Is it time to regulate AI usage?

In late 2022 and early 2023, when AI, specifically generative AI, was just settling in the hands and presence of African users, many had mixed thoughts and reasons about whether to adopt it or not. The young marveled at the thought of utilizing Gen AI to ease their work and accomplish assignments as quickly as possible. The older were slowly dragging behind in adoption as they were probably running around asking their young counterparts what the importance of AI is and why everyone was ranting about it. Companies, on the other hand, found AI as a tool to easily cut off some budgets and probably lay off a few 'lazy' employees as a shortcut to generating images and market ad copies. Even the CEO of a company himself could marvel at how quickly he can generate an image, caption it, and publish it. Then, at the end of the thought, he starts questioning if he needs the graphics design guy, and if he is quite convinced enough, the graphics guy is told to take a compulsory leave, which eventually turns out to be a polite way of showing them the door. Painful right?

Recently, as you drive or walk on major highways, you can easily spot billboard ads done with the help of AI, especially those with images of human elements. Safaricom did it and now Supaloaf has also done it here, as seen in the pictures attached. When you keenly look at the first picture and the second picture pasted on the billboard, do you realize something? Of course, you do, and your instincts are just right. To make it easy for the slow learners to catch up with the rest, the first image you see was earlier generated by a random user and has been circulating on the internet for quite a while now. The Supaloaf Bread marketing team was simply wowed by the image and its conformity with their product placement. They copied and pasted the image directly without making any alterations. They simply made the young, beautiful girl hold the bread, and the rest was just copied, pasted, merged, and done! Well, legal-minded people will ask, is this more of a violation of intellectual property or copyright infringement? The reason is that since the image has been so trendy, it was created by someone else, and since there are no regulations or rules on using AI products in this country, anyone can simply steal and use other people's creatives for their own benefit. And I am damn sure no court in Kenya will waste the time of a 5-bench judge to lament to them that so and so has stolen your generated AI image and used it, so until then or until regulations are birthed, any company or person goes scot-free. And in this case, Supaloaf is just right to use this image at this point( before you judge, I am a big fan of Supaloaf bread, by the way).

With that said, here's where the main issue is: still referring to this bread ad. Creativity and originality are worth considering when it comes to marketing a product for any company. As a creative, AI is simply a tool to enhance your creative thoughts and expressions. The moment your audience or customers detect some sort of plagiarism or lack of authenticity, you will slowly and gradually lose touch with them. As Seth Godin in his book This is Marketing puts it, marketing should be about the customer, not about you as a business. The language, imagery, and expressions to use in marketing are for them, not yours.

Whenever you use such AI-generated images for marketing purposes, you communicate to your customers that you are too lazy to use a real human element to resonate with them; you are also telling them that you are stingy enough not to hire a human brand influencer who an audience can resonate with, and lastly, you are telling them you are too lazy to be authentic and think outside the box.

As I conclude, I simply want to urge anyone reading this or using AI that AI is simply a tool you can use to enhance your talent and skills, and when you use it, be very considerate of the effect or feedback you get from your audience. Humans are easily triggered by such effects. If they notice non-authenticity in your work, they lose interest, and you lose them forever, and it will cost you six times to win them back. I know many people who use AI, including myself, to do almost everything, but it's so hard to detect sometimes because they creatively use AI as a small footbridge to cross over the road and continue walking on their own to their destination. Be wise. Use AI wisely and carefully. And yes, A.I is here to stay.

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