On AI Doomerism

And why our innate industry pig-headedness isn't getting us anywhere.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen numerous posts and tweets from ad industry folk who are railing against the perceived threat of AI.

There are battle cry statements along the lines of ‘we will not go quietly into the night, REAL creativity comes from HUMANS, AI can’t do what I do.’ Or ‘AI is shit at making ads, just look at this generic concept I generated for McDonalds’…or some such neurotic nit-picking thing.

In a nutshell, their fears and frustrations are stemming from two places:

1.     AI systems cannot beat me in the creativity arena.

2.     What you can make with AI now is iterative landfill crap.

And they’re not wrong, but they’re also missing the bigger point…and the bigger potential.

No one is saying that we’re going to take all of the creative directors, put them on a boat and send them out to sea, never to be heard from again; donating their desks to a Alfie, the new AI wunderkind who can spit out 100 unique and groundbreaking ideas a minute, and who doesn’t require a ping pong table, ten Pret coffees a day or a toilet break.

We’re also not saying that Bard, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion are the next big ad agencies, capable of creating a Cannes award winning entry by entering a embellished prompt to generate a cross-media masterpiece.

Both of those scenarios are ridiculous, at least in the near-term future.

The bluster we’re hearing over AI is the same as we heard over TikTok, Youtube, the idea of advertising on social platforms, or the world of digital banner ads.

As an industry, we are fearful of change. We like to demonise and diminish the advent of new technologies because we can’t be bothered to learn something new and would prefer to stay comfortable and oblivious in our status quo processes, roles, and ways of working.

We may occasionally rail against the sausage factories we’ve created, but secretly, we all quite like them – the conveyor belt is easy, it’s safe, we know it, we understand how it works and we’re good at it.

So, when something new comes along that threatens our stability and perceived success in our safe industry bubble, we panic. We share derisive tweets, damning think pieces and say ‘this is a fad, it won’t change anything, it’ll pass’.

We dig our heels in and refuse to move, until we’re inevitably forced to - until clients start demanding it, competitors start offering it and we have no choice but to embrace ‘the new’ in order to survive.

It’s the same old story, over and over. Pig-headedness, push-back, puerile whining…and eventual acceptance.

Aren’t you tired of it all? I certainly am.

Yet we’re seeing it again when the topic of AI rears its head.

But AI is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. It’s a tool, an accelerant, a springboard, a sparring partner, an efficiency driver and a new supercomputer for our ‘big data’ obsession.

It doesn’t have to work against us, if we choose to work with it.

Creative directors needn’t fear it is eclipsing their edge, instead they can leverage it to source inspiration, to concept at the speed of light, to experiment with imagery/video/narrative – tightening, refining, and reimagining.

Strategists can utilise it as a researcher par excellence – summarising articles, white papers, exploring the history of categories, the shape of behaviours, the norms, the new needs and the potential paths forward.

Designers can tap into a visual mega-brain, an aggregator of everything and anything to feed their imaginations, bring thoughts to life in seconds and draw on unexpected inspirations to create brand new ways in and tapestries made of a plethora of individual threads they’d never previously had access to.

Account teams and project managers can explore a goldmine of efficiencies – from building brilliant proposals in 5 minutes, to generating complex timelines with the click of a button, garnering ideas on how best to run meetings, pitches and budget for uncertainty.

And yes, AI systems can also make ads, but the focus is on the landfill stuff - the bog standard banners, the A/B testing, the ability to generate generic stock shots, remove backgrounds, change fonts etc. The donkey work. And who doesn’t see that as a blessing?

There are so many possibilities, it makes me head swim. But it’s so exciting.

Because AI isn’t an end game for advertising, we don’t need the doom and gloom think pieces, the cries to reject it in favour of ‘real creativity’ or to scoff at what it can do now when we’re all fully aware of the pace of technological evolution and how fast it can move.

Instead, we should be viewing it as a catalyst to help us unlock a new phase of creativity which we all know is sorely needed.

A new path to relevance and resonance, which can turbo charge our talents, rather than taking them away.

AI tools (because that’s what they are, tools), are about transformation, not annihilation. They’re giving us the chance to be better, faster, to tap into a limitless repository of knowledge and ideas, from which we can remix and riff, be inspired and informed, explore established thinking through new lenses and so on.

We need fewer Victor Meldrew’s and more visionaries in this industry.

So please, enough with the melodrama and the histrionics – just try it, play with it and then make some cool shit.