Matt Blumberg, CEO of Acrolinx, shares insights on leading with AI, balancing tech and creativity, and ensuring content quality and compliance.
Matt, share a brief overview of your professional journey and what led you to be a CEO at Acrolinx?
Prior to taking the helm at Acrolinx, I’ve been lucky enough to lead several different technology companies across different pockets of the internet. I began my career in the early days of the internet as a general manager at MovieFone where I led the Internet business. Once MovieFone was sold to AOL, I founded Return Path, a B2B SaaS company in the email space, that I scaled for nearly two decades through the ups and downs of the internet and dot-com bubble. Following the sale of Return Path, I founded Bolster, an AI-based recruiting platform to disrupt the executive search market. All these moments led up to me joining Acrolinx this year in January, where I’m honored to be working with this team to harness the power of generative AI to help companies keep their content on-brand and compliant. The through lines of my career have been about using the power of technology and data/data science to transform industries – and about harnessing the power of an organization by innovating people and HR practices.
Given your experience across martech, media, AI, and SaaS, what drives your passion for content creation and technology?
I’ve always been passionate about the power of language and using words and stories to move people. I’ve also been a big content creator, as the host of two podcasts, The Daily Bolster, where I’ve interviewed more than 250 CEOs, Country Over Self, a personal passion project about American history; and as the author of three books for the tech/startup ecosystem: Startup CEO, Startup CXO, and Startup Boards.
The intersection of technology and content is the future of content for companies both large and small. With the emergence of generative AI, it’s exciting to be in the content world during a time of disruption and evolution. Now more than ever, creating content that won’t put your organization at risk is so critical and it’s been exciting to jump in headfirst with Acrolinx to help companies achieve this.
As CEO of Acrolinx, what are your key responsibilities, and how do you see your role evolving advancements in AI?
As the CEO of Acrolinx, I’m shepherding the company through this new era of content being intertwined with generative AI and Large Language Models. Leveraging my experience driving growth and scaling global businesses, there’s a huge opportunity for us given the current content creation market. However, the landscape continues to evolve quickly, so leading our vision through the disruptions of AI is a core responsibility of mine. As CEO, I also lead Acrolinx’s strategic direction and our focus on expanding further into U.S. markets.
How has generative AI changed content marketing and content creation in terms of strategy and audience engagement?
Generative AI has hugely increased the volume of content being generated today, transforming the way content is being produced. From a strategic point of view, it’s allowing enterprises to achieve scalability and efficiency in their content strategy. However, from an audience engagement perspective, it can really go both ways. While it can produce content that blends into a sea of other AI-generated content, it can also hyper-personalize content to different audiences. It also introduces new compliance risks into the content supply chain. That’s why it’s really important to have human oversight even with AI-generated content to ensure it’s dynamic, engaging, and compliant.
What are the biggest challenges brands face when using AI in content marketing, and how Acrolinx addresses these challenges?
The volume of content is proliferating since generative AI has become mainstream, which has in turn increased the need for enterprises to check their content for a variety of risks. It’s not just misinformation stemming from AI hallucinations that corporations need to be worried about. It’s breaking away from brand guidelines, non-compliance with industry standards and regulations, even low-quality content that confuses customers and muddles their experience. Each of these issues are opening organizations up to legal, regulatory, financial, and reputational risks. But the biggest challenge they’re facing is keeping pace with this.
At Acrolinx, we’re solving all these problems by offering enterprises a framework to make sure content is compliant, safe, and risk-free. Generative AI can produce inaccurate and generic content and it can also increase efficiency and improve content marketing efforts. However, it risks producing content for an enterprise that doesn’t resonate with their audience. Acrolinx aligns new content with brand guidelines to match it to the rest of the content within an organization. Additionally, with regulations changing regularly, Acrolinx helps enterprises ensure their content is compliant.
How can brands ensure quality and authenticity in AI-generated content, and what best practices do you recommend?
When generative AI is aligned with your writing standards, high-quality content comes easily. Beginning with a compliance-first content framework prior to integrating AI into a content strategy gives organizations confidence that AI-generated content will not open them up to risk.
To do this, brands should digitize their style guide and create a scoring system that enables them to scan, score, and fix content against their content quality and authenticity standards. These guardrails help enterprises align their content with brand guidelines, messaging, and voice. Not only that but especially in the face of new and emerging regulations, having a compliance-first content framework that takes into account evolving regulatory changes helps brands avoid falling into any legal trouble.
What is the ideal balance between AI and human creativity in marketing and content creation?
Writers and creators leaning heavily on AI to produce more content has vastly decreased the amount of human judgement applied to content. Human creativity is a critical part of creating engaging content. So, while I believe that AI can be beneficial in kicking off the content creation process or searching for inspiration, I believe humans should have a heavy hand in the creativity aspect of content from initial ideation all the way through content execution.
Can AI fully replicate human creativity, or is there unique value that humans bring to content creation?
No – I don’t think that AI can ever fully replicate human creativity. AI not only has no judgment – it has no soul. AI can help content creators in their creation process, but at the end of the day, what truly makes an organization’s content unique is the human touch and perspective. The unique perspective, personalized touch, and emotional depth that humans bring to the table is what makes sure that content resonates with an organization’s audience, something that generic AI-generated content often lacks.
How do you help your team at Acrolinx stay creative while integrating AI-driven tools into their workflows?
At Acrolinx, we encourage teams to use AI to drive efficiency in the content creation process, not as a replacement. By integrating AI-driven tools to automate more repetitive tasks in the writing process, this frees up time for writers to focus on strategic, high-value work like creative ideation. While humans are driving the creativity behind every piece of content, AI takes the heavy lifting out of ensuring that all content is compliant, aligned with your brand, and achieves the right quality of standards.
What advice would you give to brands looking to integrate AI into their content creation process while maintaining authenticity and creativity?
My advice for brands looking to integrate AI into the content creation process is to first deploy a compliance-first framework that ensures all content produced by an enterprise meets quality standards, brand messaging, and compliance with current and emerging regulations. Knowing you have guardrails that mitigate risks in content truly enables organizations to be authentic and creative in their approach to content. I’d also advise brands to think very carefully about which stages of the content supply chain they are choosing to deploy AI within, and how that either stifles creativity or allows it to flourish.
A quote or advice from the author : “Content compliance is going through a revolution right now, because the world of content is going through a revolution.”
Matt Blumberg
CEO at Acrolinx
Matt is the CEO of Acrolinx and has more than 30 years of leadership in scaling global disruptive technology businesses. Matt is passionate about the power of language — being precise with it, using it to move people, and ensuring brands maintain a consistent voice with it — and he is equally passionate about the power of technology to change lives for the better.