AI in moderation: creativity still requires a human touch

In 2018, Joe Public created an ad called Sbu 2.0, where the hero made a lifelike android to take over daily tasks he considered tedious — from teaching classes to grocery shopping, and even going on dates with his girlfriend. The point of all this? So he could spend more time eating the Chicken Licken pieces he craved. 

Fast forward to 2023, and the marketing and advertising industry is starting to wonder if we should all become a little more like Sbu — because everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI).

This has caused more than a little panic as creatives start to wonder if their jobs are in jeopardy and if their crafts are about to go extinct — or at least replaced by computing power. I’ve even seen smug commentary from those who relish the prospect of creativity finally not being the exclusive domain of those temperamental “weirdos” we call copywriters, art directors and designers.  

Apps such as ChatGPT are being heralded as the answer to the copywriting and creativity void we didn’t even know existed. Ryan Reynolds even used it to write an ad for Mint Mobile. At one point I considered doing the same to write this article, but then my inner creative director kicked in and said “been done” — so I moved on.

But what I have done is recycle the following paragraph I wrote in 2019 on this subject:

“As a human, I would love perfection, but I also know that nothing could ever be perfect [which is also my convenient excuse for why I’ve never created a perfect ad]. The quirky and the slightly flawed is somehow more attractive than the perfect. 'Insanity over sanitised' is how I like to think of it. Got Milk? could never have been created using AI. It’s grammatically incorrect. Imagine how much poorer we’d be as a society if everything we created could only have been done by a machine?”

But I’m not here to knock progress. Far from it. 

AI is will allow us to be more creative by spending less time creating the 95% of work that’s wallpaper and lacks impact. Instead, we can focus on making the other 5% even better, so much so that the ratio changes and we have less wallpaper. What an amazing thought: create the wallpaper with less effort so that we can produce less of it in future. 

Of course, not everyone is interested in the 5%. A copywriter I spoke to recently told me the head of her agency proudly proclaimed that ChatGPT and Midjourney were going to replace the creative department at the agency.

I was surprised they valued their creative product so little, and cheekily offered her a job. She accepted. She realised that I value originality, insight and authenticity more than robotic efficiency. 

That’s not to say we don’t produce wallpaper work ourselves. But at least we're actively working towards the ratio being more favourable. We don’t want to be happy producing the kind of work that could easily have been done by AI tools.

In the same way that something like ChatGPT relies on inputs or prompts, the output of any creative agency is determined largely by the brief, strategy and creative direction. If the expectation and mandate is to churn out work that is safe and quick, you’re never going to push the boundaries of creativity. 

When that happens, there is no perceptible difference between the wallpaper work produced by humans and what basic AI programmes could create in a fraction of the time. 

That is not the business of creativity.

If you are experimenting with AI or already using it, I hope you’re doing it to free up extra time for human creativity and not to simply produce more wallpaper communication for clients.

I know that’s going to be my approach in our mission to reduce work that makes little or no impact. Our clients pay the same amount for media, whether we’re filling up the space with world-class creative work or wallpaper, so why deliver anything less than maximum value for the brands we serve?

Let’s use the opportunity to create exciting ideas that will shake things up and get noticed. And while we’re at it, use some of that extra time to enjoy more pieces of delicious chicken.

This article was sponsored by Joe Public.