We made AI, and it made us lazy. Aside from the massive energy use and the water crisis no one seems to have a fix for, we’re doing something more damaging. Destroying the next generation of creative thinkers.
A recent MIT Media Lab study looked at brain activity and found that people using ChatGPT to write had the lowest brain engagement across 32 different regions. Deep down, we all knew this. We’ve felt it happening. But now we have the proof, and as leaders, it’s our job to fix it.
The study showed that over time, the AI users just got progressively lazier, eventually doing nothing more than copy-pasting prompts. We see it on our LinkedIn feeds. We see it in blog posts. We even see it in the copy that has been handed to clients. If we, as industry leaders, are happily cutting these corners, why wouldn't the next generation follow suit? Sure, the study focused on SAT essays, but it points to a massive cultural shift in how we work.
The bit that I found concerning and where it is destroying creativity is that when participants were asked to rewrite their work without AI, they remembered almost nothing of what they had "written." Their brains completely skipped the deep processing needed to remember anything. But that ‘work’ is exactly where creative magic happens. It’s how our brains connect random dots and build unique ideas, something AI can't replicate. If we bypass that struggle, our creative process is dead in the water.
Think about the best advertising in the world. Pick your absolute favourite campaign. I guarantee it wasn’t born from an average of scraped data (which is all an LLM really is). Great work requires a singular, uncompromising, and sometimes totally irrational vision. It needs a creative who feels the idea in their gut.
If I think back to the favourite piece of work I’ve ever been a part of, it is ‘Nobody is Normal’ for the NSPCC/Childline in the UK. We pitched a monster wearing a human skin suit to show kids that the concept of "normal" doesn’t exist. Getting a concept like that approved took a singular vision. It took a team that believed in it deeply and fought like hell for it. You can't fight for an idea an algorithm spat out.
We love to label Gen Z the "skim" generation. We criticize them for relying on screens and shortcuts. But we built the ecosystem they’re trying to survive in. The older generation of leaders championed the ad-tech boom. We demanded faster turnarounds, tighter budgets, and a massive volume of assets. We built the pressure cooker that makes hitting "generate" the only way a junior creative can hit an impossible deadline. The responsibility to fix this falls entirely on us.
If our teams' creative problem-solving muscles are getting weak, we need to act like physical therapists for their brains. We need to put actual guardrails in place within our agencies. AI is a great production tool for churning out iterations, but the initial concept phase has to be fiercely protected. We should be mandating an "analog only" period for the first 48-72 hours of any brief. That’s the way we have always found our best work. Give your team whiteboards, let them write terrible first drafts, and make them argue it out in a room together. See the friction, create a fire.
The future of the agency model isn't going to be won by whoever prompts the fastest. It will be won by the studios that actively build creative champions, people who still know how to bleed a little bit for a brilliant, human idea. People who will fight against the average.
Rickie Marsden
ECD & Partner
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