AI is getting to be a powerful tool in advertising, excessive or inappropriate use could harm companies, marketers and advertisers have warned.
AI overuse could lead to more misinformation appearing in the public sphere, as well as misleading customers and ultimately damage companies' credibility.
Media reports have recently pointed out the phenomenon of event posters and advertisements which have seemingly been created using AI
Anniken Haldna, CEO of the Estonian Association of Marketing Communication Agencies, said nearly 80 percent of international firms already use AI in advertising, primarily to save time and money. However, Haldna added that AI is still mainly used as a tool. Human beings are still behind the overall creative drive of an ad, she said. "Human creativity, the human strategic perspective and dimension of marketing – that is critically important."
Alvar Lonks, creative director at Tallinn ad agency Tabasco, confirmed AI has made the work at his company faster and more efficient.
"From an agency's point of view, I can say that it makes things like creating mock-ups much easier. In the past, we had to do a lot of drawing, which took many working hours, but thanks to AI, producing mock-ups is much simpler," Lonks explained.
He agreed that AI still lacks creativity aspects, and it would not be viable to create high-quality, distinctive advertising from start to finish using AI alone. AI in ad production is nonetheless here to stay, Lonks added.
Above all, the use of AI should not be deceptive, he noted. "People generally like advertisements that speak to them, that use their language or show them familiar images. Authenticity is what matters here," Lonks said.
Haldna added the biggest challenge going forward is helping companies stand out, given ads with significant AI input tend to look a bit uniform. She also highlighted the spread of misinformation, and the challenge of earning customers' trust while still using AI.
"Critical thinking about the use of AI in marketing is vital, including from the perspective of our association. We would certainly encourage people to think critically and also to consider the issue of trust. The initial global studies suggest that people actually do not trust AI-generated advertisements," Haldna went on.
Haldna and Lonks concluded that even as AI is a useful tool for producing advertisements, advertising will remain human-centred for the foreseeable future.
"Creative people are at the heart of an agency, not artificial intelligence. That human perspective is essential if we want to create valuable marketing communications that genuinely resonate with people," Haldna said.
"It is not a case of writing a single prompt, getting a result and immediately printing it on a huge billboard," Lonks noted.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Valner Väino