You just press a button don’t you and it does it all for you?

Written By Damian Howell

I’ve turned the radio off! It must be serious; I need to focus and my usual 80’s playlist has also gone silent. 

For those of you who know me and those that don’t I have recently felt compelled for lots of reasons as a creative, MD, and business owner to write something down about the ai phenomenon that has hit us all.

Ok, lets first start by saying when it appeared all of a sudden in our studio I like many was hesitant, angry and feeling a bit lost….how dare this thing come into our lives and take away or replace what we have spent generations learning.

Remember when a client jokingly used to say to its agency, ‘you can do that quickly can’t you, it's just a click of a button isn’t it’ and sadly today that remark is as true as I’m sat here writing without using Ai. Almost everything that we have all learned in this industry was almost overnight undervalued and stamped on by this new machine. 

I get it, time moves on and tech and science will move at a pace that if you don’t jump on it you’ll be left out for the next ten years or left playing catch up. At best you cradle it and see its strengths and harness what you can from it. At worst you let it dominate and create everything you think you need from it.

In the last 6 months we have harnessed this massive unstoppable curve of change, it has come into our lives, and it has changed the way we work. For the best and worst kinds of scenarios. Sat here this Friday morning I’ve not even left the apartment for a coffee shop to try and engage my brain into writing and that says something about me and ai now. I feel like we have a real love hate relationship. My Chat account now calls me Damian. I fall out with it and that’s ok as I know it’s not human. It’s learning about me every day and I sort of like that. But it worries me that I know it makes mistakes and it’ll be giving me the same answers it’s probably given 1000’s of others.

I’ve used it for work; I’ve used it for my own personal development and some quite deep personal items as well. What I’ve learnt is that I’m not shy of taking on new things, adapting, pushing forward, and making sure that I stay ahead of the curve, well….to a certain degree as it changes all the time.

The biggest thing I’ve learnt is that if I don’t read back fully what it tells me, I can end up down a rabbit warren of disaster, and then this is when we fall out. I say “Mmmm, why didn’t you pick that up before me” its reply…”oh yes good spot, I agree with you”

Anger builds but I reassure myself that I was the gate keeper, the human at the end of the lesson to always make the last call. The only person who knows me best and the things in my life. I know now that it can’t and won’t ever replace that function of me, and I feel happy that I still own part of who I am.

I’ve been around a long time, seen many changes and owned and built businesses through two of the worst economic environments this country has faced. I know a thing or two about adapting. And you know what, I still love with passion, this industry and what we produce for our clients. Over the nearly 30 years of working in creative and marketing I’ve known when to speak and when not to. It’s a dark art actually and learning to read the room before a pitch, can be a talent only a few master. But learning to read what’s actually going to happen tomorrow, next year or even as little as 12 months away is going to be hard to do.

My biggest fear, honestly, is the amount of stuff being created that will just be entirely wrong or not fit for purpose. AI makes mistakes and unless it’s had lots of time being nurtured and trained, it will eventually bite you in the ass. That is, unless you’re that gate keeper. The one that will tell it no and can define why then, maybe things are not as rosy with the ai momentum. In my dreams every agency owner in the next 5 years will have businesses far and wide banging down their doors to help put right what went wrong.

It’s new, it saves time and resources, it saves MONEY. We are even being transparent and saying when we have used it. We should be telling our clients, it’s not a dark art that can be hidden when we know clients are using it themselves and it’s in everyone’s home and office across the world. Surely then, it's about making sure we all know what it can and can’t do. That we carefully hold onto what we have spent years learning to make sure we can authenticate what it tells us. Like most things, they have a time and place, even I do. In the studio I’m still only allowed to touch the markers when Emma says I can, as she knows the mess I make of my visuals. I know my place and I know where ai sits in my life and what it can and can’t do for me and my business. 

The internet came, it is now built into our lives like DNA, we adapted. We will and are adapting to ai, but for the sake of our industry, our roles in it from digital, marketing and creative through to writers and anything in-between, should remain human. Be the gate keeper. Find your way in and around ai before it controls too many aspects of your day-to-day decisions. 

I remain positive. I remain agile. And open to ai, I see its benefits. I also feel the negatives of seeing and hearing of ‘self-craft’, ‘built without experience’ and remember, we may now believe we have one button to press that does everything. But does it….?

I’m off for a coffee and walk. It’s Friday. Enjoy. :-)