In the latest installment of our AI series, Ogilvy Paris' Executive Creative Director, David Raichman, speaks on utilizing AI as an extension of the creative and how technology can transform the work.
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?
Today, all of the creative departments are mastering generative AI for visuals and at the start of 2023, Ogilvy Paris launched AI.Lab. This initiative aims to be a community of multitasked, agile, cross-functional teams who are trained to know how to use generative AI to superpower our ideas across Ogilvy Paris from creative to strategy to account, finance, legal, etc. When we talk about generative AI, it’s about enhancing and giving more power to our ideas. It’s not about AI for the sake of AI. It’s about the work that we create and recommend to our Clients around AI.
How does the accessibility of these tools affect the way it is used?
What really matters for Ogilvy is what generative AI can do to impact the idea. This is really the mission for us. How we can use generative AI to impact the idea, the work and, ultimately, the Brand’s purpose? More and more these past few months, our clients are coming to us, asking us to help them understand what AI could mean for them and how it’s going to transform the work that we do for them.
WPP's Ogilvy Paris used Dall-E 2 to imagine scenes outside of Vermeer's famous painting for Nestlé's La Laitière
It’s about an idea and how to use a tool, like generative AI, to impact the idea. The last kind of creative impact it brought to us was a Cannes Lion on Tinder and Radio France or at The ONE Show where Nestle’s "MilkmAId" was awarded.
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?
You need to have a double vision: A vision for how technology can help society. When you have this in your mind, it becomes obvious. Then, you need to stay way ahead of the trends and to experiment and play with the technology — create a long creative runway. Then, you know how the new technology can be applied to the debate, when the brand’s brief or creative solution can benefit by it.
"Red Cross Not Generated by AI" was recognized by the ACT Responsible organization in its “Great Ads for Good” exhibition at Cannes and chosen by public voting as the #1 Great Ads for Good in the Solidarity category. The application of AI was critical to the idea. The campaign’s intent was to refocus society’s attention on photographs of real emergencies, not AI generated fakes. The idea was born from the rise of the abundance of sensationalized AI-generated images on social media muddying the boundary between fact and fiction.
If AI furthers its capability to create and think, what is a responsible way to use these new technologies?
It’s really an important responsibility for an agency. Staying ahead of the curve, knowing that we need to bring meaning and to be careful. How we learn will be changed. Part of this future will be how to partner with AI to give meaning to ideas. More than ever, there’s a role for agencies to play, as well as new biz models for creatives and artists. (E.g.: Napster-to-Spotify.)
I imagine on the production side, AI will become a skill you’ll need to master. Like the Internet — we cannot imagine not using it. A painter was the master of paint brushes, a photographer, the master of the camera, etc. AI is another form of art to master. More than ever, we need to control the outcome. We shouldn't count on the AI to create — this is the wrong way to use it.