Navigating today's data-rich business landscape requires more than just a basic understanding of text analysis. Traditional tools and methods can offer a superficial layer of insight, but they often overlook the deeper, more nuanced layers of information hidden within text data.

Enter generative AI—a transformative technology capable of generating human-like text and understanding intricate linguistic patterns. In this post, we'll delve into several text analysis examples of companies harnessing the power of generative AI to uncover actionable insights.

What is text analysis?

Text analysis is a method used to extract valuable information from text data by identifying hidden patterns and trends—in essence, it transforms raw textual data into useful information. Text analysis uses several linguistic, statistical, and machine learning techniques and is used in various sectors, from marketing to customer service and beyond.

Given the sheer volume of unstructured data generated every day—emails, online reviews, social media conversations, survey responses, and more—text analysis has become crucial for businesses trying to make sense of their qualitative data.

Text analysis examples: How AI is revolutionizing the process

Before diving into examples, let's take a moment to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing the game when it comes to text analysis. AI, particularly generative AI, has paved the way for more advanced and efficient methods of interpreting textual data, heralding a new era in data analysis.

Traditionally, text analysis relied on manual processes or simple algorithms to sift through text data, count the frequency of specific words or phrases, and identify rudimentary patterns. However, these methods fall short in handling the depth and complexity of human language. They struggle with understanding context, deciphering ambiguities, and recognizing subtle nuances like sarcasm or underlying sentiment.

Generative AI has proven to be a game-changer in this regard. By using machine learning and natural language processing, generative AI can understand, generate, and interpret human-like text. It grasps the meaning behind words, considers the context, and appreciates the subtleties of language, just like a human would. This level of understanding goes far beyond what traditional text analysis tools can achieve, unveiling deeper layers of insight from the same data sets.

The integration of AI into text analysis represents a paradigm shift in how businesses approach their data. As we'll see in the examples below, generative AI's capabilities have opened new possibilities across a wide range of industries, providing unprecedented levels of understanding and informing smarter, more effective strategies.

Text analysis examples that show how companies are uncovering hidden insights

Here are some of the strategies that companies in a range of industries are using to harness the potential of AI-powered text analysis:

Topic analysis

Topic analysis, also known as topic detection or topic modeling, is a machine learning technique that sifts through large volumes of text data to discover recurring themes. It organizes and understands text data, allowing businesses to interpret vast amounts of qualitative information more effectively.

The application of generative AI technology, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, has added a new dimension to topic analysis. For example, consider a multinational company that receives thousands of online product reviews. Analyzing these manually to extract meaningful information would be labor-intensive and time-consuming. Generative AI can perform topic analysis on these reviews, automatically categorizing them into pertinent topics like “product quality,” “customer service,” “pricing,” and more. This allows the company to quickly identify trends in customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction, enhancing their ability to address issues proactively and make informed decisions about product development or customer support improvements.

Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis is a version of text analysis that identifies and extracts subjective information from source materials. It gauges the emotional tone of a text, determining whether the sentiment expressed is positive, negative, or neutral.

With the advent of generative AI, sentiment analysis has become far more nuanced. Beyond just determining whether a text is positive or negative, generative AI can understand the intensity of the sentiment expressed, even discerning subtleties like sarcasm, a nuance often missed by traditional AI models. Platforms like Viable leverage advanced sentiment analysis to provide deep, actionable insights from customer feedback. It can interpret feedback from various channels— social media posts, reviews, surveys, and more—transforming raw text into a clear, categorized breakdown of sentiments.

Consider a company using Viable to analyze social media posts about their brand. Instead of just getting a broad overview of positive and negative posts, Viable's advanced sentiment analysis would provide a detailed understanding of how customers perceive their brand, and why. This level of insight can highlight opportunities for improvement, guide marketing strategy, and ultimately drive business growth.

The true power of Viable's generative AI-powered generative analysis tool lies in its ability to go beyond the surface level, tapping into the subtleties of human language. This can empower businesses with a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of their customers, informing smarter, data-driven decision-making.

Intent detection

Intent detection is about identifying the purpose or goal behind a text. It's particularly useful in areas such as customer service, where understanding the customer's intent can lead to more effective and efficient automated responses.

Generative AI has taken intent detection to new heights. Consider a customer service scenario where a customer sends an email expressing disappointment because their product hasn't arrived on time. A traditional text analysis tool might simply categorize this as a complaint, while a generative AI model could dig deeper to understand the specific intent of the message. It might determine that the customer is seeking information about their shipment's status or wanting to know the company's procedures for late deliveries. By accurately detecting the customer's intent, the company can offer a more relevant and informed response.

Text classification

Text classification is the process of categorizing text into predefined groups. It can save businesses hundreds of hours of manual work by sorting through emails or other forms of text data.

With the help of generative AI, organizations can take text classification to the next level. For example, imagine a government agency tasked with classifying public submissions into categories for review. Legacy tools might broadly categorize a submission as relating to "environmental concerns." However, a generative AI model could go a step further, identifying the submission as related to more specific issues like "deforestation concerns" or "pollution complaints." This granular categorization facilitates a more efficient review process and ensures that each submission is directed to the appropriate department for consideration.

These text analysis examples show the power of generative AI

From enhancing customer service to empowering product development, generative AI-powered text analysis tools like Viable offer businesses a deeper understanding of their text data and a competitive edge in their respective fields.

As humans continue to generate more data on a daily basis, the role of generative AI in text analysis will only become more crucial—indeed, the future is here, and it's being shaped by generative AI.