Will AI Kill the Creative Business, or Save It?

Good luck with that.

If it was possible, clients would already have a windowless office full of indentured art school dropouts prompting AI to pump out their content. And you’d be signing up to drive for Uber.

Thankfully, the technology hasn’t risen to the level of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where robots can think cognitively and subjectively. In other words, AI can’t conceptualize. It doesn’t have an imagination. It can’t comprehend nuance or subtlety. It doesn’t get style or vibe. And it has no gut instincts. Which means that AI can’t gather all of the client parameters, consider the objectives from multiple angles, and formulate coherent and original thoughts that define what we call creative direction. That responsibility still falls on us archaic humans.

AI just follows directions.

When it comes to directing creative projects from kickoff to completion, AI still has a long way to go. But the impact and advantages of using AI for brand strategy are expansive and immediate.  

But before we address the AI advancements in brand strategy, let’s first cover how AI can assist creatives now.

How AI can help creatives.

Currently, AI accepts prompts as text, with or without references images for guidance, and produces options based on your direction. But, again, the human brain must still initiate the task.

We found out how much work was involved in that “based on your direction” part during a recent project we did for a spirits client. As many of us have seen on social media, we were seduced by the idea of being able to dream up some amazing visuals and all we’d have to do was type a short description in a box on Midjourney and out would pop these flawless images that we could drop into the site designs on Figma.

 Not so fast.

 To effectively use Midjourney, Firefly 3, or Photoshop’s new beta, you’ll need to study up on the platforms and how to formulate prompts that will achieve your desired results. What’s the environment? The lighting? The camera angle? The photographic style? The colors? Every single element that goes into the image must be considered, along with reference imagery to help the platform understand each detail. Pretty much the same amount of thinking required when planning a photo shoot, a shot list, props list, location scouting, picking a photographer — all that.

And once the AI cranks out a piece of content, you’ll still need the creative chops to polish the images.

In the end, on our test run for our spirits client, we produced images that we couldn’t have done without an expensive photoshoot, or some serious CGI work. We tapped the expertise of an experience AI digital artist. But the overall planning took about 20-30 hours for image research and creative direction. Hardly the breezy add-text and click-button that we envisioned.    

Because of the flexibility of AI — the anything is possible part — the technology can really help during the concepting phase, since many clients often have trouble envisioning what a final execution would look like from a description, a raw sketch, or mood board.

But if you’re going to lean on AI to produce conceptual mockups, definitely give yourself time, and consult an expert if you aren’t profficient using the image-generator platforms.

Who are the AI artist experts? There are a bunch of them out there. We really like the work of Chris Labrooy. You can check him out on IG.

And for some stellar creative work currently using AI image and video generation, take a look at the Plus Minus project by Locomotive, and the short movie "Air Heads" by the ShyKids using Sora by OpenAI.

Logo & Type Generation

AI is proficient at creating logos. Nothing earth-shattering. But decent. The latest generations of image-creators, especially Firefly 3, offer some exceptional ways to add style, textures, and 3D effects to vectors that are legitimately game-changing.  

Adobe’s Firefly 3 allows you to enter a detailed prompt, as well as several sub-categories, before transforming a vector into multiple tasty options. The AI designs will need final touches from a pro, but the initial concepts will save a lot of time during that crucial phase when many designers struggle to get off the ground.

At the moment, AI is still a task-master, and a downright infant when it comes to the thinking behind the creative. But it’s a true workhorse for brand development.

How AI can help with brand strategy.

By crunching vast amounts of data, interpreting consumer behavior, and automating processes, AI has become an invaluable asset for shaping and enhancing brand strategies.

AI can distill valuable insights about target audiences by analyzing their lifestyle patterns and buying habits through social media trends, online discussions, and customer feedback to extract preferences and sentiments.

The speed and scope of analysis enables brands to tailor specific strategies, messaging, and visuals that resonate emotionally with their target customers and create a
more personalized experience.

Messaging

After reviewing existing content and brand guidelines, AI algorithms can learn the brand’s personality, tone, and values, and propose content that aligns with the established brand identity.

To utilize AI in your brand development, you’ll need to build a custom ChatGPT-4 model and program all the inputs to educate the system on the parameters that will dictate the content generated.

Those who first embrace and adopt technology are those who will benefit most.

If you’d like to explore how AI can elevate your brand, drop us a line and we’ll go on that adventure together.