Can AI beat human creatives yet? Sydney agency Five by Five to hold live experiment to find out

Sydney-based indie agency Five by Five Global is putting on a filmed event next week for marketers to witness first-hand what can happen when a human creative team goes head-to-head with a new advertising AI model on a live brief.

A ‘traditional’ creative duo consisting of creative director/senior copywriter Nick Snelling (top left) and senior art director Emma Chu (top right) will be tasked with responding to a real brief by a real brand within a single day. Simultaneously briefed will be a new bespoke AI model developed by former Meta technology strategist and generative AI consultant Tom Dowuona-Hyde. His model has been trained on a combination of successful advertising campaigns, creative methodology and a Large Language Model (LLM).

The rules are simple: Snelling and Chu can use everything except AI in their creative response. Meanwhile, Dowuona-Hyde (bottom left) cannot deploy any conceptual thinking of his own to direct the AI model – only prompt it with the brief and then select the best ideas it emerges with. To make things more interesting, Snelling and Chu have never worked together before.

Both the humans and the AI will then present back to a panel of expert judges that same afternoon. The judging panel includes Natalia Pawlak (ex-Samsung), Jason Juma-Ross (Meta), senior advertising creative Bettina Clark, and the client sponsor (who at this stage remains anonymous). Given the time constraints, the panel will assess the output from the two teams noting the level of creativity and conceptual thinking displayed.

Five by Five Global’s CMO Matt Lawton (bottom right) explains it as a ‘crazy experiment’: “We’ve pulled this together to have an open, transparent and mature conversation based on something tangible that the audience will get to see first-hand in real time. There’s so much concern in our industry for human creativity, we just wanted to test how far AI has come to closing the gap we all recognised was there when the AI hype began last year.”

Says Snelling: “Call us naively optimistic, but Emma and I both still believe in the power of human creativity. Our impending obsolescence and the so-called singularity may be coming but it ain’t here just yet. Which is why we agreed to tilt at this windmill together. The reality is we’re both using AI as professional creatives every day anyway, so the idea it must be one or the other is a false proposition. When used well, AI is synergising human creativity rather than supplanting it. So, really, this is just a bit of fun – the meat versus the machine. Emma and I are the meat, but definitely the organic, grass-fed, free-range super-tasty kind.”

Adds Chu: “Creatives are being chased down by the beast that is AI, but screw it! Let’s throw some human sparkle at it and keep making magic.”

Lawton is in full praise of Snelling and Chu for stepping up to the challenge: “I spoke to a lot of creatives who thought we were mad and didn’t want a bar of it. Perhaps that reflects the lack of confidence that exists with talent who’ve been repeatedly side-lined in the current tough market. I feel very fortunate to have found two great creatives willing to participate on the basis that we’re ensuring a safe and supportive space. Both of them have entered into it with the spirit of fun.”

The event at 4pm on 17th September is free for client-side marketers who can register by emailing matt.lawton@fivebyfiveglobal.com. The Sydney venue for the event will be disclosed with a confirmation email.