imagination and ai
By Alan rothera
Design Manager
Imagination, it’s what makes us human
Recently Mark Read announced he was quitting his role of CEO at WPP, one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies, whilst facing one of the greatest challenges for the industry from Ai. At the same time as Meta announced its introduction of tools for users to create and focus their own marketing campaigns, the markets recorded drops in value. With these seismic changes that are taking place in marketing, the question is, will Ai plunge our industry in the dark ages or spearhead a creative renaissance?
There is no doubt that Ai will be ever more prominent in all our lives and especially in the creative and marketing industries. Ai is an incredibly powerful and fast tool making digital intelligence far more superior to biological intelligence. There has never been a point in our history where we have created something potentially more powerful than ourselves, and at the same time, something that can develop our existence far beyond what we thought possible. When used to our benefit, Ai can become a collaborator, being able in an instant, to solve and produce the more process driven and mundane tasks. This allows many more people to create and produce their own marketing, and in turn, will raise the bar for standards and possibilities so everybody will need to get better, and the only way to do that is with our imagination and creativity.
Ai takes what is out there and creates what is desired or something new using what is known (a similar process to rational thinking), making it an incredibly powerful probability processor. But imagination creates something that’s not out there and puts it in front of you as something very different. Imagination and human ingenuity aren’t just tools, they are possibly our greatest gifts and the things that make us relevant. Different Ai tools using rational thinking, will theoretically, all end up with the same conclusions, everything over rationalised and arriving at the same point. Rational thinking creates ideas that make sense in advance, which is a smaller sub-set of all potential ideas, whereas imagination brings a greater range of what is possible. The great thing about good ideas is they are far easier to post-rationalise than pre-rationalise. That’s why creative human input collaborating with Ai will make incredible impact moving forward.
“The difference between Ai and humans is imagination”
Digital media, through it’s incredible use of analytics, has for many years been able to engage with consumers in a more precise and targeted way through online and social media platforms. With the greater use of Ai in communications, this will only become more powerful. The irony is, with brands having to change and adapt from just selling a product or service to aligning with their customers values and ethics. Being real and authentic is ever more important, and at the same time we use artificial problem solving tools to try and communicate on an emotional, human and, funnily enough, authentic level.
We’ve always championed imagination and its importance in keeping us creative and unique, allowing us to connect with our audience through integrity, authenticity, empathy, compassion and humour in a very human way. And nowhere is this reflected more than in the product we produce. By championing imagination and collaborating with Ai, we will constantly keep relevant.
Nobody can tell you what the future will bring, even Geoffrey Hinton (the godfather of Ai) can’t predict where it will take us as the possibilities are endless. But one thing’s for sure, imagination will make the difference.
