GM's CMO warns that AI in creative often produces average results because it finds the "most likely next answer," reflecting the category norm, not a distinctive brand voice. Simple edits can also trigger a full re-render, introducing new errors and creating more work.
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While AI tools once gave creators an edge, they now risk producing democratized, undifferentiated output. IBM's AI VP, who grew to 200k followers, now uses AI less. The new edge is spending more time on unique human thinking and using AI only for initial ideation, not final writing.
As more teams use AI, campaign strategies become homogenized because AI suggests traditional plays based on existing data. The key differentiator becomes human oversight, where marketers add unique, creative insights to AI-generated foundations, ensuring campaigns stand out.
Generative AI is a powerful tool for accelerating the production and refinement of creative work, but it cannot replace human taste or generate a truly compelling core idea. The most effective use of AI is as a partner to execute a pre-existing, human-driven concept, not as the source of the idea itself.
To get high-quality, on-brand output from AI, teams must invest more time in the initial strategic phase. This means creating highly precise creative briefs with clear insights and target audience definitions. AI scales execution, but human strategy must guide it to avoid generic, off-brand results.
When brands use AI tools like LLMs as their primary creative director instead of as an assistant, they produce generic outputs based on existing data. This leads to a "sea of sameness" and a loss of brand distinctiveness.
AI struggles with true creativity because it's designed to optimize for correctness, like proper grammar. Humans, in contrast, optimize for meaning and emotional resonance. This is why ChatGPT would not have generated Apple's iconic "Think Different" slogan—it breaks grammatical rules to create a more powerful idea. Over-reliance on AI risks losing an authentic, human voice.
AI tools rarely produce perfect results initially. The user's critical role is to serve as a creative director, not just an operator. This means iteratively refining prompts, demanding better scripts, and correcting logical flaws in the output to avoid generic, low-quality content.
True creative mastery emerges from an unpredictable human process. AI can generate options quickly but bypasses this journey, losing the potential for inexplicable, last-minute genius that defines truly great work. It optimizes for speed at the cost of brilliance.
Generative AI allows any marketer to quickly produce mediocre content. This saturation makes buyers more discerning and creates a significant opportunity for brands that invest in genuinely excellent, insightful content to stand out and build trust. Quality, not quantity, becomes the key differentiator.
While AI tools excel at generating initial drafts of code or designs, their editing capabilities are poor. The difficulty of making specific changes often forces creators to discard the AI output and start over, as editing is where the "magic" breaks down.