AI is all the rage. There is no debating this. It is very hard these days for you to not stumble over something that has AI baked in. As a creative, while I haven’t really used any AI products extensively, I consider it to be yet another available tool in the toolset that lets you create things. Before this AI gold rush, yours truly attempted to write a short story set in the not too distant future. In this yet to be finished tale, in an advertising agency – an Art Director uses the agency’s custom built AI to quickly generate image concepts for brand work that automatically delves through historic data of brand work, factors in brand guidelines and provides enough flexibility for the artist to add in their own creative streak. Today, this future is at our doorstep. Youtube is rife with AI artists making unofficial Nike spec ads. While the company is officially said to be creating a GenAI model for product development of customised shoes for athletes. Art colleges across the world are now having lecturers work in how AI can be leveraged in the future. We are going to have budding talent in the work force who are AI ready. But in the here and now, how else is AI affecting creatives?

No matter where you sit on the fence – AI has raked its claws through the creative landscape and there is no stopping it. The first cut that bleeds deep is the inherent psychological and thereby actual cost of creativity. At the root of every successful advertising agency structure is the art and copy pairing. A partnership that forms the very core of every creative endeavour. This is what clients pay for. Creative expertise fuelled by human experience. Yet the day-to-day challenge faced by this pair when they face their clients is very different. Everyone who was taught English, or the common language that the creatives are being made in, will always assume that they can write their own copy equally well. They do not refrain from ‘taking a stab’, at it themselves. This is the bane of a copywriter’s life. Strangely – art is the flip side of the coin. If asked, most people and clients will shy from picking up a pencil and draw a rough mark. They won’t refrain from saying something doesn’t look quite right to them, or it doesn’t pop. But they can’t explain what’s wrong. It is crossing this the psychological barrier, combined with conceptual ideation and executional prowess that allows for any creative to charge a premium for their service. AI rips this away like a bandage – making the average joe customer think that if AI can do it so easily, why are we forking out a fortune for creative talent. Therein lies the rub.

Yes AI is being baked into the tools that creatives use. From Photoshop to Canva. The risk is that it makes mastery of these tools perceptually – easier. Which is far from the truth. Software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator take time to learn – years to master. The little bit of AI that is baked in, does not change this. Post writing this article, Adobe showcased its new AI features, which are definitely impressive and so openly available on the web that this too will contribute to the ‘why don’t we get our creative faster’ mentality.

On the other end of the spectrum, the owners of popular iPad app Procreate that is the equal of Photoshop on the platform – clearly state that AI is not in their future. That the humanity behind the creativity is what they champion in a world where Generative AI is stealing creative inspiration. Human’s delve into their personal experiences and what they are exposed to, to inform their creatives. It’s like a signature style. No two creatives are ever alike.

It takes creative minds to feed and manipulate AI to ensure you have an original and different outcome. If you were to task multiple people within an organisation to use AI to come up with solutions to marketing problems, it is very likely the AI would generate solutions that are very similar. More often than not, the first approach to solving a brief, is very similar. This is where a trained creative could make a difference. Going beyond that obvious first solution. AI tools are excellent at quickly scamping out rough outlines of creative work. That is if the creative feeds it the right outline. You could conceivably use these GenAI scamps to present rough ideas for buy ins and then the creative team uses this as a platform to create their work. The creative team charging a premium for AI inspired creativity – that delivers a very unique human-made and unique creative. An approach that delivers the humanity of creativity in a world of automation. Priceless.

Today however, the amount of premium any agency can charge for it’s creatives is suspect. This is not something new, with every agency account being put to review in yearly cycles, where clients hope to knock-down the cost of doing business with their agency. Maybe we will see smaller in-house AI driven teams. Yet the challenge of AI is likely to have an impact on not just how much premium an agency can charge, but how much a freelancer can charge too. This is a thought to consider. Freelancers can work around the logistic nightmare of getting client buy-in and lengthy red tape for getting an AI tool qualified to use for a project. A challenging task in the world of both advertising and consulting.

If there is money to be made out of AI, perhaps the agency that knows this best is one of the first to make deep investments in the AI space with its Marcel AI – Publicis. it had a first mover advantage unlike most other networks. At least that’s what I hope after all the publicity they spun around it. Yours truly has never worked at Publicis so has no clue.

If you got this far and still want to wear blinders to this creative maelstrom that AI is stirring up, the parallels are all around you. Look at the state of customer service around the world. It is being robbed of its humanity by AI and automation before it. Whether it is having to check-in your own baggage at airports or your shopping cart at a super market – having a ‘human interaction’ is already becoming a premium offering in such scenarios. Available only for First Class passengers for example. Or think about the endless AI driven voice bots that you need to dodge around to get to talk to a human operator on a helpline these days – the creative landscape of the future might not be so different if GenAI creatives ever become the norm. When the dust settles will you be one of those few humans who are paid premium for their personal creative prowess? Or will you be tasked to create faster with AI tools? Time will tell.