How AI Is Changing the Way We Create Together
It’s been almost impossible to get through a discussion on any subject without the spectre of artificial intelligence finding its way into the conversation, but today at the Little Black Book & Friends beach at Cannes Lions, one panel session took on the subject directly.
In recent months, the creative industry has seen generative AI tools from Midjourney to ChatGPT explode onto the landscape, shaking up our vision of future creativity. While AI was already embedded in many brands and agencies’ working practices, it seems inevitable that machine learning will increasingly take on the heavy lifting of content creation. But the rapid progress in this area has left unanswered questions that a group of AI and creativity experts on the LBB beach came together to try and address.
On the panel was Elav Horwitz, EVP, global director of applied innovation for McCann Worldgroup, Jay Ganaden, director of strategic development for Pro Design at Adobe, Mehta Mehta, global chief creative officer at Hogarth, Isabel Perry, VP of emerging technology at DEPT, and Megan Lang, marketing director at Heinz North America.
Starting on a grand scale, Elav began by introducing the audience to her optimistic vision of the future where AI is put to use to enhance creativity. “The World Economic Forum released a report a few weeks ago and it said that 23% of our jobs are going to be changed, potentially, because of AI,” she said. “But the number one skill that all of us will need to have as a result is creative thinking. I think it will be a co-pilot, a friend and something to force us to be better.”
Isabel followed by comparing the rise of AI tools to the rise of social media and the suggestion at that time that every person would become some sort of ‘influencer’, when in reality only a small percentage of us have the time, skills and desire to do so. “Whilst the barrier to accessing these tools is super low,” she said, “it still takes a certain type of someone, an artist, a curious mind, whatever it is, to really master these tools and become the next great creative director.”
Among the generative AI tools that the majority of the public have experimented with now, tech is rapidly innovating to build creative tools harnessing AI for the creative industry. Jay shared some of the new AI tools that Adobe has recently launched to support creativity, such as Firefly, which received widespread praise from the other panellists. “At Adobe we're about reducing friction to creative tools and making them more democratised,” he said. “I'm hearing all kinds of new use cases. There's the obvious one of concepting, strategy, pitch work and that kind of stuff, that's certainly the case. But since it's more democratised, we're now seeing account people, strategists - people that aren't necessarily classically trained but might start the conversation and can really get a briefing process started.”
Mehta detailed how the production capabilities of holding company WPP are set to benefit from the AI-powered tools the company has developed recently in collaboration with NVIDIA. As part of the partnerships with a range of AI partners, including Adobe’s Firefly, WPP is building a platform where it will give out all of its AI tools to creatives and non-creatives to help generate ideas and transform thinking processes.
On the hysteria around AI taking creative jobs, Mehta added, “The one thing I tell my team globally is to make something that AI can't fake. 'Hip hop' the whole thing - they took instruments away, so they came up with two turntables and a microphone and built a whole industry out of it. Don't think about it in terms of AI taking your job, do something that it can't do and it'll progress us forward fast.” He added that Hogarth and the wider WPP team is looking at how to ensure that its use of generative AI tools has ample amounts of 'soul'.
These advances and the many similar tools look set to transform how creative work is done, which inevitably alter what brands expect from their creative and production partners – a point that Megan considered, asserting that AI should hopefully give herself and her agency partners more time to ideate. “In the old world we used to spend days and days ideating in workshops,” said Megan. “Then you have to send it off to an agency that will mock it up, and then finally, you could get some real feedback. That's completely changed. Today, we're doing that in 24 hours, and you're getting an image of the concept that you've come up with in two minutes. That hopefully enables us on the brand side more time to think. And I think the same for our agency partners - they can easily get ideas from their head onto paper and hopefully spend more time coming up with ideas.
“I don't know that it completely changes our existing expectations of our creative partners,” added Megan, “but I think it raises the bar. We always expect our creative agencies to push us and to be on the edge of what's trending in culture, but now I think the bar is even higher. I think we expect our partners to experiment and play, and to push us to test and learn, though we have to foster that internally as well. At the end of the day, from a client perspective, you want your partners to make you feel uncomfortable. That's a sign of a good idea.”
She spoke about Heinz’s ‘A.I. Ketchup’ work, which it did with Rethink last year. Her partner at Rethink messaged one day with the idea, but told her it needed to be made in the next 24 hours otherwise someone else would beat them to it. “I did not know anything about AI, but I said, ‘let's do it’, because we had trust in the relationship. As I look forward, I want our partners to continue to make us feel uncomfortable, because that's usually where the best ideas come from.”
The panel concluded with a discussion on the protection of the skills of creativity and craft that this industry is built on, to which Elav responded with an anecdote of her experience judging Innovation at Cannes Lions this week. She said around 98% of the entries in the category involved some form of AI generation but only one of them was awarded a Lion.
Isabel added, “We don't necessarily need to protect it, I think it's going to be fairly self selecting because good creativity speaks for itself and we're going to get bored of the low hanging visual ideas very quickly. But there is an extraordinary abundance of generation right now, and in a period of abundance, creativity will become even more so the fierce battleground of our industry.”
Joe again mentioned Adobe’s democratised approach to its products as a shining light for the future of creativity. “We're seeing more experimentation, curiosity, and connecting those human traits with expression and an ability to express quickly but not with the traditional trappings of creativity as a craft,” he said.
Mehta noted the change to creativity that the introduction of Adobe Photoshop brought on, and how creatively the advertising industry can’t continue to work in the same ways and continue to output the same kind of content.
“I think it’s about time we changed it up again,” he said.
