Into the creative future with generative AI

What is generative AI?

Generative AI utilises machine learning to generate all sorts of new and exciting content from art, video, content and music to entire virtual worlds.

The explosion of Midjourney and DALL-E 2 over the last year with other tools entering the mix this year such as ChatGPT has seen the creative industry panic, worry and rejoice in creativity all at the same time.

It’s clear that generative AI tools have the potential to drastically change the way we approach content creation. The full scope of that impact, though, is still unknown—as are the risks.

The creative process

Throughout the last year we’ve jumped into this crazy world and what becomes absolutely clear is that to use these tools effectively, you still need human involvement at the beginning and end of the process.

Depending on the quality of the prompts, your results can vary drastically. The skill here is to have a clear understanding of the output with creative prompts yielding creative outputs. Creative brief writing is a skill and one that will be sought after. There will always be quirks to iron out and the need to refine and improve the outcome through other tools (manual or AI based).

One of the biggest advantages for this technology is to implement it at the ideation/conceptual phases. Using it to rapidly generate content, imagery will help creatives test ideas and theories quickly and efficiently.

It’s also great for replacing stock imagery. We’ve all spent hours searching image libraries for a specific photo a client has requested. Only to be disappointed or spend time artworking it instead. Now we can generate anything in a matter of minutes.

The limitations and pitfalls

It’s easy to get swept up into the hype and marvel at the outcomes, however to blindly use them brings risks that are yet to be discovered.

Trust and reliability springs to mind. One of the problems with language models is their ability to generate content that sounds believable but is false, misleading or even biased (because it’s built on the gender, racial, and myriad other biases of the internet and society more generally) and can be manipulated. The potential for misuse and the production of fake content could flood social media and other channels, which is a scary thought. Leading to the question how should generative AI be governed?

We’re also keeping a close eye on the issues surrounding intellectual property and copyright. Several lawsuits have been filed against image generative AI models claiming they violate copyright law by scraping artists’ work from the web without their consent.

The need for authenticity

With AI imagery dominating news and social feeds, there is an opportunity for brands to connect with their audience and tell authentic stories.

Heinz launched a social campaign to prove the association of ketchup with the Heinz brand. They asked people from 18 countries to draw a bottle of ketchup and they got back thousands of pictures. Claiming to see a near 1500% uplift in social conversations relating to the brand and a 10% uplift in sales.

Amplifying the campaign they asked AI to ‘draw ketchup’ and these are the results.

Heinz focused on the story and not the AI tool. Engaging authentically with their customers to create a stand out campaign in a crowded market. Ultimately it’s crucial to speak from the heart of the brand.

The future is out there….