Tech firms and ad agencies can’t stop talking about AI. At this year’s Cannes Lions, conversation about AI absolutely dominated. And while news organizations are still debating whether the technology merits doom for humanity or the next frontier, the creative industry has long since moved on, with many agencies putting these tools to work.

Leaving time for imagination

From ideation and summarizing research, to creating high level storyboards, generative AI can help advertisers to catalyze the creative process, and automate the more routine tasks that will save significant time and effort.

Our Creative Group Head, Noveri Mandey, says, “AI revolutionizes my role as an art creative by streamlining tasks like image editing, trend analysis, and data-driven insights, freeing me to focus on creative strategies and innovative concepts that only human imagination can achieve. It enhances efficiency while enabling deeper artistic exploration.”

Teddy Sandu, Creative Director, agrees. “As an advertising creative director, I consider AI my sidekick with an algorithmic sense of humor. It crunches numbers faster than I can crunch a snack, helping me decipher what tickles the audience’s fancy. While I brainstorm the ‘next big thing,’ it’s busy A/B testing the ‘next okay thing.’ Together, we’re the dynamic duo of data and daring, making advertising not just effective, but also a hoot!”

Making us all better amateurs

As regular people, we are often better at some things than others — after all, our copywriters are writers and art directors are creatives for a reason. AI can act as a democratizer so people do not have to be limited by their skills. For example, one no longer needs to know how to use Photoshop to now visualize their ideas using tools such as Midjourney.

Our team members can now build and share our ideas more creatively, bridge communication gaps in the ways we think, and develop a more inclusive creative process.

Yet, even as AI can make us all better amateurs, a copywriter still won’t be able to do an art director’s job. Experts get to remain experts because AI still has some ways to go to be able to truly create work with an original point of view, without generic content or being “prone to hallucination.”

An open-ended world

We know that AI is an inevitable evolution, and we embrace it: all MullenLowe Singapore people will undergo training in a relevant AI platform by the end of the year. Yet, we also know that the alchemy of the creative process will still require human interaction and connection.

“When presented with a new set of hands, the challenge is seamless integration and inventive harmony,” says Jose.

AI works well within closed systems with a fixed set of rules. You put in a text prompt and the technology produces work that approximates what it has learned about previous work out there. Yet, the world is not a closed system; in fact, it is vastly complex and open-ended.

Humans continue to be the best candidate to interpret our world and ourselves — which makes all the exciting parts of the creative industry still ours.

Image Credits: Noveri Mandey, check out more of her work on Instagram @irev.on