Alison McKinnon: AI isn’t killing creativity, it’s destroying brand differentiation
By Alison McKinnon, Managing Director, CM.OSX.
Twenty years ago, I entered the advertising and marketing industry thinking I was going to be creative. A copywriter, specifically. It did not take long to realise I would make a terrible one. I do not take feedback particularly well, and I have never been very good at killing my darlings. But a love of writing stayed with me.
Over the years, I have written about the industry, my experiences, life as a working mother, working across Melbourne and Perth – and whatever topic happened to be occupying my brain at the time. I have written for industry outlets, national papers, I’ve done wedding speeches and eulogies.
Lately, though, I have found myself facing a strange crisis of confidence. I am worried my writing is starting to sound like AI. The patterns. The phrasing. The structure. The shorter sentences and syntax. The temptation to write, “and here is the issue no one is talking about…”
Then again, why wouldn’t my writing sound like AI? AI learned from us. From me. From millions of people who have written, published, argued, explained, sold, reflected and created before it. It mimics human behaviour because human behaviour is what trained it.
And this is part of what makes us all anxious – the concern is not only that AI can write, design, edit or generate. It is that if AI can create, perhaps creativity itself becomes less valuable.
Writers worry about AI-generated copy. Designers worry about AI-generated imagery. Agencies worry about AI-generated campaigns. We all talk about the slop we see. My kids watch a video and confidently proclaim, “that’s AI”. At a creative conference earlier this year, mentions of AI were met with boos.
The assumption seems to be that AI is killing creativity. I am not convinced that is what is happening.
Creativity has always been constrained by access
For most of history, creative capability has been shaped by access. If you wanted to paint a huge fresco, compose an opera or build a monument, you usually needed wealthy backing. That is why so much of the art we study came from elite patronage.
At the same time, ordinary people produced enormous amounts of creative work: folk music, storytelling, quilting, pottery, carving, dance, theatre, poetry and decorative crafts. Much of it was not preserved in museums because it was transient, local or made from materials that deteriorated.
The creativity was there. The access was not.
The printing press dramatically lowered the cost of distributing creative work. Later, paint became available in tubes. Cameras became affordable. Musical instruments became mass produced. Recorded music became widely available. Then the internet changed distribution again.
For most of history, a talented painter, writer or musician could remain invisible outside their immediate community. Today, someone can upload music globally, publish a novel online, share artwork instantly or build an audience without institutional support.
Every time the barriers fall, more people participate.
AI is another shift in that long history. It is lowering the cost of creative execution in much the same way previous technologies lowered the cost of creation and distribution.
Is the output always good? Of course not.
But access and quality have never been the same thing. Democratising creative capability does not guarantee great work. Nor does it guarantee an experience with a creative that will truly create an emotional connection with a brand.It simply means more people have the opportunity to create it.
History suggests this reaction is not unique to AI
Photography was once seen by some as a threat to painting. Desktop publishing made people question what design expertise was worth. Social media created millions of new creators and, with them, a lot of average content.
Now AI is creating a new version of an old debate. Critics worry it produces fake mastery. Supporters argue it removes barriers that once excluded people from creative expression. Both views carry some truth.
AI can produce more generic work at greater speed. It can create content with no lived experience, no real intent and no meaningful point of view. It can also give someone with a strong idea the ability to bring that idea to life without needing a production team, specialist software or a large budget.
I don’t see that as making creativity less important. Like with a lot of things being impacted by AI, it changes where creative value sits.
Creative execution in marketing and advertising is becoming abundant
For a long time, marketers and advertisers who had the ability to produce creative work gained the competitive advantage. Not necessarily because the ideas were better, but because relatively few people had the skills, resources and time required to execute them well.
Today, even the most junior, entry level marketer or advertiser with an idea can create a video, generate imagery, write copy, build presentations and develop concepts at a speed that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The barriers to entry are falling. But that does not mean everyone will suddenly create great work. It just means more people can create work.
And when more people can create, production is no longer the bottleneck. Judgement is.
AI can help generate outputs, but it does not know which idea matters. It does not understand which customer problem is worth solving. It does not know which message will resonate, which tension is worth exploring or which opportunity will create commercial value. It can produce options. It cannot determine meaning.
The value is moving, not disappearing
When something becomes abundant, its value does not always disappear but instead shift. Calculators did not make mathematical thinking worthless. They reduced the value of manual arithmetic and increased the value of problem solving.
Search engines did not make knowledge irrelevant. They reduced the value of accessing information and increased the value of interpreting it.
AI will do something similar to creative work. It will reduce some of the friction in execution. It will make more outputs possible. It will give more people the ability to express ideas in formats they may never have been able to access before. But it will also make judgement more important.
Because when everyone can create more, faster, the hard question becomes what should be created in the first place.
The future belongs to people with ideas
I do not believe AI reduces the value of human creativity. I think it increases the value of the most important parts of creativity. Original thinking. Strategic insight. Human judgement. Taste. Context. Imagination. The things that abound in our industry.
The execution layer is becoming more accessible, but the thinking layer remains the most important.
Success will not come from access to AI. Everyone will have access to AI. Success will come from identifying meaningful opportunities, making stronger creative choices and using technology to bring better ideas to life.
When we change the conversation from AI killing creativity to democratising creative production capability, the future actually belongs to people with ideas.
About the Author: Alison McKinnon, Managing Director, CM.OSX is a strategic marketing and brand leader with more than 20 years of experience across Perth and Melbourne, delivering high-impact campaigns, digital transformation and customer experience (CX) strategies for leading Australian and global brands.