What Do We Make Of AI Really?

The artwork above is a collaboration. Not between two human artists, but between one and the AI he used to finesse the details. The cars are human-designed assets, while the backgrounds (all of which are, like the vehicles, meant to represent “the future”) were created in Midjourney. Both elements were then knitted together in Photoshop, combined into a cohesive series of concepts.

This concept work is from Limehouse Creative, who are at the forefront of integrating AI into various stages of their creative work.

They are not alone.

In creative offices worldwide, a revolution is on the horizon. The possibilities of what artificial intelligence can offer creatives is expanding every day, as the capacities of their neural networks grow minute after minute, hour after hour. At the same time, their human coworkers are growing more and more familiar with just how AI ‘thinks’, and this increased literacy is yielding ever-improving results.

But we can speak in vague tech-optimism till the cows come home. What, on a material level, does it mean to have AI involved in creativity? And where do we go from here?

We spoke to various industry experts in the field to find out.

“The most obvious use of AI in the creative industry has to be image generating AI algorithms turning written prompts into mind-blowing images,”says VMLY&R creative director Robyn Bergmann. “MidJourney and DALL-E 2, to name but a few, have burst onto the scene and rocked our worlds. The creative industry is fast becoming infiltrated by these neural networks that mimic the structure of the human brain…The possibility for AI generated creativity seems endless.”

Andy Flemming, creative lead at 72andSunny, echoes this classification. “There are two fundamental apps,” he said. “You’ve got the art programs and the writing programs. The former generate images while the latter generate copy. Neither are yet at a point where you can let them just run without supervision - but as for starting points, they’re very powerful indeed.”

That’s certainly how most agencies have used them so far. Campaigns which integrate AI have, up till now, tended to lean into the artificiality or limitations (or even novelty) of what they’re working with - as the technology simply cannot generate copy or images comparable to that of a trained and talented human creative - yet.

Robyn cites, as examples, works from VMLY&R and Heinz. The first made light of AI’s inability to translate languages correctly, while the second joked around with the uncanny nature of AI image generation: “ When given the prompt of ‘ketchup’, AI-generated images of Heinz bottles appeared, proving that even AI believes that ketchup is synonymous with Heinz.”

Robyn is quick to note, though, that with the speed of machine learning, the former matter has likely been resolved, and the images generated by AI continue to grow more realistic. 

Nevertheless, AI remains in a supporting role for the moment. Is it, then, fundamentally just a tool which enhances creative efficiency, comparable to something like Photoshop?

James Lucas, creative partner and ECD at Limehouse, disagrees. “Photoshop was awful when it came out. AI can create its own stuff, and it's got a point of view that is different to yours. I could see an idea, and I could spend days mapping out every little thing I'm gonna do with that, or I could write a series of prompts, and, within 15 minutes, I’d have 50 different variations of that idea, where at least one of them definitely isn't something I would have ever thought of.”

The fundamental truth of the matter, of course, is that AI grows and learns at an exponential rate. As Robyn puts it, “If AI is anything, it’s disruptive. It has burst into our lives with unimaginable potential and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle… Who knows what the future really holds, but AI’s power as a collaborative tool is immense. Humans are incredibly inventive, and I foresee an explosion of creativity as machines help humans make new art, music, film, fashion, architecture etc. It’s unbelievably exciting.”

She clarifies that she sees this as a future where AI does not supplant human creativity, but rather enhances and collaborates with it. 

Andy, however, has some cold water to pour on this perspective. “The big barrier right now, is that because it’s pattern seeking, all it can do is to look backwards - to search through work that’s already been done and try to amalgamate it into something new.”

To which James replies “Isn’t that what a human creative does? Aren’t we all the sum of our influences, in the end?”

Some of AI’s most immediate and impactful work is being felt in the realm of production, where it’s being used for image upscaling and VFX. We’ll be diving into this process in more detail in the weeks to come but for now let us reflect on AI’s place in the purely creative realm.

“It can create beautiful abstract landscapes, but it can't do fingers,” says Andy of the technology’s limitations. Indeed, work produced by AI seems to still fall short of the standards of human creativity - as this piece from Toby Jarvis explored.

But it’s worth remembering that a mere year ago it seemed unthinkable that image generation AI would be as commonly accessible as it is now. The technology grows with every passing day. The days of campaigns which use it only as a conceptual aid, or which lean into its shortcomings as some sort of quirk, are numbered.

Robyn puts it bluntly. “The speed at which things are changing has left my poor human brain struggling to imagine how AI will affect our creative industry. All I know is that I’m nervously excited and eager to use the tools of the future. To use machines to bring my boldest ideas to life.

The ethical and industrial implications of AI are unclear. AI is learning from our collective imagination and knowledge of our humanity, and we will need a new framework for intellectual property and copyright going forward.”

There is reason to be excited, reason to be sceptical, and reason to be nervous. But there is no reason to be indifferent. This transformation is more than just a tool - it will, on a fundamental level, rework the way creativity functions. We can only hope that, when it does, we’ll be ready.

Oh brave new world, that has such programmes in it.