The danger of the same thought
Where were you when you first discovered generative AI? I remember my first time was in a client meeting in 2022, where I was working as a project manager and a client wanted to forgo our writing team and use ChatGPT to write a press release because it was going to be fast. I was curious, but I was also sceptical of relying solely on a tool for a key brief that was going to go out to the public. I politely objected and assured the client that we were going to prioritise the press release for the day. Looking back, it won’t be the first time I push back on AI.
Then I remember the next wave of AI that followed; ChatGPT was used for almost everything from emails, articles, essays, scripts to creative concepts and presentation briefs. Emails all started reading the same: mechanical, strict and polished. It was this new exciting partner at work that made everything possible. Remember those memes of “ChatGPT and I receiving awards at End of Year retreat” or “ChatGPT and I doing my jobs”. It made everyone an expert on a topic in minutes, but on a surface level. A rather funny compliment I heard about a colleague was that“He is a human ChatGPT, just type and he goes”
Ironically, there was also panic spreading because “AI was going to take our jobs”, especially for people in the creative fields such as graphic designers, copywriters, strategists, communication experts, and even finance roles. Remember the client who wanted to use ChatGPT to write the press release? That was the job for our communications team. Post AI, that project would have taken 3 hours between research, drafting, reviews and approval but now the same press release would have taken 30 minutes to complete. In that context, this is a valid fear, and their job was hanging on the line.
Four years later, AI especially Generative AI. This is a type of AI such as Claude, Google Gemini, Perplexity AI, ChatGPT, that creates new content, such as text, images, videos, audio, and code, by learning patterns from existing data. It has become more integrated than ever in our work but has not taken our jobs as we feared. It has seemingly made our work “easier”, “cheaper,” and, to the average eye, “better”. A well-thought-out prompt covering role, context, task, and output format is fed into the AI platform, and within minutes, you have the task completed. We have embraced it, and we reap its benefits.No more burning long hours on conceptualisation, drafting, refining, and editing. A jarring instance is seeing creators submit a short-form video in 2 hours, one that would have taken 48 hours between scripting, casting, shooting, and editing. It is incredible.
It is getting harder to imagine a world without AI. It is universal and accessible. Some AI tools can be used without an internet. Platforms such as META and GOOGLE, writing
apps, design softwares and editing suites have an AI assistant embedded into their technology. A Google search and your first result is the AI overview. When last did you read a full article to get the answer you need?. As an Operations specialist, I am elated by this because efficiency and productivity have soared over the roof within any organisation that has embraced AI. According to AI Marketing Trends by Active Campaign in 2025, AI saves marketers 13 hours per week in daily tasks.We don’t have to dedicate long hours to manual and rigid tasks, in a way, we can say that we canreinvest those hours into strategy, creativity, and execution.
It also saves institutions money and is more cost-effective. There would be no need to hire a graphic designer, a copywriter, or a video editor when I have a resource that fulfills all these functions. 71 % of images shared on social media were AI-generated or AI edited by Forbes, There are now 1.3 billion videos on TikTok labelled as AI-generated by The Guardian. Anyone who is not embracing AI enough is going to be left out.
There are, however, reservations against AI, especially in creative work. Let us start with copyright and the intellectual process, which is currently a large bone of contention. It is seen played out in debates, protests and lawsuits around the world. People are getting worked out about the issue of creators’ work being used to train AI models without permission, whether or not this constitutes copyright infringement, National Review. Earlier this year, I came across an interview by Ghanaian artist and songwriter, Ria Boss, revealing that her songs were used to train AI without her consent.
Another reservation is that AI is killing creativity because it is less innovative and derivative. A colleague shared,“Weneed to ban these AI posters.”, I chuckled. AI has made us identical twins. How easy it is to spot AI Slop. It has flooded our timelines. We are starting to sound and look the same, but of course this is expected. Generative AI systems are trained on collections of existing images, layouts, and text, and it is all the same data sets they are using. Creative work involves ingenuity, imagination and innovation to create something new, and that’s why it feels different, whereas AI relies on existing ideas to “create” something.
There is also a growing distrust on social media for brands that use AI Slop. While I can’t say how long this will last, it is interesting to see how people are pushing back. The more content and noise that is pushed out, the more consumers are reaching for trust and a recognisable human voice.
Think of the last memorable ad you saw, how long ago was it created? Why has it stuck with you? Maybe it was by a creative team, by people who brainstormed for a long time, who genuinely loved a product and wanted people to know how it would change their lives. At the risk of sounding melancholic, it was made with a soul and not a prompt. I went into a client onboarding meeting in Q3. As part of the process, they had to take us through their internal documents, and a particular presentation made me feel joy. It was
like nothing I had ever seen in a while: the copy choice, the design arrangement and the edited videos all made with a goal – to evoke emotions. AI, cannot feel emotions. It can learn to reproduce artistic styles and forms, but it cannot understand or express emotions in the same way as a human. As a result, anything created by artificial intelligence could lack the emotional depth and nuance that characterise human art.
AI is here to stay. Clients and employers are embracing it, and expectations are shifting with
them for faster turnaround and more “Can you just…?” And if you don’t use it, chances are higher that you may lose the opportunity to a colleague who already has a certification course in AI.
Remember AI is not a magic bullet; it works best when paired with human strategy and creativity. For marketers and companies, AI can be used to accelerate data access, information and automate repetitive tasks- think about all those hours you are taking back from mundane tasks. AI can be used to augment the creative process and should not be used to replace the human touch. For example, give AI a thought and say ‘what do you think about it?” “What else can I add to” or “What am I missing?”. Questions like this will help deepen your knowledge, extend your skills while helping you do your best work.
And if you are creative that loves to create, keep creating and don’t let a robot do it for you. Don’t lose your soul.
