Isobell Roberts.
If you haven’t experienced the growing pains of Generative AI’s rapid evolution over the past year, consider yourself lucky. A major issue for marketing and creative communities of course, is the homogenisation of content as Gen AI continues to take precedence. The risk of a ‘wind-tunnel effect’ occurring as brands push toward Gen AI platforms that facilitate faster, cheaper creative is a serious and valid concern. But not all Gen AI tools are created equal, and whether we find ourselves in the middle of a content wasteland in the next few years depends on making the right decisions now.
That’s where an opportunity for creatives comes in: right now, rather than pull back, lean in to the right Gen AI platforms. Help guide their clients toward the tools that focus on efficacy over efficiency – those that will enable you to deliver your best creative work – and help shape a future where distinctive work is supercharged, not run off the tracks.
When multiple Gen AI platforms rely on similar datasets, prompt structures and generic models, the result is content that lacks distinctiveness. When all Gen AI platforms are the same, then the creative landscape becomes predictable, with brands losing their ability to stand out.
This wind tunnel effect isn’t just a limitation of the technology, it’s a symptom of a flawed approach to Gen AI. Many off-the-shelf platforms shout about efficiency and low costs, but they in-turn sacrifice creativity and strategic relevance. It’s these platforms that are driving brands towards mediocrity when differentiation has never been more critical.
Let’s be clear: Gen AI is not a "one-size-fits-all" tool. Brands that want to stay relevant need a considered approach to Gen AI, an approach that understands that the quality of input defines the quality of output. This isn’t some philosophical notion. This is the hard truth of how Gen AI works. It’s also the tried-and-true tagline of Nutri-Grain cereal: you only get out what you put in. If you feed a Gen AI platform with broad, non-specific data, it will produce the same recycled ideas over and over again.
Choosing the wrong Gen AI platform – one that values speed and cost over creativity and substance – is a fast track to becoming just another brand lost in the noise.
Instead, brands and marketers need to be cognisant of the fact that Gen AI is a tool for augmentation, not automation. Rather than steamrolling over the work currently done by creative agencies, the best platforms are those that play a heightened strategic role, crunching the numbers to provide a modernised brief.
The real magic happens when Gen AI is trained using a customised, proprietary content store that’s unique to a brand. This is a curated database of brand-specific data that enhances the quality, relevance, and strategic alignment of the AI’s outputs. When you refine the inputs to brand assets, creative briefs, and past performance data; you can generate diverse, strategically aligned outputs that cut through the clutter and help inform more effective creative work that remains distinctive to the brand.
Once creatives realise this, leaning in and encouraging clients to use platforms that will better inform and help scale effective creative work like never before, we will ensure a win-win scenario for everyone involved, steering us away from a future where the wind-tunnel effect exists and clients turn away from creatives in favour of quick and dirty output.
This isn’t an evangelist love letter to Gen AI. As advanced as it is, it still falls short of matching the depth and nuance of human creativity. What a lot of people in this industry won’t admit is that yes, there is AI out there that will take your job. The even greater tragedy of which is it that over the long term, that particular AI will also do a worse job of it. Gen AI can’t replicate the emotional intelligence and lived experiences that define great creative work. It cannot give you a Cadbury gorilla (for instance).
But there are platforms that genuinely enhance creativity by better equipping creatives to do their best work with even better briefs. There are platforms that will help you create more Cadbury gorillas. This Gen AI is definitively not coming for your job. This Gen AI, when used properly, can bridge the gap between insight and execution, allowing creatives to focus on the big ideas that matter most. But as we stand at this fork in the road, it’s critical all sectors of our field educate themselves on the difference between Gen AI-enabled creative platforms now and encourage those around them to make smarter choices in favour of efficacy versus efficiency.
If you’re using a Gen AI platform that runs on a content store-trained, multi-model approach, you’re ahead of the game. A multi-modal approach is one that leverages multiple LLM’s in “symphony” to reduce the risk of repetitive, homogenised outputs.
Only by establishing a proprietary content store and allowing it to evolve over time with new data and insights will you be best placed to keep the platform fresh and adaptive.
The future of Gen AI in marketing depends on brands adopting platforms that do more than spit out fast, cookie-cutter content. Agencies need to encourage clients to work with platforms that integrate human insight and data-driven precision to create something truly original and impactful. The wind-tunnel effect is avoidable, but only if businesses adopt the right tools and make the right decisions. Focus on what matters: thoughtful inputs, human oversight, and Gen AI that works for you—not the other way around.
Isobell Roberts, Founder & Chief AI Creative Officer – BrandComms.AI, Forethought