Umpqua Bank

My first encounter with artificial intelligence was in the 1982 film Blade Runner. Ridley Scott's replicas mesmerized me. Their beauty, physical appearance, strength, speed, intelligence, and sophistication were all just so... perfect. I never imagined the potential dark side of that technology. Now, 40 years later, AI is real—and people say it’s coming for my job.

AI is changing the landscape of marketing content to the point that we can no longer differentiate reality from illusion. From AI-generated music, voiceovers, art, design, photography, poetry and copywriting, the algorithms are generating endless near-perfect outputs and variations. Are we at the end of an era of writer's block or creative slumps? Many tech luminaries think this sophisticated technology will replace human content makers, but I disagree.

As a Creative Director, I have been fortunate to work on large rebrands for several Fortune 500 companies. I understand the power of technology and innovation. I have led pioneering tech projects including Conde Nast's first augmented reality cover issue for Allure Magazine. I know how it can help streamline workflow and make better-calculated decisions to engage an audience. There’s no question that AI is coming for my job but it’s not there yet. Not even close.

AI is disrupting and re-shaping our creative landscape in ways few could have imagined even five years ago (much less back when I saw Blade Runner on the big screen), but I believe that it’s still a long way off from replacing us creatives. Why? As simple as this sounds… AI just isn’t creative enough.

Humans—particularly creatives—possess complex traits and unique abilities for reasoning, discovery and ideation to create new original concepts that are influenced by our environments, emotions, relationships, optical views, culture, and experiences. We have the unique ability to tap into these to come up with decisions that shape our world. And we can adapt and make new decisions on the fly based on what we see, feel, hear, or smell. AI lacks cognitive abilities such as adaptability, social intelligence and learning from experience, and it is far from achieving our superior biological traits.

“AI is changing the landscape of marketing content to the point that we can no longer differentiate reality from illusion.”

As creatives, rather than fearing AI, we need to look at it as an advantage and use it as a tool to build a strong foundation to speed up our execution and thought process. For example, with the help of my incredible team of (real human) designers, we are integrating AI to help with a rebrand project. By manipulating AI-generated content and customizing it to our brand, we are able to develop a stronger and far more diverse visual language which at the end can be more engaging and beneficial to our audience.

AI can do so much more than help improve visual language. For example, AI can help us creatives, help customers interact, engage and experience products before purchasing through augmented reality experiences, leading to more ethical experiences as time, energy and intelligence are not wasted on quick and impulsive decisions.

They say that AI is coming for my job, and in some ways that’s true. But I believe that creative thinking stems from uniquely human experiences (for example, finding creative inspiration through our experiences with the natural world and animals we co-exist with). As creatives, we can learn to co-exist side-by-side with AI. Combining our inspiration with its executional abilities can help us create enhanced and extraordinary visuals.

Maybe I’ll get to meet a replica one day. In the meantime, I’m excited to be creating and using technology I thought only existed in movies.

P.S. This was written by a human!