The other day, I asked my son, who is soon to be 20 years old, whether he wanted or needed a subscription to ChatGPT. His answer: A flat “no.”

I asked him why. Won’t it help him do some things quickly that he needs to do, for school or otherwise?

He responded by giving me a lecture (which is what he usually does) about AI killing creativity and the learning process. In other words, in his view, AI is simply a shortcut. People don’t have to think. They don’t have to do the work themselves, so there is no learning that happens from struggling and failing. There is no “a-ha” moment in a creative process. You just enter a prompt and ask the machine. He went on to ask: “What’s so special about producing something that took no thought at all?”

He went on to lament to my wife and me what would happen to all those great books, songs, movies, and shows. The new stuff will seem “creative,” but will it actually be?

I have to say, he’s probably not very practical (at this moment at least), but he’s also not wrong in addressing this key issue. Let’s explore this more.  

Can a Machine Be “Creative” When It Comes to Marketing?

The short answer here: Yes.

First, let’s explore what creativity really is.

If you think about it, being creative starts with a shared understanding between people. What a creative individual does is take that shared understanding, twist it slightly so you can still see the original idea, but create something slightly different, yet still recognizable.

It’s what makes jokes funny.

It’s the same for films such as Oppenheimer (which doesn’t exactly follow the book on which it’s based, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin). Or, say a completely unique adaptation in the case of Apocalypse Now (set in the Vietnam War, which is based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” set in Africa).

Machines these days, similarly, have so much data about this shared understanding between people. And have so many examples of what creativity is, that it can easily produce something “creative” – and in seconds, without all the tortured process that artists have to go through or what comedians have to struggle through to get a joke.

Technically, this is “creativity.”

Because machines today (and certainly in the future) will have as much knowledge about the shared understanding between people as any individual would, creating something slightly resembling that understanding but different isn’t actually that hard for a machine. Even today, you probably wouldn’t know the difference.

That doesn’t mean it has any soul, of course.

But companies and corporations don’t pay for soul. They don’t pay for tortured processes to get their ads or their content to have an impact. At the end of the day, though they might give lip service to the human element of “learning,” it’s generally not about that at all. What they care about most is quality production. And at the lowest cost to get the best result.

There’s a reason why Amazon’s Alexa Fund recently invested in Fable[1], Saatchi’s San Francisco-based startup that oversees Showrunner, which the company has hyped as the “Netflix of AI.”

What is it?

According to Variety, it’s “a service that lets you type in a few words to create scenes — or entire episodes — of a TV show, either from scratch or based on an existing story-world someone else has created.” 

That’s pretty scary stuff for the entertainment industry. But it’s a reality that’s going to be faced by those of us in marketing as well. 

What Happens in This New World to the Marketing Creatives?

If you’ve used AI recently, the one thing that stands out is that it’s significantly improved from, say, just one year ago. Indeed, if you were asking it to be creative about a particular thing and gave it the right prompts, you could certainly come up with something (regardless of the generative content area) that would probably be pretty good.

That said, the creative types – artists, designers, script or content development experts who are good at what they do won’t be out of a job anytime soon. What broad AI doesn’t do really well yet is nuance. That goes for everything from subtle cues (e.g., personal intuition that humans possess to ascertain a particular circumstance or situation) all the way to what you might call finesse, the attention to little details that connect with people on a human-to-human basis. While it can analyze data and trends, its interpretation of that data creatively is, frankly, still not on par with the best humans in the field. At least not yet.

Is it getting close, however? Yes, it is.

What Should You Do as a Small or Midsize Business

We’ve often said this. You probably don’t have a choice about moving to AI. It’s likely your competition already has, which means to stay competitive, you probably need to do the same thing, especially when it comes to creative output/production. (And yes, I’ve discussed my own reservations about the technology and where it is headed.)

I don’t think that means eliminating all your creative or marketing-based roles. You do need adult oversight, especially over the next several years. But certainly adopting the technology will save you or your team hours of time for mundane tasks and may even help you a bit on the creative side.  

In that way, unlike my son’s view, I think you have to be practical (at least for now).

————————–

Have questions or need help navigating the path of marketing? Don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation. (And no, AI wasn’t used to write this blog.) 

[1] The amount of Amazon’s Alexa Fund investment in Fable isn’t being disclosed, according to the reports.