How AI is transforming the way we think and create

The unstoppable wave of AI is crashing through our industry.

It's transforming our creative work lives at an unprecedented pace. We are living through the productivity revolution, and I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. 

We're about to take creativity to the next level, making it more efficient, more effective, and more imaginative.

The goal remains the same—to deliver captivating stories and creativity that gets everyone talking. But the journey is about to get a whole lot more interesting. 

Think of AI as a radioactive spider bite, granting us superpowers of productivity and efficiency. 

We have been given the equivalent of millions of highly educated and talented assistants, freeing us from the monotony of everyday tasks and enabling us to concentrate on our true creative potential.

AI can swiftly peruse and digest thousands of articles and present a succinct summary.

This deep learning gives creative thinking a head-start by analysing vast swathes of data to identify patterns and relationships that could be beyond even the smartest strategists (I know, right!).

But it doesn't stop there.

AI monitoring tools can spot creative opportunities in real-time and alert us to breaking news and trends relevant to our clients, allowing us to be the first to respond. Whether it's a quick quip or critical reputation management, AI tools can keep us ahead of the curve.

And the tedious tasks of writing up ideas, visualisation, and building presentation layouts can all be taken care of by our robot buddies, freeing us up to focus on what benefits most from human care and craft—the initial creative thought and adding the magic sprinkles to the work. 

It's like having a robot sidekick to handle the mundane so we can focus on output, quality and originality.

Post-campaign analysis just got easier too, with AI deep learning helping us digest results and extract meaningful insights for the next briefing cycle, or even to optimise current creative work. Closing the loop to constantly improve conditions for original and effective creative thought.

But STOP, don't delete your creative department yet. It is important to note that AI should not be the lead creative force.

Over-reliance on AI-generated content can lead to financial and reputational risks, copyright infringement, biases, and inaccuracies. 

Brands need to be careful when relying on AI output without human moderation.

Remember when SkyNet became self-aware and crushed the humans? It's not that bad…yet! 

But AI solutions are only as good as the data they're trained on, which can sometimes be plagiarised, or copyrighted, or biased. There's already a backlash from artists whose work is being referenced or used in AI-generated output. And don't forget that AI can only mimic human behaviour, so it can quickly develop biases and inaccuracies. Just think about the chatbot Tay, back in 2016 (that's about one million AI years ago), who became an uber-bigot after being deliberately corrupted by user inputs.

This year, the value of authenticity, craft, and soul in creation will only continue to rise, particularly in public relations, where truth is paramount.

"This happened" will always be more powerful than "If this happened, it could have looked like this." 

The next generation values authenticity and is discerning enough to distinguish mass-generated artificial output from genuine, original work. AI should not become the lead creative story or solution. 

'This x was created with AI' has already become a tired narrative, with same-y results in its output, and diminishing impact.

So, let's welcome our robot overlords with open arms.

We're already passively engaging with AI with our phone cameras and auto-complete functions in documents. So why not make the most of it? Embrace the robots, make friends with them, and watch as they take care of the mundane tasks, freeing us up to focus on being creatively brilliant. After all, that's what we do best!

This article was researched using ChatGPT, written via prompts to ChatGPT, then crafted by a human (me).

The word count was refined on ChatGPT, before human moderation (by me) to make sure it wasn't all nonsense.

Accompanying image created using Midjourney with the prompts' ‘creative director and robot are best friends and laugh at a laptop in an advertising agency'.