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Recruiters are calling Austin Anglin, an art director at the independent Atlanta agency 22Squared. They aren’t interested in interviewing him. Instead, they want to reach an art director named Alex Irving.
The caveat? Irving isn’t human. They’re the pseudonym behind the AI-produced creative portfolio Anglin created with his co-worker, 22Squared senior copywriter Emma Murf.
Using ChatGPT and Midjourney AI tools, the creatives dreamed up Irving (who they’ve deemed the first AI art director), built a portfolio for the digital entity and applied to real job listings using AI-generated work. The experiment helped answer a question that troubled them: Can AI replace take their jobs?
Can AI replace creatives?
Anglin, who works across agency accounts like Toyota, had been using online AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney to determine how 22Squared could use them advantageously. As Murf conducted her own research in tandem, eventually, the co-workers learned of their mutual interest in the technology.
They traded notes, noticing a surplus of ominous online content insinuating that AI might soon, or could eventually, replace creatives.
“We really kept finding a lot of articles about how it’ll replace everything…There were quite a few about creatives, especially copywriters, as well as art directors. You know—the jobs we do every day,” Anglin told Adweek.
Creating Alex Irving
That’s when Murf and Anglin decided to conduct an experiment, and asked ChatGPT’s AI tool to develop a creative profile for a fictionalized art director.
“We basically aggregated the power of several AI software to create what we have deemed the world’s first AI art director. Their name is Alex Irving–AI,” Murf said. The duo asked the AI to create a portfolio featuring six different projects, which it completed, guided by Murf and Anglin’s promptings, in just three days’ time.
To gauge if the AI-generated portfolio was impressive enough to score Irving interviews for real jobs, the creatives used it to apply to open postings.
“We think of it almost like a CAPTCHA test for the advertising industry. Like, can you spot that fingerprint of artificial creativity?” Murf said. Some recruiters couldn’t, with Irving’s portfolio garnering their interest.
