Adland, in an AI future, will see demand for strategists as AI replaces lower administration jobs, according to local agency CEOs of global groups speaking on stage at AdNews Sydney L!VE.
Despite holdcos currently building proprietary AI systems, the tech relatively does the same thing in automating repetitive and admin-based tasks.
According to Forrester principal analyst Xiaofeng Wang, the more a job requires originality, the less likely it will be replaced.
So the real value of agencies, the human brains behind the technology, will continue to drive the success of an agency.
AI allows for better efficiencies on strategy and human thinking, GroupM ANZ CEO Aimee Buchanan said.
"I think we're going to be in a war for strategic talent, good communicators and good relationship builders," GroupM ANZ CEO Aimee Buchanan said.
"And we need to be ready for that because we haven't [previously] trained that way - we've trained on how to work machine, to buy, to plan and we're going to have to shift that.
"At the mass level clients are not saying they want 20% off, they want 20% better - so I'm hopeful that the super tools as our co-pilots will bring that."
But where will juniors fit into this future?
"The kids graduating from college are learning to be adaptive thinkers," UM CEO Anathea Ruys said.
"Our junior staff are going to come in with incredible abilities to respond and embrace the way we use AI in different technology in a way that maybe some of us have been fighting a little harder because it's all brand new."
With any luck, the first 10 years that juniors waste on menial task will just disappear in the industry, Publicis Groupe ANZ chief creative officer Dave Bowman said.
"And suddenly we'll have a whole kind of different brainpower jumping in contributing to work, rather than waiting until they're sort of in the middle of their careers to contribute," Bowman said.
"As a [advertising] business which charges a premium for very smart people who can find magical ways to help businesses drastically improve that's not going to change."
In fact these raft of tools will allow for faster solutions.
WPP and Publicis are committing almost $500 million (AUD) each on AI investments, IPG is spending around $100M and Omnicom won't put a number to its investment but locally it is in the 10s of millions.
However the industry still has a long way to go in interrogating AI deeper with proper human oversight, OMG ANZ CEO Peter Horgan said. Hallucinations were among the issues cited by the panel.
"People are not used to questioning the machines, but now we have to," Horgan said.
"On first glance AI gives quite vanilla answers, so you need the human to interrogate those outputs."
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