Ad Agency holding company announces big AI Investment. Where is all this going?
AI is the talk of every business. “If I had a dime for every time I've heard the term AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos, then I’d be very rich indeed,” wrote Sprina Srivastava last week in Business Insider.
In our world, marketing and advertising, 75% of industry people currently use AI. And, no surprise, so do we. SMA NYC is a full-service agency serving mostly B2B clients. In media planning and buying, our comparatively small group manages enormous complexity, achieves fantastic precision in audience targeting, and delivers cost-efficiencies for our clients that can rival any agency.
Our use of AI in creative development is, like all agencies, in the Pilot/Co-pilot mode. Our humans control the process and creative ideation, while the AI Co-pilot delivers an endless stream of suggestions, corrections, and options in copywriting and art direction.
In these ways, AI is already a great equalizer for smaller agencies. AI technology allows SMA to manage scale to match agency giants, while sticking to our core value of providing actively engaged people who are piloting our relationships and managing a wide variety of marketing products.
So far so good, right? But where is all this going?
We were struck by the news that Publicis (the French agency holding colossus) plans to invest $300 million euros over three years to build their AI capability, named CoreAI. Other big advertising, marketing, and media organizations are expected to answer with their own aggressive initiatives.
A Publicis spokesperson introduced CoreAI with soothing chords. “Our strategy is about supercharging people, and not about cutting people. AI will be a mega tool for talented creative staffers,” he said.
He seems to be saying the Pilot/Co-pilot relationship will remain intact. But let’s think about that.
Connor Leahy, CEO of the AI safety company Conjecture, asks this question in a recent TIME interview: “If you make something that's smarter than humans, better at politics, science, manipulation, better at business, and you don't know how to control it – which we don't – and you mass produce it, what do you think happens?”
Mr. Leahy asks this rhetorical question to raise the possibility of an existential threat to humanity. His business is to wrestle with over-arching issues like this. Our business is advertising. So, we ask:
Who is thinking through the unintended consequences of unleashing an exponentially higher order of super-charged persuasion-power into the marketing ecosystem?
Did we learn anything from the rapid rise of social media, the marketing darling of the new millennium? Social media took off with a bang, and continues to be a massive business driver, but it is now blamed for social ills ranging from epidemic teen depression and isolation to unchecked distribution of polarizing misinformation that divides people politically and, yes, socially.
A more immediate question: does AI pose an existential threat to the livelihoods of people who comprise the advertising business? Is it reasonable to think that Pilot/Co-pilot relationship in marketing (with humans in control) will survive for decades to come?
The Writer’s Guild of America strike settlement from last summer is relevant. The new contract settlement includes terms that protect writers from invasive use of artificial intelligence in development of movies and television content. It states specifically that humans must remain the creative Pilots that drive ideation and the writing process. And the new contract impedes any effort by management to reduce the role of the writer to subordinate to AI. These guys see the coming tidal wave.
Thinking about the big financial investments that the big marketing agency holding companies are making in artificial intelligence raises a lot questions – both ethical and practical.
Among them: Should the livelihoods of advertising and marketing people be protected? By enforceable regulation? How? And by whom?
Most likely, the industry will let the evolution of business technology find its own place and let the ensuing displacement of people take the natural path that falls out of it. People in favor of this argument are quick to mention that extinct toll-takers, butter-churners, and magazine executives all pivoted to new occupations after they had their gigs swept away by technology. This has been the fortunate outcome of past disruptions – and it always comes with some growing pains.
It is difficult to imagine all the amazing marketing opportunities this new generation of AI technology will offer, and it is also nearly impossible to predict all the challenges. Let’s embrace both the joy of finding new possibilities and the awesome responsibility that comes with it.
