Using AI to supercharge creativity & connection

AI. It’s one of the key buzzwords of the moment, jostling for top position amongst contenders like attention and OOH – and for good reason. Like the development of the internet, programmatic advertising and algorithmic tools for media buying, it’s the next step in the evolution of the digital landscape. 

To get the most of artificial intelligence, we need to explore the fine line between using AI to enhance campaigns, while making sure the human touch is still at the core of advertising. What limits does it have and where should the balance be struck between human ingenuity and machine learning?

Essentially, AI is a tool. With ever-developing capabilities and iterations, the impact it has on possibilities for personalised content and creative ideation are almost limitless. Rather than starting with a blank page, it can jump-start the creative process and help us bring campaigns to life quicker and more efficiently.

However, as with any developing tool, it’s not 100% perfect. Connection is at the heart of advertising, with many of the most memorable adverts – such as John Lewis’s yearly Christmas offerings – centred around telling an emotive story. It’s our own distinctly human traits that allow us to create this kind of messaging, resonating with audiences on a deeper, more personal level.

While AI is an amazing tool, but it’s not human. It lacks the creative spark, fuelled by our unique experiences, emotions, and the imagination that we inherently have. It doesn’t have traits like empathy, creativity and nuance. Everything it creates comes from learning from humans.

Take creativity. Broadly speaking, creativity is the ability to generate new ideas or concepts that are original. It requires the use of imagination and divergent thinking to come up with ideas or solutions that aren’t necessarily conventional or obvious. AI is limited by its programming and the data it’s been trained on. It’s not capable of original thought or creativity in the same way as humans, meaning it can’t create something wholly new in the same way as we can. It’s always going to take the most logical route, whereas humans don’t always stick to logic – nor should they.

While it can understand and explain certain traits and emotions, without having its own personal biases or emotions, it can’t be affected by them in the same way that humans can. As it stands, AI can’t replicate the emotional connection that comes from understanding the human experience, and likely will never be able to.

This means that human creativity and oversight has a key role in refining and complimenting the work of AI. At Vyde, we’ve been researching how we can use it to forge deeper connections with audiences and spark engagement with consumers – or, on a simpler level, speed up the process of designing our Conversational Creatives.

Getting creative approval can be a lengthy process – maybe the client hasn’t sent enough assets, maybe they’re unusable, or maybe the brand copy is jargon-heavy and won’t translate well into ad copy. AI like ChatGPT can help us distill technical information into easily digestible content for consumers, while art generators like DALLE can design or enhance image or video assets based on text prompts. AI can even suggest creative changes tailored to the specific needs and preferences of certain audience segments.

We’ve been developing an AI decision-tree maker that takes data from our platform and uses it to build flows for personalised conversational creatives. Its ability to process and analyse vast amounts of data makes it invaluable for delivering more relevant and engaging content – and it’s only the beginning. In the future, this will be key to powering elements like intelligent optimisation and personalisation at scale – for example, automating A/B testing by identifying the most effective creatives, and adjusting campaigns in real-time.

AI is here to stay, and we think it’s crucial to embrace this new technology and discover the possibilities it opens up. The more we understand exactly how to use AI, and define where human oversight is needed to refine and complement it, the more we can drive increasingly effective campaigns and foster more authentic connections with audiences.

As long as it’s used in a way that compliments our inherent, very human strengths, we’ll be able to harness its true potential as a powerful tool for enhancing our creativity and taking innovation to the next level.