Thoughts on AI
Well, it’s here. Whether we want it to be or not, AI has officially become part of the creative process. Like many of my creative colleagues, I was certain that AI would be no friend of mine. Really, I was convinced AI would be an asshole—a democratizing bastardization of the profession I’d dreamed I would be a part of since I was a kid. It wasn’t so much that I was worried that AI would “replace” me, it was that I was convinced that AI would lend credence to the idea that anyone can do this job. And writing the world over would suffer the consequences.
But, maybe for the first time in the history of creative directors, I’m willing to admit that I was wrong. Partially, at least.
I was wrong because I was focusing on what AI CAN do, not what it can’t. By thinking about this new tech as a singularly creative tool, I was discounting the biggest part of this whole conversation: AI doesn’t have ideas. It executes on them. And when you reframe it that way, AI actually becomes kinda exciting. Because ideas can (and should) come from everyone. Creativity isn’t a club. And having ideas is just as much hard work as it is magic.
Let me illustrate—in the before times, I’d meet with a strategist who would give me a brief with some insights and then me and my team would go off into the ether (also known as: a bar) and bounce ideas back and forth until we found something that we felt could both meet the brief and be executable. It was a sometimes painful, sometimes amazing process of blocking and unblocking, starts and stops, and exhilarating ‘a-ha’ moments. Creatives across the land guarded those sessions like gold in Fort Knox.
But now, the walls are torn down. With these new tools, everyone has a seat at the brainstorm, because anyone can get help verbalizing their ideas. The democratization of being able to execute on an idea means we’re opened up to more perspectives, other angles, and new ways in. And guess what? That makes work better. Every time. Demystifying the creative process might mean there are less Don Drapers out there in the world, but that should probably be seen as a good thing. That dude is a jerk. I’d rather have good ideas than “good creatives” anyway.
Another way that my thinking about AI has changed is that I stopped thinking about it as a ‘solution.’ The reframe from solution to tool has been an important step because before I started thinking about it like that, the stuff ChatGPT would spit out felt soulless, cold, and…well, bad. But if you think about it as a jumping off point instead of the final product, a lightbulb goes off. ChatGPT (or midjourney or whatever) suddenly becomes your brainstorming buddy—you can explore faster and wider than ever. More is always more when it comes to ideas.
So, I’m not going to make any grand apologies to AI or tell you that it will fundamentally change the way advertising is made, but I will make one bold statement: AI is going to do a lot of good for good ideas if we get our heads screwed on right about it. It’s just gonna be up to us to make that happen.
This article first appeared on Tim’s Medium page
