AI is here and it’s not going away. It’s in our meetings and in our notes and scheduling our days and analyzing our data. And it’s creating TONS of content. Piles and piles and mountains of digital detritus that may never leave an LLM but often populates the hell out of our social feeds. 

Whether you are a skeptic or a proponent everyone is passively or actively engaging with AI and using it for different purposes and ends. Ask ten creatives how they use AI tools and you will get ten different answers. Some have automated entire parts of their process, removing “grunt” work in place of AI solutions to free up their time for their more engaging work. Others see it as a creative partner, someone to bounce ideas off of, generate some inspiring images or find synonyms for the perfect concept idea. As a creative, I find myself in the “feeling it out” phase, using AI as a tool in the background but making sure everything has that trademark Garrett™ touch (basically adding puns and bad jokes, you’ll see more of that later).

But when an AI creative work leaves the safety of our browser windows and decks and goes viral (or reaches above some content exit velocity where it gets past our algorithmic filter) it gets ROASTED. An AI radio dj? WE MAD. AI being used to emphasize accents and create reference imagery that is then re-created for an Oscar nominated epic. WE MAD (“WE MAD” is also an award season tradition unlike any other). AI Tupac? WE MAD. Memes created by the government for some reason (no, I will not be linking thank you very much)? WE MAD FOR MULTIPLE REASONS. We are at the point where anti-AI conversations aren’t just on the fringe, they are becoming buttons and jokes in major tech company streaming shows.

And while the AI backlash itself is a multi-faceted point of view with hesitance for any number of reasons, there is undeniably a reaction that happens when audiences see creative work that is made with AI. We are told AI is going to change everything (and it has and will continue to) but it is important to take a step back and see how audiences are reacting to the content. It’s not just about how we feel about AI, it’s about how AI work makes us FEEL. As all creatives continue to grapple with the technology we have to ask the question, where do audiences want AI in their creative work?

To frame this, let’s look at an AI trend that didn't have this same type of backlash: the AI action figure meme from a month ago. It seemed for a week or so, you couldn’t open a social feed without seeing these Funko inspired images; hell, we even hopped on the train. And it's also not a coincidence that this work was CLEARLY AI. We didn’t feel duped like a deepfake nor did we view it as “art” where authorship might matter. But now a month later? This content already feels dated. It was a flash moment of AI adoption and imagery that everyone seemingly shrugged, said “that’s neat,” hit the like button, made our own version and then let this idea float right out of our brain.  

This feels instructive to where we are at when it comes to AI creative. We are cool with the disposable, the meme, the B2B post we know will be buried in our feeds in short order. The action figure meme is basically a modern Harlem Shake without having to get up and dance. AI makes the barrier to entry so low to create that these moments are something we can all participate in without having to really try and content that is inherently timely but disposable. 

I think this is why AI creative seems to be working on two tracks: the disposable and the technological marvels. We feel comfortable with it as the disposable pablum in our feeds or as the WHOA IT’S CRAZY THAT THE TECHNOLOGY CAN DO THAT (which is less a conversation about creative as it is about technological optimization). But fundamentally on the things we want to be meaningful, we are apprehensive to laud AI as even part of the process. We still seem to like work that has authorship, something on the other side, to connect to through the work. Again, not a coincidence that in the advertising world it feels like AI is expected and fine in B2B but not in B2C.

I don’t say all of this to plant a firm stake in the ground. AI development and adoption continues at such a rapid pace that this window is surely to shift as new use cases and controversies emerge and we will have to continue to monitor the situation (we can’t be that far from a massive AI Milli Vanilli situation which will be equal parts instructive and insane). And this conversation will be shaped on more than just creative but on the larger implementations of AI (looking at you Duo Lingo) and how firm the reaction towards and against is. 

To avoid this just becoming the first installment in MoreMore’s “Garrett being a bummer contrarian about things” series, I do think there is something for all of us in creative and experiential to think about. A big part of creating experiences is recognizing what the audience wants and needs. A user-first approach requires us to think about how our work is going to make people FEEL. And right now, the feelings about AI aren’t just ever-evolving, they are complicated, messy and often contradictory and not just something you can package in a plastic toy wrap.