The AI and Automation Dilemma: Chasing the Unicorn in Creative Industries

AI promises to achieve a lot, seemingly capable of solving any task that’s thrown at it. The reality is certainly less hyped but nonetheless promising, especially in the realm of creative adaptation. Locaria’s director, creative adaptation and production, Oksana Matchuk, says “the industry is still chasing the unicorn,” having tested plenty of the tools together with her team. 

Oksana explains that her creative team would love to use AI to automate some time-consuming tasks, but that none of the tools on the market are currently delivering the capabilities needed. “The most time-consuming aspects of our creative adaptation workflow are the repetitive tasks involved in localising assets for multiple markets—such as updating text, supers, and product visuals—while maintaining technical and visual accuracy,” she says.

Among the available tools, none quite live up to the seamless automation expectations just yet; they often misplace fonts, adjust sizes incorrectly, or disrupt design elements, requiring manual corrections. “Another key limitation,” Oksana continues, “is that these tools are designed for finalised, fully approved designs. In reality, clients frequently request individual adjustments to assets throughout the process, making automation less effective in these scenarios.”

Oksana notes that generative AI tools like Adobe’s Generative Fill offer some support but are currently limited to static images. And video adaptation, “which is a major component of our workflow, still relies heavily on manual effort.” So what’s the verdict? “Ultimately, these AI-driven tools function more as creative enhancement solutions—helpful for retouching or clean-ups—rather than true adaptation tools,” says Oksana.

In her role overseeing creative adaptation, Oksana has tested a lot of tools since finding the right one with the right capabilities will make a huge difference to the efficiency of her team. While many are almost there in terms of what they offer, one limitation recurs: the lack of seamless integration with Adobe Suite, “which is essential since creative adaptation projects are typically prepared and delivered in Adobe formats.”

She continues: “Many automation platforms don’t support After Effects or Photoshop projects, making them impractical. Additionally, AI tools struggle with video resizing and complex adaptations, often applying changes inconsistently across different versions of an asset. One promising plugin, Dataclay, integrates with Adobe and allows for text and simple product replacements, but it does not work well for moving images or HTML projects.”

As it stands, currently no tool or platform exists that would satisfy all the requirements of the creative adaptation process. For Oksana, the ideal tool “would focus on intelligent resizing—one that understands which content needs to be preserved, adapts layouts accordingly, and ensures that no crucial elements are lost. Current resizing tools often rely on simple cropping or trimming, which can cut out important parts of a design. AI should be able to analyse the brief and prioritise key visual elements within the resized format.”

Another key capability that Oksana would love to see would be eliminating the need for extensive project preparation to fit rigid automation templates. “Many automation platforms require significant upfront work to structure files according to specific requirements, which adds inefficiency. A truly effective AI tool should seamlessly interpret existing assets without requiring extensive manual setup, allowing for faster and more flexible adaptation.”

Costs are incurred when the promised solutions don’t live up to expectation. Oksana sees two primary ones. The first is financial loss: “Paying for an automation platform that doesn’t deliver the expected results.” And the second is time cost: “The extra manual labour required to fix AI-generated errors, which can sometimes take just as long as doing the work manually from the start.”

While resizing is one of the primary areas AI is lagging behind in for now, Oksana is seeing promising tests. Some platforms are starting to experiment with resizing and there has been early success which, in the world of tech and AI, typically means that breakthrough is close. “While the current solutions are not ideal, AI advancements suggest that a more effective resizing tool could emerge within the next 12 months.”

The industry-wide hype and fear surrounding AI is unfounded in Oksana’s eyes – and her and the team’s experience with finding the tools to automate what should be easy enough tasks are the proof. “No major disruptive change has occurred in the creative adaptation space,” she plainly states. “AI’s impact has been more significant for small businesses, allowing them to generate simple designs, copy, and translations.” The dangers are there, though limited to “large enterprises that face legal and ethical complexities regarding AI-generated content, particularly in voiceovers and branding. There is still much uncertainty regarding usage rights and ethical implications,” she adds.

As for the rest of the industry, it’s worth testing the tools available and learning about their applications and limitations to know what’s out there and what’s coming next so when the right tool does arrive, teams are primed for their seamless integration.