Should Advertising Be Fearful of AI?

Artificial intelligence has begun to revolutionise advertising. From Coca Cola’s latest Christmas advert to Heinz’s recent social-media campaign, endless brands, both large and small, have made use of AI’s mechanical generosity. However, after the luxuries of having less work to do and needing to spend less fade, a payment is expected: human minds risk wasting away.

Merely a few months ago, the household-brand Heinz entrusted AI to develop bespoke imagery for an innovative ad campaign. Providing a generative AI model with the simple prompt to “draw ketchup”, dozens of images were quickly produced that captured the product’s essence. From signature brand colours, its keystone label, to retro illustrations that emphasised the condiment’s enduring appeal, its audience was awe-struck by AI’s spot-on depiction, despite having never tasted ketchup in its artificial lifetime.

Last Christmas, Coca-Cola also handed the creative reins to AI, tasking it with generating a series of festive ads. The outcome? A remarkably convincing advert that many viewers mistook for being real. It even earned 5.9 out of 6 in testing and was praised for its “exceptional” short-term sales potential. This piece of artificial work may have lacked the nostalgic warmth of the brand’s iconic 1995 campaign, but for Coca-Cola’s marketing department, it felt like a Christmas miracle of its own. Given Coca Cola spent more than five billion dollars on advertising in 2023, the lure of AI’s cost-cutting efficiency might be hard to resist in the years ahead.

Also indicating that this shift is permanent are Coca Cola’s recent collaboration with Adobe, named “Project Fizzion”, which it described earlier this year as a “groundbreaking design intelligence system”. In its initial press release, Fizzion was unveiled as enabling “creative teams to produce content up to 10 times faster without compromising quality, integrity, or originality”. While highly impressive, it is understandable to worry about its potential impact on creative headcounts. The full effects may not be obvious yet; we may simply observe roles no longer being backfilled when members of staff leave, internships no longer opening, and entry points into the industry gradually vanishing.

However, outside of Coca-Cola’s swanky headquarters, the consequences are far more apparent. Across the world, job listings are rapidly shrinking, with 92 million roles predicted to be displaced by AI by 2030. These aren’t abstract numbers: many of us already know contacts in the advertising world whose role has been automated, merged, or downgraded because of new AI technology.

Yet the picture isn’t entirely bleak. It is a widely shared view among economists that while AI will destroy jobs, it will also create them. A recent World Economic Forum survey of more than 1,000 large firms argued that AI could generate over 170 million new roles within the next five years – more than offsetting the losses. Nevertheless, this “creative destruction” masks an uncomfortable truth: the new opportunities will not necessarily appear in the same industries, countries, or pay brackets as the ones lost.

The roles most at risk in advertising – such as junior copywriters and routine graphic designers – tend to be entry-level positions that provide essential support to creative teams. By contrast, the opportunities that AI is creating often require highly technical skills such as AI campaign management, data analytics, or prompt engineering. This raises a question of accessibility: how many displaced advertising professionals will realistically retrain to compete for these new roles, and how many will be left behind as the industry evolves?

Another, and perhaps darker, observation is that our reliance on AI is beginning to harm not just our work, but our minds, and even our relationships with other people. A student with an essay to write knows they could have it edited to near perfection in under a minute. Countless young people facing complex social issues are quietly turning to AI for advice, when those conversations belong with parents, friends, or mentors. Additionally, in the workplace, hesitant employees often feel compelled to compromise on their creativity simply to keep pace with their AI-embracing peers.

Intelligence works like a muscle. Some people are naturally stronger while others need more practice, but in all cases, if it isn’t exercised, it wastes away. The result is not a more efficient human, but a diminished one: a person left as a shell of their true potential, with little to offer once the Wi-Fi cuts out. Of course, we regularly see how helpless a community, a company, or even an entire country can become the moment it experiences a power outage. In a society where almost everything is becoming digitised, perhaps our greatest act of resistance is to protect the capability of our minds.

Every era, no matter how dominant, eventually reaches its end. History moves in tides: empires rise and collapse, ideologies sweep across nations only to be cast aside, and technologies once hailed as unstoppable often meet resistance, or regulation. The Atomic Age brought both awe and terror before treaties and safeguards tempered its reach. The excesses of the Gilded Age gave way to reform. Even television, once thought to herald the death of books and cinema, eventually enjoyed a harmonious balance within the wider media ecosystem.

Artificial intelligence may meet a similar end. If its impact proves corrosive – eroding creativity, livelihoods, or trust in human originality – then there is every chance that our scared society will demand a correction. Consumers may come to prize authentic campaigns over automated ones. Or, perhaps, efficiency and scale will prove too tempting, and authenticity will be reduced to a luxury product for a discerning few.

For now, one thing is clear: the end of this societal chapter will be shaped not by tools but by how we use them.