artificial intelligence Getting real about

AI has reached an inflexion point and is set to transform every industry — advertising included. Liz Unamo, editor of Hispanic and media advertising at PRODU considers the technology’s impact on the US Hispanic market and how multicultural agencies are rising to the challenge

THE USE of AI within advertising agencies is increasingly common thanks to its ability to provide innovative solutions to many daily tasks. Though it lacks any road run as yet, its arrival means that agencies must be more transparent, responsible and accountable regarding the work they create with the help of this technology. Will agencies really use ChatGPT? Is this ingenious new tool just another gimmick or something that will genuinely benefit agencies and clients? What is the strategic problem of responsible advertising in the era of ChatGPT? Some of these questions were first asked of creatives in multicultural agencies in the US. The technology allows the current focus to become more inclusive, since AI doesn’t attempt to codify the rules, but rather allows computers to discover them on their own through the correlation and classification of an enormous amount of data. There is no currency more valuable in this millennium than the data of giant organisations that is freely available on the internet. It’s a fact that multicultural agencies travel the creative road with AI. So how do the likes of We Believers, Casanova//McCann, Founders, Conill, BeautifulBeast, LERMA/, d expósito & Partners, Zubi and Samy Alliance use this tool? And how do they see AI’s ethical implications in today’s world?

Gustavo Lauria, co-founder and chief creative officer of independent agency We Believers, says the technology is there to strengthen his creative team but never to replace it. “Good creatives will always have a place,” he insists, “particularly those who focus on ideas that affect individuals, our society in general and the environment, and who get people talking.”

Louis Maldonado, partner and managing director of d exposito & Partners, agrees with Lauria about the value that agencies contribute — and what keeps their work from being mere sales pitches — in terms of ground-breaking ideas based on brilliant strategies. “Chatbots and other AI tools can help us in that process, but they are not capable of original thought — at least, not yet,” Maldonado says. “We still need to be creative and develop the ideas that connect and move real people, who respond not only to reason, but to emotional triggers and cultural stimuli.”

Casanova//McCann has experimented with AI on a number of daily tasks and is beginning to define the best use of these resources for its specific needs. “ChatGPT has the incredible power of gathering and condensing very focused and targeted information in seconds from existing data,” says Elias Weinstock, executive vice-president and chief creative officer of Casanova//McCann. “But it lacks human analysis, emotion and the capacity to make unexpected connections that generate new and powerful ideas. But again, as a tool, I believe it will play a big role in agencies and brands alike.” The technology is not a threat, but whether its integration will be accepted depends on the way people react to it. Founders co-founders Checha Agost Carreño, chief creative officer, and Tanya De Poli, chief operating officer, reflect on why a total integration of AI has not yet happened within the industry: “We definitely don’t see it as a gimmick like we considered the Metaverse to be. AI language models have very specific and tangible uses in our industry — data analysis, copywriting, market research and automation, for example. And the best part is that it is an accessible technology and easy to use. This, and the fact that AI can help us improve our efficiency in many everyday tasks, makes it much easier for our industry to embrace it.” Aldo Quevedo, CEO and creative chairman of BeautifulBeast, quotes Thanos, the villain of Avengers: Infinity War, who famously said: “I’m inevitable”. Quevedo believes the use of ChatGPT is equally inevitable: “The possibilities are limitless and we have only just begun exploring its potential.” Meanwhile, Flor Leibaschoff, chief creative officer of BeautifulBeast, believes that, as research digs deeper into the capabilities and limitations of AI, the industry will begin to produce truly extraordinary work. “The use of AI has gained widespread acceptance due to its ability to offer unique and innovative solutions to daily tasks in agencies across the board,” she adds. But agencies must ensure that their use of AI aligns with their brand values and ethical guidelines. There’s also the issue of transparency. In some cases, consumers may need to be informed when they are interacting with AI rather than a human. The use of AI in advertising can be a great asset — but it also introduces new challenges and responsibilities that agencies will need to navigate carefully.

“One of the challenges is the lack of regulation and the potential for unethical usage. It’s crucial for us, as humans, to maintain control and management of AI-generated content. We must set guidelines and standards to ensure responsible and transparent practices,” says Veronica Elizondo, chief creative officer at Conill. Taking a similar line, Francisco Cardenas, principal of digital strategy and integration at LERMA/, identifies two crucial points about the use of ChatGPT. The first is that the sources of some of the answers offered by the chatbot are still not 100% clear. This could represent a problem for agencies, which could find themselves infringing copyright. The second point is that the more ChatGPT is used and, as a result, the more it is published on an ever greater number of websites, the more it is likely to be used as a source of future reporting. But if those websites are not regulated, they may contribute faulty information to the chatbot, which will then be spread among other users, thus creating a toxic cycle. “My opinion is that we must keep experimenting, but responsibly,” Cardenas adds.

For Hernán Cerdeiro, Samy Alliance’s chief creative officer, Americas, advertising has a responsibility to come up with powerful, effective messages about how ChatGPT and AI can be adapted to make work processes more efficient and effective. “Our responsibility is to understand how to utilise AI to evolve our profession, but always putting human talent ahead of any technology,” he says.

Iván Calle, vice-president executive creative director at Zubi, delegates ethical responsibility for AI to individual agencies. “Part of creative culture has constantly been disregarding ideas that are done. Yes, some people violate that code, but there is a code. ChatGPT does not have intuition, the ability to collaborate, the capacity to improvise or evaluate human emotions or consider how a specific group feels about a brand or have any understanding of a particular individual’s past experiences. Culture and physiology are some of the elements that are still very human.” For advertising, all this means that agencies must be more transparent, and more responsible and accountable than ever for the work they create using this technology.