‘It’s just sort of ridiculous’: AKQA founder Ajaz Ahmed on the metaverse and other tech bandwagons
After founding the AKQA in 1994, Ajaz Ahmed remains its CEO. Now the agency is embedding artificial intelligence in “just about everything we do,” he told Mumbrella this week.
“We really don’t look at AI as a threat. We look at these incredible technologies like Computer Vision, large language models, machine learning, and robotics as tools to augment what we do, help us and help society.”
AQKA’s founder Ajaz Ahmed
Ahmed said on this week’s Mumbrellacast, that in some ways “our belief is that the reason the internet was invented was for artificial intelligence.”
“Up until now, the great innovations across the internet have been predominantly customer self-service on the one hand […], and then the other aspect is multi-media convergence.”
Anyone that has played with the AI applications that have become famous, Ahmed said, “can’t fail to be impressed.”
Yet he isn’t entirely convinced by all the technological advancements that have gripped the advertising, design and marketing industries over the past few years.
“With our industry, there’s often a lot of excitement about new technologies when they occur. There used to be lots of talk about blockchain, crypto and NFTs, and we weren’t particularly bullish about those.”
“Then there was another aspect which was to do with the metaverse. Our point of view on the metaverse is we call it the ‘meta-worse’. We weren’t particularly bullish about the metaverse. But the good version of the metaverse has always existed in entertainment or video games, but the kind of fake version, that’s a new second life, but once again the loyalty has been incredibly transient.”
Ahmed believes the metaverse still attracts too much focus which he said remains doing something in “a more complicated and plonky way than you would normally”, that just doesn’t work.
“It’s just sort of ridiculous.”
“I think there’s a lot of these bandwagons that people jump on that aren’t necessarily a commercial reality. They could be interim steps in what’s going to happen, but some organisations seem quite happy to waste their money in them. It doesn’t make sense to our clients.”
AKQA developed Speedgate, the first physcial sport invented by AI
Ahmed founded AKQA in 1994 as a 21-year-old, which while often defined online as a ‘digital agency’, he defines as a design and innovation company.
“It’s interesting that since the acquisition by WPP, because WPP is seen as an advertising agency, we get called a digital advertising agency, whereas if you asked our team what we do, we would say design and innovation.”
The nature of the agency, and the work it does has evolved over time, he said, which he said is what keeps him inspired by his job to this day.
“We’ve got the best team we’ve ever had. We’ve got the best clients we’ve ever had, and we’re doing the best work we’ve ever done. And I suppose I absolutely love the work that we do.”
“The clients are absolutely brilliant and really give us a blank canvas to help add value to their goals and desired outcomes.”
“So in that environment, I feel like we are really just at the beginning of what’s possible, and when I look at some of the early examples of how we’ve embedded AI, either into our systems as a company or into the work we’re doing for our clients, it’s really exciting, and it feels like the birth of the internet again, in terms of the territory is yet to be defined.”
Listen to the full interview with Ajaz Ahmed on this week’s Mumbrellacast from the 14.13 mark.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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No actually reference to how AI is embedded into the organisation? Aside from a poster about a fictitious sport…
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Hi Nick
The full podcast with Ajaz offers a bit more context. This article is just a teaser.
Check it out and let us know what you think.
Cheers
Cal
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