Ep 264: An AI Thesis - "The Creative Industries and AI - Wrap"

Fearless Creative Leadership

What will be the impact of AI on the creative industries, and how can we meet this moment?

This is the final episode of my series of interviews over the last few weeks leading up to and through the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

It offers a map for the future based on those conversations, and observations of the speed of change. If you haven’t seen it, look up the Volvo ad that was just published on social media. It took one person, 24 hours to create.

This ad could not have been made in May, when I started this series of interviews.

Creativity and innovation are oxygen for the world's best businesses. Increase the flow and they soar. Limit the supply and they wither and ultimately die.

That has been true for longer than anyone reading this has been alive.

What is also true is that until now, that creativity, that ability to come up with original ideas that solve problems has been limited to human beings.

With the arrival and advances in AI, will that still be true five years from now? Two? Tomorrow?

Over the last few weeks, I've interviewed ten different leaders from across the creative industries. Brand leaders, agency founders, global agency heads, global client leads, production experts, creator community experts, consultants, and an advertising industry legend.

And while I was at Cannes, I talked to two dozen more about where the creative industries are headed and what they need to do to ensure their future.

These industries are a complex eco system of competing and contradictory forces built on what I believe is the worst business model in the world: selling original ideas based on how long it took to conceive and deliver them, and then giving up the ownership and the economic benefit of those ideas forever.

It is the equivalent of pricing a Picasso based on how long it took him to paint it. It is selling every patentable idea based on the cost of the labor, while ignoring the impact on people's lives.

According to some reports it takes 24 hours to build an iPhone. Imagine if Apple broke that down into a scope of work and then sold each iPhone for the cost of that scope and, with it, the ownership of the IP. For how long would they remain the most valuable business in the world?

The daily advances of AI challenge every aspect of the creative industries. From defining and articulating the problem, to conceiving, creating and delivering solutions. Every part of the process is being radically changed. And the extent of that change is limitless.

So what should we do about that?