Why AI needs Creativity – and Creativity needs AI

It’s all too easy to get into a binary debate about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Creativity: are AI’s capable of creativity? Will they ever be as creative as human beings? Yes or no?

The reality is far more nuanced. AIs can and should have an intimate relationship to human creativity. They can and should contribute to it, and they can and should be used creatively. I would argue that building a productive relationship between human creativity and AI is essential for the future of AI itself – and it’s also essential for the future of creativity. We have to look at these two things working together, in a symbiotic way, rather than sitting in opposition.

At a time of advancing automation, Creativity remains the essential differentiator – of greater value than at any other point in human history. As Wunderman’s Chief Creative Officer Daniel Bonner puts it, “Creativity is the ability to have an entirely original thought, and as such, it provides any business with the opportunity to have a competitive advantage.” When we increase the potential of more people to be creative, we create greater equality of opportunity. And AI can help with that. However, when we reduce creativity down to a standard, homogenised form, we take away that opportunity to differentiate yourself or your business. We have to ensure that’s not what happens.

Creativity has to stay abreast of all the relevant insights and inputs if it’s to come up with original ideas that are also relevant ideas. Because it’s now intrinsically linked to competitiveness, it has to be ready to evolve quickly – because that’s how competition works. And that rapid evolution will inevitably involve AI. If you insist on being creative without any interaction with insights and ideas produced by algorithms, you’ll be leaving yourself at a serious competitive disadvantage. No true creative wants less insight and inspiration available to them.

The game will move on quickly as AI standardises certain creative processes and even basic levels of creative thinking. However, by an almost mathematical rule, every time basic creativity becomes automated and easier, it brings the opportunity for higher-level creative thinking within reach. As our inputs become more creatively advanced, we should aspire to more creative outputs off the back of them.

We’ve got to remember to do this, though. As creative-minded marketers, we have to remember not to settle for the perfectly respectable, data-optimised creative solutions that an AI is likely to come up with. We have to commit to using those ideas as a starting point for our human creative process and taking them in further, more unexpected and original directions; directions that are informed by human imagination and human empathy that machines don’t have access to.

We also have to be creative in the way we conceive of using AIs themselves – the questions we dream up for them to answer, and the sources of insight we imagine can help to come up with those answers. If AI isn’t creative, it won’t really be Artificial Intelligence – it will just be artificial execution.