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The 2023 edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity may be remembered as the “disconnect show.” There’s the beer brand whose inclusive, award-winning marketing campaign prompted a devastating boycott. There’s the technology sector, whose pull-back on marketing spend and headcount is being cheered by Wall Street. But the biggest disconnect at Cannes is playing out mostly in between sessions—the one that pits human creators against AI.
The rise of ChatGPT, Midjourney and other AI platforms are forcing a reckoning in creative industries, and for good reason. They do a lot, and a lot of what they do can be construed by the undiscerning eye as “creative work.” But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we need to acknowledge that creativity has been hurting for a long time. Having judged past editions of the Cannes Lions, I’ve seen my share of remarkable, inspiring work. But I’ve also seen an industry struggling to innovate. Best practices are accepted without question, and few are brave enough to pioneer new ones. Instead we resign ourselves to apply the brand playbook to the deliverable and collect our check. Where did the wild, experimental thinking that drew us to this work go? Is that even the right question?
Rather than get depressed, I’ve simply moved on, both in my practice and in how I lead my team. And the thing that’s liberated us—that saves us from dwelling in the past, applying the same tired approaches to profound new challenges—is the same thing that got Cannes so worked up: AI.
Generative AI is prompting a lot of fear—both for designers’ livelihoods and brands’ IP. But again, let’s be honest with ourselves: If we feed prompts into ChatGPT, does it give us a new product idea? If we do the same in Midjourney, do we get a new brand identity? AI makes me hopeful, not fearful, because it doesn’t give me the answer. It does, however, help me and my team arrive faster at provocations we can then interrogate and explore to get at our answer—it frees our minds to do the real creative work. AI is the breakthrough of our time, if not of all time, and we’d be bad partners if we deprived clients of its promise.