What if AI didn’t really democratise creativity, as in generative AI didn’t make machines more creative, but allowed humans to spend more time being, well, creative? And how exactly? My conversation with Adobe’s JAPAC AI Evangelist, Rochelle Tognetti, revolved around this premise.
With a parallel interest in neuroscience, Tognetti joined Adobe after 27 years in marketing, most recently as Chief Marketing Officer for Deloitte Australia. She’s not interested in “how many seconds did AI save” as much as what those saved seconds allow the human brain to do.
“I think there’s a really interesting opportunity for productivity and creativity to sit together,” Rochelle says. “And what I mean by that is where creative teams can use AI to remove some of that administrative burden for their teams. To remove some of those points of friction that actually are distracting from their ability to think creatively.”
If you look at how modern creative work actually happens, Tognetti’s advice doesn’t sound far-fetched.
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Looking at our own newsroom, no single writer spends eight hours uninterrupted simply writing their copies, nor does a designer spend time designing creatively non-stop. Think social media managers, editors, brand teams, creators, filmmakers, or people from any profession, everyone has to spend time doing non-creative work. From administrative tasks, emails, chasing approvals, to interpreting data and analytics, and my personal pet peeve – attending endless meetings. All of this needs to take care of before anyone’s actual work can begin.
“Spending your valuable thinking on actually running processes, which has become such a big part of modern marketing and creativity. And I think there’s this incredible opportunity for AI to take some of that cognitive load and actually empower everybody to have some more time to think,” emphasizes Tognetti.
For example, automating 10% of someone’s workload in an organisation is expected to deliver 10% more output with the help of AI. But Tognetti believes that reclaimed time will allow creative people to think about higher-value creative pursuits that helps organisations with more strategic output, not merely gauged in terms of daily work efficiency.
“I see a pathway in the future where AI is giving more weight to greater, more strategic creativity,” Tognetti says. “I think there’s an incredible opportunity for creative leaders and marketing leaders to bring foresight, to combine their craft and their many decades of experience, so their skill, their experience with their deep knowledge of customer and customer experience, and actually start to bring foresight to the organisation and start to impact strategy.”
Tognetti’s reasoning for this trend is logical, if you think about it. If production becomes easier due to AI making processes more efficient, creative judgement becomes more valuable. If AI reduces the cost of execution, then knowing what to execute becomes the key judgement.
And when everyone can match you with competent looking copies, artworks, and videos, at lesser cost and faster speed, then the ability to make something worth noticing becomes key for creative pursuits, Tognetti suggests.
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But she’s also blunt about the danger. “What we have to be aware of and conscious of is the AI slop. We need to make sure that we are bringing in that creativity into the way that we advertise and we express our brand in really recognisable, engaging ways.”
Tognetti also warns organisations about how they’re deploying AI today. The mistake, she says, is treating AI as a shiny layer placed over existing workflows.
“What I see that goes wrong consistently and what people can take from it is trying to put AI on outdated processes. So taking existing processes and then putting AI just in.”
When I ask Tognetti if AI might change the nature of creativity itself, in how it originates from early thoughts and concepts, she gives an interesting response. She argues that our intrinsic human traits will ensure creativity remains unchanged by AI fundamentally.
“I think it is wired into us and I don’t see that going away. I see AI might change the mediums. AI can also be a good sparring partner for interesting and creative ideas,” Tognetti believes. Our attraction to novelty, unexpected spontaneity, art and emotional connection is too deeply wired in our psyche to disappear.
Like Tognetti and Adobe reiterates, AI’s full potential is wasted if it’s only limited to make creative people produce more. AI’s true opportunity is to make creative people matter more than ever before.