to deal with quality and security concerns. Nearly all (99%) of marketers in Canada review the content produced by Gen AI before posting it on social media.

Marketers are challenged to maintain data integrity and avoid misinformation. Among marketers who review Gen AI-assisted social content, 63% didn’t expect that they would have to do so much work to edit the posts before sharing them. In addition, 77% of marketers have experienced instances of quality-control problems, such as factual errors or bias. For those companies with sensitive proprietary data, protecting company information can also be a challenge. In fact, 12% of marketers have found their company data exposed in Gen AI output.

Almost all (95%) of surveyed marketers in Canada are concerned about spreading harmful misinformation online through Gen AI-created content. The prevalence of bias and misinformation has led to policies that aim to bring about transparency surrounding Gen AI-assisted content, however just 44% of Canadian marketers comply with these policies and label content produced by Gen AI.

Compared to other global markets, Canada is in the lead position when it comes to the use of AI for social. Of the 41% of Canadian marketers who use Gen AI for content creation do so at least once a day, most commonly to generate images and copy for their social content, or to come up with ideas for social campaigns. When asked about the top three benefits of Gen AI for content creation, marketers say enhanced creativity (34%), increased efficiency (31%), and a competitive advantage (31%).