Jordan Harper, Executive Strategy Director of Digital Transformation, and Simon Candy, Executive Creative Director, of Iris speaks on the role of the creative with the adoption of AI and how it streamlines the creative process.
Does your agency encourage or deter the use of AI in your work? If applicable, how does your team integrate these tools into the creative process?
JH: We are very much an agency that looks forward – a big part of that means embracing change and new technologies – so yes, we have absolutely embraced and encouraged experimentation with AI! Experimentation being the operative word – we are very much at the beginning of learning how and when to use various AI tools effectively, so we encourage people to use and push creative AI, LLMs, code generators, and anything else that could help make us smarter.
SC: With Midjourney specifically it has become an extremely valuable tool to assist us in visualizing ideas at speed. Generally speaking, the time required to create an ambitious visual idea can be reduced by 50% but does require a solid understanding and experience of the parameters that MidJourney works within. There is always a degree of experimentation required but with the addition of parameters that means you can weight visual input as well as written it is really becoming a formidable tool.
How does the accessibility of these tools affect the way it is used?
JH: I think it’s interesting how a lot of the tools have adopted integration into existing platforms – like Midjourney building an interface in Discord, or Adobe building Firefly into the creative suite – and I think it’s true that the way these tools are accessed affects the way they’re used. Midjourney is home to experimentation and boundary pushing, Firefly is more focused on the creative workflow and practical applications in existing workflows.
SC: Again with Midjourney this was initially something that felt like only the most curious and experiential minds might venture into. But, its proliferation into the everyday conversation means we find it being adopted more widely across the agency, not just within the design specialism.
As AI advances, how is the role of the creative redefined? In what ways do you see the landscape of creation changing/shifting in response to AI?
JH: On a practical level, I think creatives – in particular designers – will benefit hugely from learning to effectively prompt AI tools to help speed up the early stages of the creative process, and of course to take advantage of tools integrated more tightly into the existing software they use.
SC: Personally I feel that AI will become an increasingly powerful tool in generating the visual expression of ideas but ultimately creativity will continue to rely on the human brain’s ability to create those ideas in the first place - there’s a certain magic that happens there that AI has not been able to achieve (yet!). AI enables the creative’s ability to spend more time exploring conceptual ideas and then crafting their expression - this is really valuable. To me, it has become a prerequisite for any creative in our industry that an understanding of AI is part of their experience and skill set.
If AI furthers its capability to create and think, what is a responsible way to use these new technologies?
JH: I think that AI – at least for the foreseeable future – is probably best thought of as ‘thought assistants’ for humans. LLMs like ChatGPT and generative creative AI applications are able to give individuals quick and intuitive access to something that’s able to ‘think’ alongside them, quickly bringing to life seed-ideas, find flaws in their arguments, spot connections that hadn’t been considered and to bring together concepts or visuals in unimagined ways. What they’re not are replacements for people. I think it would be irresponsible for teams or companies to fully rely on AI tools to do a job where creativity (visual, written or strategic) makes the difference between good and great.