Note: This chapter is being built in public, one brick at a time — just like we do for clients through the Authority Chapter Plan™. Welcome to Chapter Ten. Read the entire AIO for Attorneys book here.
In the world of search engines, text has always been king. Always protective of bandwidth, search engine crawlers have mostly stuck to devouring meta tags around the fringes of your digital law firm. AI currently prefers text as well, but platform owners are taking steps to integrate video and audio authority measurements, meaning the future is bimodal.
As AI grows its eyes and ears, the next frontier of AIO will include expanding the dossier you make available to AI with video and audio content as well as text-based and image-based. Soon, when everyone else is creating audio and video with AI, you will be better served creating audio and video for it. The same principles of AIO apply here, just in different formats. I include this chapter so that you have time to prepare effective strategy now, as it’s better to be too early to the party than too late. In only one of those scenario are you guaranteed pizza and beer before it runs out.
Nobody else in the legal marketing world is talking much about bimodal authority right now, perhaps because they’re too busy cashing your checks in the present to give much thought to the future. But the future will be here soon enough, and given the exponential growth of technology and AI, it will likely be here in a blink. Let’s make sure we’re well prepared.
What is Bimodal Authority and Multimodal Authority, and How Does It Integrate with AIO?
In the book First Bite: How We Learn to Eat British food writer and journalist Bee Wilson wrote: “The experience of tasting food is far more multi-sensory than is the case with hearing, sight or touch, which is why it requires the most sophisticated part of our brain to process it. In fact, eating is influenced by hearing, sight or touch, as well as flavour: we prefer apples that crunch loudly, steaks that look blood-red, sauces so smooth they seem to caress the inside of our throats.”
It may be some time before AI can taste, smell, or feel outside of labs and technological experiments, but what AI is already in the infant stages of implementing is the ability to see and hear. To secure AIO best practices into the future, then, we must demonstrate our authority via not just written words, but through audio and video. This will be the difference between AI reading about your expertise and directly viewing it by watching you speak and listening to your voice.
Currently, AI is kept informed of your podcasts and video production by reading transcripts. Soon, it will be able to analyze your on-camera presence, body language, confidence, and audience engagement signals based upon tone, posture, and classic credibility signals. It’s already here, just ask ChatGPT to analyze your photo in the morning. Being called “Puffy and resoundingly average looking” is a scary thing to hear from a platform supposedly trained on being inoffensive, as I can tell you first-hand!
In other words, AI will again mirror the preferences and reactions of humans. Just as a human can pick up that you are nervous from your body slightly swaying during a speech, or a slight quiver in your voice, AI too will take such things into account when performing its dossier of authority research. And I should note here that it would appear to me that many of the inherent biases and ableist constructs that exist in humans will, sadly, be repeated within the machines we build. I’m not sure what to do about that, other than to point it out so we can all be mindful of it and hopefully impress change upon these large tech companies that carry so much sway.
The Credibility Dossier Goes Bimodal
AI and Visual Authority Signals
In prior chapters, I described how AI is forming an intel dossier on each of us. What I didn’t mention is that the dossier is not just the words you write or the words spoken about you in print or on the internet, but also podcasts, videos, and images. The dossier is expanding all the time and integrating more of the patina of reality. Because videos and podcasts will be some of the harder things to fake in the future (or rather, they will not be worth faking with “deep fakes” when it comes to most law firms), they will be seen as credibility plays by AI to help round out its referral file.
Consider incorporating the following audio and visual assets into your legal marketing bundle:
- Keynotes and CLEs: When you present, make sure you have a video taken so you can upload it to your firm’s YouTube channel and your firm’s website. This will help demonstrate your command of the material and stage presence to both humans and AI alike and is a great reputational trust signa.
- YouTube Videos: If you’re anything like me you probably quietly dread the idea of creating “how to” or “FAQ” or other educational content on YouTube. Nonetheless, AI is hungry to observe you in 3D form, so you might as well present the offering. As with everything, be sure to inject your material not just with facts but with your humanity, your authenticity, and your professional philosophy, the very things that make you unique. This not only makes it more likely that AI will refer you but helps ensure you’ll be referred the right types of cases.
- Video Podcasts – Video podcasts are easy to set up and will pay real AIO dividends in the future. Same basic standards apply here as with the YouTube video explanation, above, and you would be wise to upload these to YouTube to round out your material.
- Photography – It’s no longer vanity, and perhaps it never was…you need to be seen, lawyers, and not just while smirking before rows of moldering bookshelves. Action shots of you speaking at podiums, accepting awards, volunteering in the community, and collaborating with other staff members of your firm show your humanity, to both humans and AI.
- Infographic & Data Visualization – There is authority in clarity, so do your best to take complex ideas that explain them in the most concise manner via infographics and data visualization. This shows AI that you are not just an attorney, but a thought leader and educator.
- Quizzes and Ratings. As you can see with our firm’s AIO Rating™ there is great power in tiny numbers. Although the age of “apps” is fading, along with SEO, authority tools such as legitimate quizzes and rating systems will demonstrate you’re ahead of the curve and speaking the algorithmic language that is AI’s fluent tongue.
AI and Audio Authority Signals
Avoid the sea witch Ursula, because AI is going to want to not only see your face (puffy and resoundingly average looking or not), but to hear your voice. Audio content will become one of the primary authority signals for AI, due to its versatility. Just as voice search and voice to text have become increasingly popular, so will AI’s reliance on audio to analyze your credibility and fill out your bimodal, soon to be multimodal dossier.
AI is already developing the ability to analyze your vocal tone and will determine your confidence and competency based upon similar signals to that of humans, namely your pacing, the clarity of your arguments and spoken word, and the confidence you project. A strong, clear presentation will become an active sign of authority for AI, just as it has been for humans since the invention of speech.
Podcasts are the natural way to demonstrate your expertise and are one of the classic authority assets that you must consider implementing. If you are not yet ready for your own podcast, then consider appearing as a guest on established podcasts to get your feet wet. This allows you to borrow some authority from a third party, which increases your AIO and helps redirect human listeners your way with potential cases. Look for podcasts that are within your practice area, have a growing and active listenership, and who do not charge you to appear.
If all of that seems like too much at the present, at the very least start building an audio library for your website where you create audio versions of your most important articles and blog posts. As with all things, strive to make your material accessible.
Bimodal Authority: The Future of AIO
“I want to be surprised. Astonish me, pal.” – Gordon Gekko, Wall Street
What AI most craves is novelty. That’s why AI can’t stand AI-generated content. My last book, The AI Content Paradox includes a bizarre intermezzo where I pretend AI speaks directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall. It contains information about how AI may catalogue written content in the future, set at five-year intervals. It follows two fictional attorneys at these five year set patterns. These are all choices AI would never conceive of. That’s exactly what makes it AI catnip.
The trouble with most legal marketing is that everyone’s doing the same thing. This makes it easier for marketers, or even for risk-adverse attorneys, but does not impress AI. If you’re going to jump to the front of the line for AI referrals, then you’re going to need to display legal marketing jazz, not classical music. Like my favorite cinema anti-hero, Gordon Gekko, AI wants to be shocked, awed, surprised. That even the artificial craves the sublime reveals the mark of its maker.
But how? How do we surprise AI without shocking prospective clients or making us look like asses. Ours is, after all, a traditional field.
The answer lies in thought leadership. You can dangle from a much thinner limb when you step out into the future. The air is thin up here, and the view is good. And AI will crouch down by your feet like a satiated jungle cat. You must create authentic experiences, or AI will leap down and continue its search for true innovation.
Some of the more staid ways of doing this include webinars, especially with live-streamed content. I believe that someday VR will become an avenue of demonstrated expertise. In fact, the next chapter of this book will display my own attempt at futurism and thought leadership, as I attempt to conjure the VR courtroom training grounds of the future. Audio and video will also lead to AI avatars, should you wish to put yourself out there and upgrade from the usual website chatbot boondoggle.
AI Avatars: The New Chat Bots
Another reason creating a cache of video and audio may pay dividends is through the simultaneously interesting and alarming notion of AI avatars. Essentially, within the next few years you should be able to train AI on creating a “base model” avatar of yourself. Said another way, AI platforms will be able to take your audio and video recordings and use that to create a photorealistic avatar of you that will be able to speak as you via animation, complete with your unique facial expressions, mannerisms, and vocal intonations. You may even be able to use this in place of a chat bot, if you can train it on certain responsive scripts. The more video and audio material you have, the more lifelike this may be.
Not something you will likely see me trying anytime soon, but for the more photogenic (and, for that matter, videogenic) in our bunch, this could be a good play to attract clients in the future. Note, this technology is already being developed, and in the next five years I predict you’ll see this go from a novelty to a mainstream business tool. Before then, you’ll have to endure all of your Facebook contacts uploading their video avatars and for that I can offer no relief.
At any rate, prepare for a healthy dose of uncanny valley in the coming years as we move from text, to bimodal, and ultimately multimodal AIO. The strategic imperative for you now is to start thickening the AIO dossier with not just written authority assets, but a subset of audio and video authority assets as well. This goes directly to pillars one and three, so create both audio and video assets and be seen in audio and video format via real-world mentions.
Building out the Multi-Sensory Digital Twin
AI is thirsty for information, especially information that is unique and authentic. By feeding AI a steady diet of text, audio, video, and images, it will be trained to favor you as an avenue for referrals. This isn’t science fiction, and as a published speculative fiction author I can tell you this all outstrips even my wildest imaginings.
The good news is that regardless of format, authenticity and reputation are the key elements to AIO success.