Thoughts on Magical

Steve Chan · February 9

Hi folks.

We have an opportunity to work with Magical on a sponsorship basis and I was wondering if anyone used this service before.

From using it for a bit myself, it actually looks pretty intuitive and I'll be keeping it installed for the mean time. I've already set up a few templates using it and it definitely works as advertised. It kind of feels like a simpler version of Zapier if y'all used that platform before. Not as in-depth for sure, but hey, it's free!

*Please note that our team does our own research and testing around vetting sponsor products and services. However, we've found that soliciting feedback from the community can sometimes add something new to the conversation that we weren't aware of*

jubjub · February 9

Anything that uses "AI" as the main basis for marketing their value is immediately questionable. Are they even using neural networks? If they're not then they're being incredibly misleading with their marketing. If they are using neural networks what data did they use to train their model? Not listing how you trained your "AI" is incredibly questionable from an ethical standpoint and raises an immediate red flag. If the datasets they trained off of were ethical you'd think that'd be an important marketing point. Because there aren't many any claims in this area it seems very suspect.

The product is probably fine but their marketing seems ethically dubious.

Now if you have a look at their blog posts it's made very clear that they don't really have any ethics around the use of AI. They also have an incredibly questionable blog post titled "How to Make Money Using ChatGPT (8 Money Making Ideas)" that stuck out to me as a giant red flag. This is the type of blog post that grifters make. The impression of the company leads me to believe they probably used chatgpt to write their blog posts (and the whole website) anyway.

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/how-to-make-money-using-chatgpt

Here are more of their blog posts:

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/how-to-scrape-and-extract-data-from-any-website

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/scrape-realtor-com

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/summarize-doc-with-ai

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/scrape-zillow

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/amazon-scraper

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/facebook-scraper

Clearly they're not the type of company anyone should want anything to do with. They're greatly misusing AI in ways that are clearly unethical at best and potentially straight up illegal. They use marketing tactics associated with scammers that target vulnerable people. Even if everything they do is technically legal (which I suspect isn't the case) they're not the type of company LMG should be associated with.

Big fat giant NOPE to having them sponsor anything.

SorryBella · February 9

Quote

What tasks will you automate today?

IFTTT hasnt contacted you guys to do another sponsor spot? I guess the whole garage debacle was enough to put it in internal blacklist?

Steve Chan · February 22

On 2/8/2024 at 7:08 PM, jubjub said:

Anything that uses "AI" as the main basis for marketing their value is immediately questionable. Are they even using neural networks? If they're not then they're being incredibly misleading with their marketing. If they are using neural networks what data did they use to train their model? Not listing how you trained your "AI" is incredibly questionable from an ethical standpoint and raises an immediate red flag. If the datasets they trained off of were ethical you'd think that'd be an important marketing point. Because there aren't many any claims in this area it seems very suspect.

The product is probably fine but their marketing seems ethically dubious.

Now if you have a look at their blog posts it's made very clear that they don't really have any ethics around the use of AI. They also have an incredibly questionable blog post titled "How to Make Money Using ChatGPT (8 Money Making Ideas)" that stuck out to me as a giant red flag. This is the type of blog post that grifters make. The impression of the company leads me to believe they probably used chatgpt to write their blog posts (and the whole website) anyway.

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/how-to-make-money-using-chatgpt

Here are more of their blog posts:

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/how-to-scrape-and-extract-data-from-any-website

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/scrape-realtor-com

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/summarize-doc-with-ai

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/scrape-zillow

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/amazon-scraper

https://www.getmagical.com/blog/facebook-scraper

Clearly they're not the type of company anyone should want anything to do with. They're greatly misusing AI in ways that are clearly unethical at best and potentially straight up illegal. They use marketing tactics associated with scammers that target vulnerable people. Even if everything they do is technically legal (which I suspect isn't the case) they're not the type of company LMG should be associated with.

Big fat giant NOPE to having them sponsor anything.

Hi there!

Thank you for your feedback! We've asked Magical for more clarification on their use of AI, and while they do not feed individual responses into training the model, they do gather feedback from their users and community and tweak their models. The AI will learn from the templates the user creates to formulate appropriate responses.

Magical uses AI (powered by ChatGPT) to support their platform, but their primary focus is on providing a simple automation and template tool to save the user time.

Please feel free to reach out to me via DM if you have any additional questions about the service/product they provide and I'll do my best to answer!

jubjub · February 23

4 hours ago, Steve Chan said:

Hi there!

Thank you for your feedback! We've asked Magical for more clarification on their use of AI, and while they do not feed individual responses into training the model, they do gather feedback from their users and community and tweak their models. The AI will learn from the templates the user creates to formulate appropriate responses.

Magical uses AI (powered by ChatGPT) to support their platform, but their primary focus is on providing a simple automation and template tool to save the user time.

Please feel free to reach out to me via DM if you have any additional questions about the service/product they provide and I'll do my best to answer!

That doesn't address most of my comment. I'm not someone who's against AI and I've used ChatGPT to make my own automations before. But there's a very fine line between use and abuse when it comes to this technology and nothing about their website indicates the former. Even just looking at their blog posts they don't seem to be an upstanding company.

Their website reads like a NFT/blockchain pitch without the NFT/blockchain part and I think it's clear they're cutting a lot of corners with their company. Maybe in 18 months if they've built a track record and have shown that they won't abuse or encourage others to abuse AI then it'd be appropriate to have them as a sponsor. But right now with the lack of regulations and the attitudes shown from tech startups in emerging industries over the past 4 decades it just doesn't seem like a good idea to promote a company like Magical with very little track record.

SorryBella mentioned IFTTT and if you look at their website that's the perfect example of what you want to see. https://ifttt.com/

When you land on Magical's page the first thing you see is "4.6 stars 3,200+ reviews" and a big shiny almost 5 stars alongside a heavily exaggerated slogan of "Make tasks disappear. Like magic." followed by heavy emphasis on using AI with their product. Then you have a heavy emphasis on testimony as you scroll down the page including large claims. Replace AI with VPN and their website would look right at home. Or any other industry known for similar marketing techniques. Compare that with IFTTT's website. They start with a really sensible straight to the point statement "Automation for business and home" followed with "Save time and get more done". They're not trying to use AI as a sales term they're using their actual product to sell you. It doesn't matter to the end user how it works what matters is what it does and IFTTT nail this perfectly. They use AI not as a marketing term to sell you something but as an explanation for how some of their products work. Their website focuses on what their products provide not how they work and that theme is overarching throughout the whole website. Magical has a heavy focus on "AI" and how their product works instead of focusing on what it does. This SCREAMS "blockchain". We've literally just come out of a craze where people were promising "blockchain" as some new technology and advertised it in the exact same way Magical is now.

Now Magical might not be following the same footsteps as the companies touting blockchain as a solution were but if that's the case they shouldn't have copied the same marketing techniques. When you copy the same techniques as scammers for your website you should expect to be treated like one. I just don't see how a company with ethics or good judgement could end up with the website they have. I'm still quite convinced they've used AI to produce a lot of the content on their website. It reads like it was lifted straight from a ChatGPT scam page.

Steve Chan · February 27

On 2/22/2024 at 6:32 PM, jubjub said:

That doesn't address most of my comment. I'm not someone who's against AI and I've used ChatGPT to make my own automations before. But there's a very fine line between use and abuse when it comes to this technology and nothing about their website indicates the former. Even just looking at their blog posts they don't seem to be an upstanding company.

Their website reads like a NFT/blockchain pitch without the NFT/blockchain part and I think it's clear they're cutting a lot of corners with their company. Maybe in 18 months if they've built a track record and have shown that they won't abuse or encourage others to abuse AI then it'd be appropriate to have them as a sponsor. But right now with the lack of regulations and the attitudes shown from tech startups in emerging industries over the past 4 decades it just doesn't seem like a good idea to promote a company like Magical with very little track record.

SorryBella mentioned IFTTT and if you look at their website that's the perfect example of what you want to see. https://ifttt.com/

When you land on Magical's page the first thing you see is "4.6 stars 3,200+ reviews" and a big shiny almost 5 stars alongside a heavily exaggerated slogan of "Make tasks disappear. Like magic." followed by heavy emphasis on using AI with their product. Then you have a heavy emphasis on testimony as you scroll down the page including large claims. Replace AI with VPN and their website would look right at home. Or any other industry known for similar marketing techniques. Compare that with IFTTT's website. They start with a really sensible straight to the point statement "Automation for business and home" followed with "Save time and get more done". They're not trying to use AI as a sales term they're using their actual product to sell you. It doesn't matter to the end user how it works what matters is what it does and IFTTT nail this perfectly. They use AI not as a marketing term to sell you something but as an explanation for how some of their products work. Their website focuses on what their products provide not how they work and that theme is overarching throughout the whole website. Magical has a heavy focus on "AI" and how their product works instead of focusing on what it does. This SCREAMS "blockchain". We've literally just come out of a craze where people were promising "blockchain" as some new technology and advertised it in the exact same way Magical is now.

Now Magical might not be following the same footsteps as the companies touting blockchain as a solution were but if that's the case they shouldn't have copied the same marketing techniques. When you copy the same techniques as scammers for your website you should expect to be treated like one. I just don't see how a company with ethics or good judgement could end up with the website they have. I'm still quite convinced they've used AI to produce a lot of the content on their website. It reads like it was lifted straight from a ChatGPT scam page.

Hey there!

Thank you for your reply! While we can definitely see how AI can be abused and used as an easy "cash grab", after trying the product, we've determined that this is not one of those cases, and the AI aspect is just a small part of the overall package they have to offer.

What we look for when considering sponsorship opportunities is actually quite pragmatic: does the product work as intended, do we feel that it provides value to the user (would I or anyone else I know use this), and does the product page use any misleading/unverifiable marketing tactics/claims to suck users in? We believe Magical passes these checks.

As for the marketing strategy on their website, we've found that, while they do use some buzzwords that are commonly seen employed by many other companies, we've found no outrageous claims and no information that is outright false.

After evaluating the product as well as taking into account audience input, we've ultimately decided that there are no reasons to not continue with this partnership. Of course, if anything glaring comes up, we will address them appropriately.