Make Yourself AI Proof

As a writer and overall squishy meat person, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about AI. It’s inspired me to ask a lot of philosophical questions like, “where is our industry headed?” and “is it too late to learn welding?” I intend to answer both of those questions in this article.

First of all, no, it’s never too late to learn a new trade. But I kind of love being an advertising writer. I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I’m going to ride this floating carboard box as far down the river as it’ll take me.

But I’ve got reasons to believe that it’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to AI. I’ve also been a tech enthusiast my whole life. I grew up building computers with my dad, and I regularly follow tech news as a hobby. AI has been an interesting topic for me. I’ve watched it go from a novelty with a lot of promise to a paradigm shift akin to the industrial revolution in the span of just two years. A lot of it is hyperbole. That’s what the tech industry does when they think they’ve found a new market.

That said, AI is still casting a long shadow over what we do and how we do it. In the advertising world, we talk about how “AI is coming,” like it’s a hurricane. And I see the storm prep happening all around me at conferences and in online articles. But instead of jumping on the speculation express and inventing best practices for a world we don’t live in yet, I think it’s important to take a step back and better understand what’s really going on with AI and advertising as a whole.

What exactly is “AI”?

AI has become a ubiquitous buzzword over the past two years. And a nebulous one. Today, you can find “powered by AI” on just about anything, from laptops to kitchen appliances to clothing. But when people talk about AI transforming our industry, they’re not talking about smart toasters. They’re talking about generative AI and large language models – the real slim shady of AI.

LLMs like ChatGPT are amazing technologies that feel like magic to use. But the technologies that drives LLMs are not magical. They use training data to connect dots and generate responses that are statistically likely to be the correct answer. In essence, they are highly sophisticated guessing machines. The more training data they have, the more accurate they are. But even with the massive amounts of data they are using now, generative AI still gets it wrong a lot of the time. And looking ahead, training data will be harder to come by – not easier.

However, the argument over LLM accuracy I think misses the point. They can be modified for customized uses and their accuracy improved with a few parameter tweaks. And even if errors persist, LLMs are good enough for many businesses looking to streamline (or straight up automate) their marketing process. And that’s where the real issue lies when we talk about AI and advertising.

Why AI is really replacing people.

Generative AI is new, but not a new threat. It’s simply pouring gasoline on an existing fire. And that fire has been slowing burning down our industry for over a decade.

Ad agencies have been struggling with the fact that they are no longer the gatekeepers of content creation. Anyone with a smartphone can make an ad. They can edit it with free software and distribute it online through one of several ad platforms. No agency required. And that was before AI. Are those ads good? Probably not. But they are good enough – and that’s the real battle we’ve been fighting.

The perception of “good enough” has been a looming specter in the advertising world for a long time now. And with generative AI, anyone can make “good enough” ads with shocking efficiency. Even creative roles that traditionally couldn’t be automated, like writers and designers, are being done by AI at a fraction of the cost (and at 100 times the speed). So, what’s the value proposition of an ad agency?

If there is an existential threat to the traditional advertising industry, we can’t really blame AI any more than we can blame an iPhone camera, CapCut, or the Facebook ad platform. AI is just another tool that clients are using to approximate the work of professional advertisers for less money. AI isn’t the real threat. The real threat is the idea that what we do is a commodity.

How to commodity proof yourself.

If I’m being honest, we’re partly to blame for the current “good enough” era of advertising. The bar for creative has collectively been lowered in the name of improved KPIs. Agencies will look at what performs well in the marketplace, study it, dissect the pieces we think work best and reassemble them to create new ads for our clients.

That kind of sounds like what an AI does.

We even let Google assemble the ads for us dynamically, optimizing for our preferred flavor of engagement. It’s getting impossible to know how a final ad will look, where it will run and what it will say. Where’s the human element? Where‘s the creative risk-taking that defines memorable advertising? To make a case against AI, we need to do what it can’t: be original.

Don’t get me wrong, data and results are at the core of what we do. They always have been. But we need more hands on the steering wheel. We need more creative ownership over our work. Think about what defines a craftsman. It’s their pride and how they obsess over the details that elevates their work above a machine. We need to ensure we’re doing the same.

Another way we can be AI proof? Be a problem solver. Whether at the agency level, or as an individual, what problems are we solving for clients? One thing to remember is that AI cannot deliver big picture thinking. It’s an order taker. It’ll write 50 social media posts for you but will never tell you that a social post is the wrong approach. People with experience, vision and ownership over their work will always have value because they can diagnose problems – not just treat symptoms.

At the end of the day, if we charge a premium for what we do, it must have perceived value. How we articulate that value is unique to every agency and client. But you must always answer the question: “How is your work not a commodity.” It should clearly stand above any automated system or off-the-shelf creation tool. We are craftsmen and our intelligence is not artificial. I firmly believe that our creative ideas and the strategies that drive them will always have value – in the age of AI and beyond.