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Creatives and AI: Are they the perfect match?

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the pace of many industries - and the creative fields are no exception. While there is still a stigma of fear towards AI in some sections, the majority are beginning to see the positive impact the tech is having.

Creative jobs are enviable ones. Copywriters, art directors, designers, social media managers - there are a raft of roles where using the imagination is the most important aspect. But, like any other job, there are mundane aspects that dampen the fun.

Many creatives would love to automate the mundane parts of their job, freeing them up to focus on igniting the flames of creation. Fortunately, AI is proving to be the perfect tonic to creative roles, analysing images, studying datasets and finding new marketing insights.

Understanding creativity

AI’s connection to creativity has always been open to debate. After all, replicating the human characteristic of being creative is the hardest trait to learn. While artificial intelligence might not directly replace the mind, a world where it empowers expression to tell more compelling stories is entirely plausible.

As millennials and Generation Z shy away from traditional advertising practices, the emphasis on creatives to come up with engaging content only grows stronger. There are tons of messages circulating around social media and the internet at large - the need to be a clear voice amongst the noise is more important than ever before.

For example, analytics tools already make the most of AI and help marketers use data. Deep learning takes on large datasets to place objects into categories and reveal hidden relationships between millions of data points.

A deeper understanding

As a creative, you probably spend a fair amount of time on research. Whether scrolling through copious amounts of images or studying data to make decisions regarding campaigns, the majority of creative roles are loaded with extensive research.

Want that time back? We’re not far away from AI taking over these tasks completely. It is learning to look at images and recognise key aspects while automatically tagging and describing them. Image recognition is providing designers and marketings instant results when they search for a particular subject.

Some machine learning can even go as far as matching a company’s style, taking its colours and branding type into account. Then it will provide results that integrate with already existing campaign mood boards, making for a more seamless search.

Partners to the end

Creatives are well known for working in partnerships, especially in the advertising industry where it’s not uncommon for a copywriter to work with an art director. AI’s role as an artificial creative partner is very much in how it can assist creatives.

The tech can’t reason, nor does it have the ability to make decisions based on emotions. It’s vital for people to display characteristics such as empathy, happiness and sadness to be a genuine creative force.

AI’s role as a collaborative assistant for creatives means it can monitor our work and develop an understanding of our habits and style. Based on our own behaviours, it can offer suggestions that will help with our brainstorming while managing workflow more efficiently.

Creatives are already on board

Despite the stereotypical connotations about people fearing AI, it seems as if most are willing to embrace the tech - especially in the creative field. A recent survey revealed that 85 percent of creatives believe AI will have the most significant impact among emerging tech.  

There is so much up-and-coming tech, including augmented and virtual reality, but it is AI that leads the way. In ad agencies, there can be an issue between brief and execution, with creatives not feeling like there is enough information.

AI has the power to negate such a problem, offering precise insight into the details, which leaves creatives completely clear of the task at hand. The merge should eventually be a seamless one, which will make everyone’s job clearer.

Automated marketing

If you can automate something without loss of quality, then it should be a no-brainer. Over the years, marketing automation has taken off - this has coincided with the rise of social media. Marketers are finding ways to tap into the consumer mindset, and AI is helping them.

Without AI, marketing automation had the ability to carry out repetitive tasks. Yet with the inclusion of the tech, AI brought predictive analysis and personalization engines to life which has given marketers insights with more precision that enable them to make better creative choices over their outreach communications.

With the ability to scale, brands build content strategies that speak to a global audience. The creative then has the ability to turn that strategy into a tone of voice that cuts through the noise and creates communities of followers, buyers and brand evangelists.

AI cons

As the tech becomes more powerful and creates new ways for creative people to flourish, there are some downsides. Some people will use the tech to fake artistry, with voice recognition being one potential tricky area.

With such power, people can easily change the context or meaning of what someone said. And with the problems behind the US Presidential election, it’s hard not to foresee even bigger issues arising in the future.

Of course, wherever there is good, bad will always arise somewhere. Overall, though, the power of AI has the ability to push the creative world into a new direction of unparalleled expression.

Smart AI

AI is making artists evolve and challenge themselves in new ways. The days of creating that one thing and then replicating it for the next 20 years looks to be over. Smart algorithms will apply reference to a variety of content automatically.

Creatives can continuously reinvent themselves with the help of machines. With certain, more mundane aspects automated, they are free to take on more work and increase the overall demand for creation.

The future will be a creative one, led by humans but with a little help from their robotic friends.

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