Agencies and AI: A look back at SXSW 2023
With SXSW 2024 almost upon us, Reece Ryan, executive creative director at Hardhat, looks back to last year's festival to understand how AI felt then, versus now. Have we made peace with the machine or is the machine about to eat us agency-folk alive?
March 2023 felt like we were standing on the precipice of wholesale AI change – the fear of the unknown was palpable. And rightly so. I have likened it to watching my first episode of Black Mirror with a room full of futurists screaming, this is legit! It was a psychedelic Web3.0 Metaverse rabbit hole that engulfed me.
From an attendee standpoint, I can quantify my experience in 2 parts:
Part 1 – Existential crisis
Like stumbling into a Skynet AR prequel planning session – I watched as the world’s top AI innovators and disruptors debated, interrogated and plotted what an optimistic versus a catastrophic future world may look like with AI at the helm. The president and co-founder of OpenAI, Greg Brockman reminded us all of our collective responsibility to help build AI that benefits the whole of humanity.
I could not escape the ethical influence and potential bias of these humans at the helm. It was all very scary but somewhat intangible until, of course, they inevitably turned their laser pointers on us, agency kind: graphic designers losing their jobs, content creators fading into non-existence and copywriters becoming obsolete in favour of the machine. Pretty heavy stuff.
Part 2 – We all score an assistant
The likes of AGI quickly took centre stage as I went in search of thought provoking use cases that could be applied for creative good. I discovered helpful, fun, predictive and automated AI things that could shortcut the mundane and reduce the complexity. Lean in or lose out because there is no stopping this freight train. My key takeout for every creative: Learn to write better prompts.
So where are we today and how is our AI intern getting on?
In a living demonstration of technological evolution speeding up exponentially, 12 months on, AI has quickly and seamlessly integrated itself into almost every part of our creative process. A bit like learning photoshop for the first time, we have supported each other, learning to fail faster and harness the power of the tools around us. Much like turning to your partner to build on a creative idea, AI has become an assistant for many everyday tasks. Clumsy as I may be, the one thing I know to be true – human creativity ultimately informs the outcome.
As creatives, we spend our careers honing our skills in directing, presenting, curating and crafting ideas that can be instantly understood by a room full of left-brains. Yet still, so many of our brilliant ideas sit on the canvas. Deemed too time-consuming, fanciful and expensive to execute, whether that’s due to the processes, the tools, or our technical abilities. It is especially true in a pitch scenario, where you just don’t have the funds to spend a few days photo composing a shit idea.
AI today is affording us efficiencies and opportunities I never could have predicted. A shortcut to manifesting those weird and wonderful thoughts and stress-testing our bad ideas early and a little less dirty than before. From synthesising notes, to automating layouts, the likes of Notion, Chat GPT, Midjourney, Adobe Firefly and Shutterstock are a part of every designer and creative’s arsenal.
Turns out that the same descriptive, emotional language that you need to hone and finesse as a Creative Director can be directly applied here – sort of. Creative prompt writing has become another (sometimes infuriating) art form that can genuinely help to surface a concept. Of course though, creative impetus is everything – don’t think for a second that we can’t sniff out your superfluous adjective riddled robot copy from a mile away. User beware: If it looks overly airbrushed, if it feels unnaturally styled, if it has 6 fingers, if your CV lacks anything that is genuinely human – you will be called out.
Keynote speakers at SXSW ‘23 predicted that designers who are technically proficient in using tools and software but not inherently creative may fall by the wayside, but creative thinkers won’t. That’s why I’m encouraging our team to lean in. Consider it your assistant – whether you’re writing text for user interface design, trying to conquer the blank page to using it to storyboard a visual problem.
So far I have seen zero redundancies and nothing but efficiency thanks to AI. Creativity will always remain the most essential element of our industry, and its human judgement will determine whether the creative will connect with consumers in a relevant and authentic way.
Bring on SXSW 2024.
Reece Ryan is executive creative director at Hardhat.
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